Blue-and-Orange Brigade

JB on the Amazin’s, the New York Mets

WILLIE-NILLY

I swear--I haven’t seen so many people unload on one person the way everyone does on Mets’ manager Willie Randolph since I was the target in junior high school.

After his team got swept in Atlanta and dropped two of three in Denver’s thin air, now come the stories of Randolph meeting with GM Omar Minaya and owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon. No, this is not unusual for any manager (except maybe Joe Torre in his Yankee years); he’s in charge and must answer for his team. No one, however, wants to hear anyone talk about four months left to the season and plenty of time for a turnaround.

Part of that stems from last Septemeber; we know what happened, so there’s no point in rehashing it. But before the Sunday night game of the Subway Series at Yankee Stadium, ESPN analyst Peter Gammons said that two-week stretch weighs heavily on everyone’s minds, not to mention how the team was .500 (75-75) since the previous May at that point. Then Gammons threw in a little something about how Randolph keeps his cool during press conferences after losses--and how the team tends to follow his lead. It sounded Gammons would gripe continuously until the final out.

Okay--so the Mets made the wrong kind of history, put together a record only a sports reporter would notice, and don’t trash the locker room after they come up short. Yeah--that\'s a great group of reasons to stuff Randolph in a locker.

To be fair, those reporters stick their mikes in Randolph’s face after games, win or lose. So they have every right to criticize the manager and call for his head. The trouble is, they do so at the drop of a hat.

Believe it or not, this mentality stretches back to the team’s days at the Polo Grounds. They lost a whopping 120 games in their expansion year, a dubious record nearly broken by the Detroit Tigers a few seasons ago. Since then they’ve been considered the Yankees’ kid brother, and those two World Series banners at Shea mean nothing these days, or perhaps at any time before and after the Mets won it all.

This fickleness reared its ugly head last September, when the team went into its swoon and everyone lashed out at Minaya for assembling a hodgepodge of young and old players. Then Randolph took flak for supposedly directing them to play poorly. Here’s my question: why didn\'t the naysayers complain while the Mets were winning? After all, if they lost 120 games 46 years ago, they can’t do anything right, can they?

Naturally, all this bad-mouthing caught up to the skipper, who accused the media of making it a racial issue. Yeah, it was a dumb and ill-advised thing to say, but he apologized for it. I, however, think it was a knee-jerk reaction and would’ve treated it as such if I were a reporter.

Recently New York Newsday clearly stated Minaya and the Wilpons had no plans to replace Randolph, which made me feel warm and fuzzy. Still, others in the local media were convinced he was on the hot seat when word of the big meeting broke.

See, I hate this jumping to conclusions. Yes, the writers have more experience in these matters than I do, but they might make their point better if they showed up at Shea with a giant pink slip containing their signatures as well as those of any fans in the area. Never mind the decision isn’t in their hands. Still, they’re delusional enough to think so, or so it seems.

But let’s suppose the Mets’ brass does give Randolph his pink slip. What happens then? His replacement will only be an interim manager from the bench, because it makes no sense to interview candidates this far into the season. And don’t think for one minute the team will turn into the 1986 incarnation the minute Randolph cleans out his locker.

This isn’t about blind loyalty on my part. Considering I had 27 jobs in 18 years, I know full well when someone isn’t doing a good job, there has to be change. But there shouldn’t be any change just because outside forces want it--especially when those outside forces can’t do much better themselves.

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