Willie Randolph's Record Since Last Memorial Day: 77-83

Days Until Contract of Luis Castillo (Key Strikeout, Otherwise an Acceptable Night in a Punchless Way) Expires: 1,222

Days Until Willie Randolph Is Fired: ?

Days Until I Give Up on This Listless, Unwatchable, Eminently Booable Team: -6

Yeah, I'm writing this early. If I wind up with egg on my face, I'll be thrilled. If only.

Let me see….

A lot of vaguely tough talk from Met ownership … on a day in which they did nothing to arrest the freefall of their $137 million team, destined to be routinely booed in a beautiful new ballpark.

Two long balls from Jose Reyes that will look nice on the highlights — and another horrible error that opened the door for an opponent. Jose's electricity/stupidity ratio was even for the day. Congratulations, Jose!

Given an excuse, Mike Pelfrey once again lowered himself to the occasion, demonstrating that he needs some more time in New Orleans. Faced with the possibility of New Orleans, Aaron Heilman didn't screw up. That's progress these days.

The Mets fought back from a 2-0 deficit, briefly took the lead, fell behind and, as is their wont, went to sleep. These days they're dead ringers for one of those minor-conference champions that get their tickets stamped to March Madness. They hang around for a bit, then fall behind by three or so in the first quarter. Then five, then eight, then double digits and you know it's over.

Did that cover it? Of course it did — we're talking about the 2008 New York Mets. Goodnight, sweet underachieving princes….

The big meeting took place. Willie Randolph is still the manager. Omar Minaya says he will be until he's not, more or less.

Jose Reyes has been on base in each of his past 25 games. Carlos Delgado has hit three home runs since Thursday. A Nationals loss this afternoon extended the Mets' fourth-place lead to three lengths, five in the all-important loss column.

Things are looking up, eh?

Heading out there now to tell them what a good job they've been doing. I'll try not to cause undue harm to small animals along the way.

6: Tuesday, September 23 vs Cubs

Shea Stadium, ladies and gentlemen, has been known as many things through its 45-year life, but one of the most accurate descriptions attached to it is “pitcher’s park,” in deference to its fair dimensions, its symmetry and probably its pitchers in residence. Every Mets pitcher who has succeeded here would be quick to tell you the park was made that much better for pitching by defense.

Pitching and defense…the key ingredients to so many magical Mets moments at Shea Stadium. Though Shea is rightly celebrated for some of the finest pitchers to have toed a rubber anywhere since 1964, tonight we tip our cap to the other part of the equation: to defense, particularly the most memorable defensive plays to unfold right here at Shea.

It is easy enough to be blinded by offense, but defense can mean the difference between winning and losing championships. Consider the great catches that have ensured titles, like the one Willie Mays made at the first home of the Mets, the Polo Grounds, in 1954 when he tracked down one of the longest fly balls imaginable. And consider as well the infamous plays, like the one that took place in the Polo Grounds exactly 100 years ago today.

On September 23, 1908, it was the Chicago Cubs visiting New York, just as it is on September 23, 2008. Then the home team was the Giants. Then leadership for the National League pennant was on the line. Then the winning run seemed to have scored on a two-out, Giant base hit in the ninth — except a young player named Fred Merkle didn’t advance from first to second on the single, a common enough practice at the time. The Cubs’ Johnny Evers got hold of a baseball, stepped on second and convinced the umpires that the game should not be ruled over. Unfathomable controversy ensued with the upshot being the game having to be replayed at the end of the season. The Cubs would beat the Giants for the flag and the legend of Merkle’s Boner — an unfortunate sobriquet — was born.

We digress…perhaps. Let us get on with honoring Shea’s most memorable defensive plays as prelude to removing number 6 as an essential component of the Countdown Like It Oughta Be.

We start in left field with a ball that was surely leaving the ballpark…and with it, most likely, the Mets’ hopes of winning the East. Fate and some airtight execution, however, had something else to say about it. It was September 20, 1973. The batter was Dave Augustine of the first-place Pirates. Richie Zisk was the runner on first. The score was tied at three in the top of the thirteenth inning. Bob Murphy will describe what happened when Augustine swung:

The two-one pitch…hit in the air to left field, it’s deep…back goes Jones, by the fence…it’s hits the TOP of the fence, comes back in play, Jones GRABS it…the relay throw to the plate, THEY MAY GET HIM…HE’S OUT! HE’S OUT AT THE PLATE.

