Jerry Manuel: Still An Honest Man

Yes, the Mets split the last 4 games of the 2008 "subway series." Yes, they took the season series 4 games to 2. Yes, they won all 3 games at Yankee Stadium.

Does it matter? No. This matters:

We're kind of like the second team... The Yankees have won 26 championships... That's just the way it is...

I don't have a problem with that. I love playing them. I don't have a problem with that...

Shoot, use that as motivation. If you want to be first, win. Win some world championships. Don't be first just by popularity or who wears what jersey. Win some championships and you can claim first.
-- Jerry Manuel.

Oh yeah. That's gonna be until we win a World Series. And if we win one, they're going to be over us because they've won 26.
-- Carlos Beltran.

The front page of the Daily News says, "YANKS RULE!"

The front page of the Post says, "WERE NO. 2."

As the Bible says, "Great is truth, and mighty above all things." Hallelujah.

A Split Doubleheader -- A Bananas Split

Anybody who says they understand baseball is LYING.

Today, each team scored 15 runs. Each team looked brilliant. Each team looked like a bunch of bums. And tomorrow and the next day, we do it all again.

Game 1: Mets 15, Yankees 6, after the Yanks had a 4-3 lead.

Game 2: Yankees 9, Mets 0.

Dan Giese didn't have it. But Sidney Ponson? He was given up for baseball-dead. And Pedro: WHO'S YOUR DADDY? I love beating that punk.

The Ernie Banks phrase "Let's play two" has been bandied about a bit the last 24 hours. I don't think this is what Ernie had in mind.

In the first game, Carlos Delgado set a Met franchise record with 9 runs batted in. In fact, he had as many RBIs in the game as he'd had in the month to that point. Another guy who'd been given up for baseball-dead.

You've got a 9-0 lead, and you let Kyle Farnsworth and Kei Igawa each pitch an inning? Joe Girardi, just because your hair went gray in a hurry doesn't mean the rest of us want to suffer the same fate!

I could've handled losing the 1st one in a well-played game, but that was a disgrace. The 2nd one was satisfying, but it was getting served a steak dinner knowing that the ice cream you bought after lunch melted and dripped all over your fridge.

The last Yankee Stadium/Shea Stadium doubleheader was like seeing a hot cheerleader: A split is acceptable, but you wanted more.

Along those same lines, to paraphrase Angels fan Gwen Stefani, this split was bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Giambi In the Hall? Yeah, Sure! Wait...

Somebody asked me today if I thought Jason Giambi was going to the Hall of Fame. Not as a visitor, but as an elected member.

My 1st reaction was to quote another controversial Yankee, 1960s pitcher Jim Bouton: "Yeah, surrrre!" First of all, the voters would have to get past the steroid question. And then there's his defense, his failures in the clutch, and...

But wait: He has, at this moment, 381 career home runs. Steroids or not, that's nothing to sneeze at. It's more than the following Hall-of-Famers: Orlando Cepeda and Tony Perez with 379, Carlton Fisk 376, Ralph Kiner 369, Joe DiMaggio 361, Johnny Mize 359, Yogi Berra 358, Gary Carter 324, George Brett 317, Al Simmons 307, Rogers Hornsby 301, Chuck Klein 300, Ryne Sandberg 282, Joe Morgan and Brooks Robinson 268, Robin Yount 251, Goose Goslin 248, Hack Wilson 244, Roy Campanella 242, Roberto Clemente 