The famous Ball Off The Wall play indeed ended at home when the catcher, a rookie who had started the season at Double-A Memphis, blocked Zisk from scoring and tagged him for the third out. For good measure, that very same rookie catcher came up in the bottom of the thirteenth and drove in the winning run to propel the Mets toward their You Gotta Believe finish in 1973. From that night on, this dependable backstop was a Shea Stadium fixture clear through to 1984. Score it 7-5-2 and welcome back Ron Hodges.

We return to left field for our next play. It is yet another night with everything on the line. The inning is the sixth. The score is tied at one. The runner on first for the St. Louis Cardinals is Jim Edmonds. The batter is Scott Rolen. The setting is the National League Championship Series, the seventh and deciding game. Gary Cohen tells us what happened next:

Perez deals. Fastball hit in the air to left field, that’s deep. Back goes Chavez, back near the wall…leaping…and…HE MADE THE CATCH! HE TOOK A HOME RUN AWAY FROM ROLEN! Trying to get back to first Edmonds…HE’S DOUBLED OFF! AND THE INNING IS OVER! ENDY CHAVEZ SAVED THE DAY! He reached high over the left field wall, right in front of the visitors’ bullpen and pulled back a two-run homer. He went to the apex of his leap and caught it in the webbing of his glove with his elbow up above the fence, a MIRACULOUS play by Endy Chavez, and then Edmonds is doubled off first and Oliver Perez escapes the sixth inning. The play of the year, the play, maybe, of the franchise history for Endy Chavez, the inning is over.

It was as sensational a catch as it was a call and it will live on as long as anyone remembers Shea Stadium. Score it 7-4-2 and say hi to the left fielder who leapt as no one had leapt before, Endy Chavez.

From left we move to centerfield, another postseason, an ultimately happier ending. Let’s listen to Curt Gowdy and Lindsey Nelson describe the indelible highlights of the third game of the 1969 World Series. First with Elrod Hendricks up and two Oriole runners on in the fourth inning:

The count is no balls, two strikes. There’s a drive into deep left-center…racing hard is Agee…WHAT A GRAB! TOM AGEE saves two runs!

Tommie Agee going all the way to track, look at the backhand stab of the glove, and now he’ll have to brake himself with the bare hand on the wall, a lot of white showing, look at that ball!

Boy he just had that one, Lindsey. Standing ovation for Agee as he comes in.

Next with Paul Blair batting and the bases full of Birds in the seventh:

The count is oh and two. And it is a fly ball, it’ll be tough to get to, and Agee is going and Agee…makes a diving catch, he’s out!

This man has possibly saved five runs in this game. Watch it in slow motion. The wind is blowing out now, and Agee twice has clutched this ball in the webbing of his glove, once against Hendricks with two on and two out, this time with the bases loaded and two out, a skidding sprawl and another standing ovation for him when he came in.

Let’s move one day forward and over to right field as long as we’re in 1969. It’s Game Four, the ninth inning of the tensest of World Series thrillers. Tom Seaver is on the mound leading 1-0. Orioles are on first and third, Frank Robinson the lead runner. Brooks Robinson at bat. Hall of Famers are everywhere, when somebody else enters the picture:

And there’s a drive to right-center. Swoboda…comes up with it. The tag at third, here comes Frank Robinson, the game is tied. Ron SWOBODA making another sensational catch for the Mets; Frank Robinson, the old veteran…they’re going to appeal at third that Robinson left too quickly. But Frank Robinson…here is that grab, look at that, Lindsey!

Beautiful catch by Ron Swoboda…

Beautiful catches all around, beautiful month to be a Mets fan, thanks in no small part to two outfielders whose legends were firmly established in that World Series. Score it 8, score it 8 again and score it 9. Tommie Agee indeed saved five runs on two spectacular grabs in the third game and Ron Swoboda dove across the right field wall and held the Orioles in check to allow Seaver to finish the ninth with the game tied at one. It would be won in the tenth and the Series would be secured by the Mets the next afternoon.

To commemorate those three immortal catches from the most Amazin’ week Shea Stadium ever saw, please welcome the wife of the late Tommie Agee, Maxcine Agee and, escorting her to join Ron Hodges and Endy Chavez as they march toward number 6 around in right, Ron Swoboda.

But they will have company.

No retelling of the great plays in Mets history would be complete without this one. We give you Bob Murphy and Gary Thorne, the tenth inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series, Mookie Wilson swinging:

And the pitch by Stanley…and a ground ball, trickling…it is a fair ball…GETS BY BUCKNER! Rounding third Knight! The Mets will win the ballgame! The Mets win! They win!

Unbelievable, the Red Sox in stunned disbelief!

Yes, stunned disbelief…everybody was immersed in it in the early hours of October 26, 1986. The Mets were one out — one strike — from elimination, but a never-say-die rally, capped by a play that would be scored E-6 E-3 and go down in unforgettable baseball history with Merkle’s Boner, forestalled elimination, and by Monday night the Mets would be world champions once more.

One man was at the center of the action in Game Six. His moment in the first base spotlight overshadowed an absolutely brilliant career that deserves to be remembered for 2,715 hits, a batting title, an All-Star berth and a track record of hustle that allowed him to persevere as a Major Leaguer from 1969 until 1990, making him one of the few to ever play in four different decades. It is testament to the kind of man he is that he graces us with his presence tonight, aware as he is of the historical significance of what we’re doing as we close Shea Stadium.

Ladies and gentlemen, heading to right from the most memorable defensive play ever in this or maybe any ballpark, number 6 on the 1986 Boston Red Sox himself, Bill Buckner.

Number 7 was revealed here.

Number 5 will be counted down next Monday, June 2.

Adam Rubin of the News wasn't exactly presenting it as a scoop on the FAN tonight, but he did sound rather resigned in conversation with Lori Rubinson to Willie Randolph being dismissed, quite possibly Monday. I trust Rubin's reporting as much as I do that of any of those who cover the Mets daily.

Watching the Mets change managers, even if very much merited — even if it means a manager you don't care for will be out of your life — is never fun. It is an explicit admission that something has gone terribly awry for our team, which isn't why we turn to sports. It generally means either our season has gone down the tubes (Westrum, Torre, Harrelson, Green, Valentine, Howe) or it's been definitively judged headed that way (Berra, Frazier, Bamberger, Johnson, Torborg). In the four instances when it's happened around this time of year (Yogi was offed in early August), it's meant little in the way of changing fortunes. Only Buddy taking over for Davey in 1990 seemed to meaningfully spark the Mets for the balance of the season. No Mets team that has changed managers in-season (or even the next season) has ever made the playoffs.

I've held off from weighing in with a Fire Willie or Keep Willie proclamation this year because I couldn't conjure a convincing argument one way or the other to myself. Last September I was ready to replicate the final Saturday Night Live sketch of the tepid 1985-86 season. It was supposed to be a cliffhanger à la “Who Shot J.R.?” In that case an inferno threatened to engulf the entire cast, and producer Lorne Michaels appeared in the scene to direct only Jon Lovitz (then very hot with his pathological liar character) to safety.

Me, I might have airlifted David Wright out of the carnage of Shea on September 30 and turned my back on everybody else.

Cooler thinking prevailed, but that notion of firing 'em all and letting the Wilpons sort 'em out has never completely left my thought process. It really is everybody's fault. Nobody with the exception of a guy with a concussion has done his job exquisitely in 2008. That includes Wright. That includes Reyes. That includes Beltran. That includes Wagner. That includes Maine. That includes Santana. That includes the guy who traded for Santana, counted on Alou and gave four years to Castillo and that sure as hell includes the man who has managed Ryan Church and 24 underachievers/clockpunchers into a solid fourth place, at least until the Nationals heat up.

You've read it in varying measurements. Let me give it to you exactly and accurately.

• Starting May 30, 2007, one night after that fantastic game when Delgado blasted that walkoff homer off Benitez moments after Benitez balked home Reyes, the Mets have won 78 games and lost 82 games. 78-82 over 160 games. That's virtually an entire season's worth of sub-.500 ball under the stewardship of Willie Randolph.

• Starting September 14, 2007, when the Mets entered play with a 6-1/2 game lead as the second-place Phillies arrived at Shea, the Mets have won 28 games and lost 37 games. 28-37 over 65 games. That spans the stretch run of one season when the Mets surrendered a seemingly impregnable division lead and nearly a third of the year conceived as the season that would put the collapse behind them. All of it has been under the stewardship of Willie Randolph.

• Starting April 20, 2008, following a five-game winning streak that had vaulted the Mets into first place, the Mets have won 13 games and lost 19 games. 13-19 over 32 games. That is twice the length of this season's reasonably promising 10-6 start. This, too, has occurred under the stewardship of Willie Randolph.

• On May 25, 2008, Willie Randolph's Mets sit 23-25, 5-1/2 games out of first place.

With all that, I can't knee-jerk tell you Willie Must Go, even as I can't find too many reasons to tell you Willie Must Stay. Jerry Manuel or Ken Oberkfell or Wally Backman or Jose Valentin or whoever you like will have the same roster at his disposal, a roster filled with players who have lost 19 of 32, 37 of 65, 82 of 160. I have no idea what practical magic Willie Randolph could have stirred to have materially altered those trends. I still remember Willie Randolph leading the most exciting Mets team in 20 years to an easy division title and to within one out of a World Series only two years ago.

But trends are trends. And Willie Randolph doesn't seem to be reversing them any more than Wright, Reyes, Beltran, Wagner, Maine, Santana and the concussed Church are. If Willie Randolph doesn't get the chance, I will be genuinely sorry, both for a guy whom I've liked more than I've disliked and for my own selfish interests as a Met fan — because when the manager of my team requires replacement, it's rarely only the manager that needs to be changed.

Here's what Gary Carter said Friday when asked on Sirius Satellite Radio about his interest in the Mets' managerial job, still occupied as of Friday by Willie Randolph:

I just want them to know of my availability. I'm only a phone call away. I could be in New York tomorrow… You know my enthusiasm, and hopefully I would be able to bring that to maybe help turn that ballclub around… And if you look at Willie's record, it is right around .500 since June of last year.

What Gary Carter meant to say:

Davey Johnson did not last past Memorial Day in 1990 when his record was around .500 at the end of May, right? We all remember George Bamberger was replaced in June in California.

On Saturday, Gary Carter sought to clarify his remarks on WFAN:

I'm not trying to undermine anybody. I like Willie Randolph. I don't know why this has become such an issue. [Sirius] asked me, “Would I be interested?” Well, how would I not want to be interested especially when it was mentioned on ESPN? The Mets know that I'm available and it wasn't like I was trying to reach out or anything. When I called Jay Horwitz, I just said, “What's goin' on, is this true to fact that there's a possibility of Willie being relieved?”

What Gary Carter meant to say:

Yesterday I was discussing the Mets' managerial history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the replacement of both my former manager and Mr. Bamberger in May 1990 and June 1983 and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had managerial replacements by early June. That's a historic fact. The Bambergers have been much on my mind the last days as I am bidding on eBay for a couch that was once sold at Bamberger's, and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire fan base, and particularly for the Bamberger family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever. My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to, and I'd be honored to hold George Bamberger's seat at Shea Stadium in the borough of Queens and have the highest regard for the entire Bamberger family.

I'm no expert, but I don't think this is the way for Gary Carter to get the Mets to nominate him as manager — or even bench coach.

Well, on the plus side Aaron Heilman kept us in it several batters longer than I thought he would.

After we got an HDTV, Emily and I had to deal with a problem: The picture had such hallucinatory clarity that we'd frequently get distracted by fans in the stands. What's that lady keep doing? Did you see that guy's hat? What's that guy reading? Would those kids watch the game already? (As a side effect of this, we went from thinking people on their cellphones waving at the person who can see them on TV should die to thinking they should die slowly.)

We're used to it by now, but during road games Met fans still catch my eye. For us New York folk, road games — even ones in the mountains far away — are primarily an oddity of the clock, to be watched from the couch. But for New York expats in those road cities, they're different: They're big nights planned out and awaited for some time — an evening when you'll get to see your team up close, and when you'll wear your faraway colors defiantly before the home crowd, whether in triumph or in defeat.

I thought of that after Matt Holliday's homer, when SNY's camera caught a guy in a blue Mets t-shirt somewhere on the third-base side behind a fuming Billy Wagner. Holliday had rounded the bases and headed back to the dugout, but that fan was still standing there in mute dismay, apparently too numb to do anything but stare at the field.

I wonder how he managed during everything left to come — Reyes' half-witting snare of Ryan Spilborghs' hard smash to avoid a loss in regulation; Reyes' round of high-velocity Twister with Clint Barmes; Reyes' erasure at the hands of conspirators Yorvit Torrealba, Brian Fuentes, Omar Quintanilla and, well, Jose Reyes; Heilman's apparent determination to walk Jon Herrera; Heilman's giving up a hit instead; and Holliday, again, sending the Mets to the hotel and us to mutter our way through preparations for bed.

If that poor Met fan was still standing there through all that, I hope he remembered the bars are still open in Denver.

“Waiting, waiting, waiting; enduring not so much the losses as the long stretches of nonwinning; because you've only really ever finally lost when you've given up the game.”

—Rick Perlstein, Nixonland

I had a dream, as Lionel Richie once put it. I had an awesome dream.

I dreamt of a weekend. A weekend not so long ago. A weekend when all that had been wrong with the world was turned right.

On the first night of that weekend, a heroic figure emerged from the shadows and took up our righteous cause.

On the second afternoon of that weekend, a more mysterious type came to the fore and furthered our cause.

On the third and final afternoon of that weekend, our cause was universal and all contributed to its validation.

In my dream, we were jubilant because it felt as if all we had ever wanted had been secured. Our cause was triumphant, and those who had held it back for years and years were vanquished. They would no longer stand in our way…and surely we would no longer stand in our own way either.

Like I said, it was all a dream.

It hasn't even been two years since the Mets went down to Georgia and accomplished what a generation of Mets fans thought impossible: they swept the Braves at Turner Field.

July 28, 29 & 30, 2006. Oh what a time it was. After countless indignities suffered on rotted soil and venal grass, the table and the tide were forever — yes, forever — turned.

Pedro Martinez came off the disabled list, struggled for one inning and then mastered his opponents and our nemeses for five after that. The Mets won 6-4.

Orlando Hernandez baffled Brave batters for eight innings while Carlos Beltran homered twice and drove in five. The Mets won 10-3.

Beltran launched two more homers the next day, one of them a grand slam. The game ended when Marcus Giles struck out and Willie Aybar was thrown out by Paul Lo Duca trying to steal. The Mets won 10-6.

The Mets swept the Braves at Turner Field.

The Mets scored 26 runs in three games.

The Mets raised their record to 63-41.

The Mets led the National League East by 13-1/2 games.

The Mets led the third-place Braves by 15 games.

Was it all a dream?

You couldn't tell it wasn't from the cold, stark reality of the past three day.

The Braves swept the Mets at Turner Field.

The Mets scored nine runs in four games.

The Mets lowered their record to 22-23.

The Mets trail in the National League East by 4-1/2 games.

The Mets lead the last-place Nationals — and no one else — by 3-1/2 games

The Braves are not a first-place team at the moment. When it comes to winning so far in 2008, what happens in Atlanta stays in Atlanta. They're a lousy road team to this point, but they sure make up for it at home. Even if nobody looks as good as they do when they're winning, if you had to bet, you'd bet they'll get a whole lot better on the road before they completely fall apart at home.

The Mets are very much a fourth-place team all across America. One looks for signs that they are something more. The best indicator one can come up with is they were really good in 2006.

That's not a particularly helpful indicator.

Though I'm not the resident marshal of the FAFIF chapter of the Chowder & Marchman Society, I do think Tim in this morning's Sun summed the precipitous decline and fall of the Mets since those heady days as well as I've seen it summed:

This team isn't even any good at being bad.

While the deathwatch over the managerial tenure of Willie Randolph kicks into third gear, old man Bobby Cox just keeps rolling along. Bobby Cox turned 67 on Wednesday. Bobby Cox was managing the Atlanta Braves shortly after turning 49 in 1990. Bobby Cox was managing the Atlanta Braves just after Bud Harrelson replaced Davey Johnson in New York. Bobby Cox managed the Braves to divisional championships while Harrelson, Cubbage, Torborg, Green, Valentine and Howe were not. Bobby Cox even snuck one in while Willie Randolph was getting his feet wet.

2006 came along and it was all different. The Mets were ascendant. Randolph was the manager with whom to be reckoned. Cox could go get himself ejected. There was a new sheriff in the East.

That lasted, huh?

Like I said, the Braves aren't in first place (the Marlins are — and we get them at Shea next week for the first time since the very end of 2007, oh joy). The Braves may not be nearly the juggernaut they appeared to be Thursday, Wednesday and twice Tuesday, but they're solid enough to have beaten us four straight, six out of six at Turner Field this year and to have re-established permanent residence in our heads, at least for when we visit them next. That won't be 'til September. I shudder to think where the standings will have us by then.

This isn't about the ol' Turner Field curse, 'cause what made the ol' Turner Field curse operable was that it put the whammy on us when we were doing well otherwise. Remove the Turner Field curse from the Bobby V years and you have an extra Wild Card or two, a couple of divisional titles, a pennant probably. Whether the Turner Field curse was buried in July 2006 and exhumed for all time in May 2008 or merely misplaced for a couple of seasons is irrelevant. What I do find telling is that those who turn the knobs and pull the levers in Atlanta…they don't leave easily.

Bobby Cox has been the manager since the middle of 1990.

Leo Mazzone was his pitching coach through 2005.

John Schuerholz was their general manager until last year.

John Smoltz has pitched for them since 1988.

Chipper Jones has hit for them since 1995.

Mazzone left. Schuerholz was kicked upstairs. Ownership morphed from one budget-conscious media conglomerate to another. Two Hall of Fame starters said sayonara (even as one never spiritually left and recently physically returned). They have turnover in personnel as does every Major League team, but they have rock-solid stability at their core in a manner almost unknown in precincts closer to our battered hearts.

Whenever firing the manager seems like the quickest route to what ails us, I find myself thinking back to a Carnac bit from the summer of 1979. Gas prices were soaring (a dollar a gallon!), the Dodgers were losing and something else that escapes me was happening. Thus spake Johnny Carson:

“[Somebody], Jimmy Carter and Tommy Lasorda…name three people who are going to lose their jobs soon.”

Tommy Lasorda managed the Dodgers clear into 1996. Between his lousy season in '79 and the health issues that forced him out seventeen years later, Lasorda won two World Series and guided L.A. to the playoffs three other times. I personally couldn't stand Tommy Lasorda any more than Fletch could, but the Dodgers sucked it up when they had to and Lasorda rewarded those who employed him. Same as the Cardinal dynamic has been with Tony La Russa when they've floundered between flags, same as happened in Colorado for five seasons until Clint Hurdle led the Rockies on the hottest streak imaginable. The Braves, too, remained patient when those Cox suckers ran out of steam in 2006 and didn't get it all back in 2007.

Managers don't always get the axe when things go rotten. Managers don't always deserve the axe when things go rotten. Bobby Cox never got the axe even when things in Atlanta went unseasonably tepid, even when October became the shortest month of the year. He's still there. They're doing well again. He looks revoltingly happy. Chipper, too, who told Ed Coleman last night he wants to bring his son Shea to Shea one time to take pictures and arrange to purchase signage (if a Met felt compelled to name his progeny after the stadium in which he hits well in the clutch, there'd be a lot of Nowhere Delgados and No Place Reyeses running around the clubhouse on Player Family Day). And wasn't that John Smoltz testing his arm so as to do what Met pitchers rarely do: come back from an injury?

The Braves have not fired on all cylinders. They are dreadful when they're not Tedful. They've been paying Mike Hampton for nothing but tutoring since 2005. Allegedly, Kelly Johnson isn't Chase Utley plus Dan Uggla against the rest of the world. Yet we don't see it. We see the Braves as they've always been: smart, competent, skilled, making great pickups (Kotsay, Teixeira) and adding them to awesome homegrown talent (McCann, Francoeur) and never letting the foundation of their franchise crack.

I hate the Braves like any right-thinking Mets fan. I hate their manager, I hate their players, I hate their chant, I hate their chop, I hated the Superstation that until dropping their telecasts dubbed them America's Team (now that they're not, I can say that for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country). I generally disdain what their sycophants in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution write on their behalf, but what columnist Mark Bradley posted on ajc.com the other day hit home:

[N]ot for the first or even the hundredth time, we see why the Braves remain the gold standard of communal harmony. They don’t throw 25 players together without consideration for compatibility… The manager never creates problems; he defuses them.

Willie Randolph has dug himself a probably unclimbable hole. He muses about how and why various forces are out to get him; he backtracks like a DVD search function and now he doesn't get his calls returned by ownership. Even if the players are too cocooned in the shell of their own unimpressive heads to be affected by the swirl he conjured all by himself, it's not what a manager is supposed to be doing. In the years when Lasorda and La Russa and Hurdle and Cox did not have their teams at their best, did any of them have a week quite like the one Willie Randolph brought upon himself? La Russa drove drunk, which is menacing to society. Cox was once arrested for domestic violence, which is just as despicable. Lasorda always blustered too much for my taste, though I don't think that's against the law. But only Willie Randolph set himself up for laser-like scrutiny by demonstrating that if he is to be judged by the content of his character, then he is to be judged by the thinness of his skin.

I'm not endorsing the aforementioned managers as human beings — La Russa's work on behalf of pets notwithstanding — and Willie might make better company for 15 minutes in a cab (not that I'm necessarily trying to get him driven out of town). But these other managers did stick around and they did manage to manage well after rough stretches. Could Willie? Could the latter portion of 2007 and the first quarter-plus of 2008 be the aberration? Could the stagnant mess we call our favorite baseball team actually be the fault of others (players, front office) more than Willie and could the manager who improved his team by 12 in his first year and by 14 the year after that be the wrong person to off because his calm and cool, if given the time, would prevail once the humidity of the moment dissipates?

Probably not, but we don't know for sure.

I don't remember any of those other skippers digging exactly the kind of “everybody's against me” gully Randolph dug for himself in his Ian O'Connor chat. If they did, they didn't do it in New York in an atmosphere where everybody's already on edge, where the year before was an unqualified debacle, where the Met metric to which we might pay heed is a won-lost record of 27-35 since last September 13.

Eight games under .500 once the c-word began, not close to winning as often as losing since the heat was turned up.

Too much of this roster seems beyond managing. Advanced in age, unable to get around like they used to, waiting on their check as if enrolled in an entitlement program that glitched out in their favor…they don't need a manager — they need managed care. But they're here and unless somebody's willing to absorb as many losses on the ledger as have been absorbed on the field, they're not going anywhere…except, perhaps, to rehab.

So what do you do then? The obvious answer is Willie, or more specifically the lack of him. The next answer will be Omar, the genius who mailed Luis Castillo a contract sealed with a FOREVER stamp. After that, it's a matter of waiting out the pacts that will expire at the end of 2008 and not picking up their options; if somebody in the executive suites of Queens really needs to see Moises Alou smoke line drives for two healthy weeks a year, stockpile quarters and take him to the batting cages in Astoria.

And then…well, maybe by then, David Wright can devote his clubhouse gaggles to reconstructing wins not issuing alibis on behalf of his less outwardly motivated teammates, Johan Santana won't be left to shrug off an unsupported performance pocked by the most (walks/hits/homers/pitches thrown) of his brilliant career, somebody in a Mets uniform will stand upright and perform capably and make pleasingly substantive statements in deed and in word and, because the line between inertia and stability is currently too fine to detect, somebody else will man the visiting manager's office at Turner Field three times a year, maybe somebody who will have nothing for which to apologize.

Whenever that next dreamlike state is achieved, Bobby Cox will likely still be managing the Braves.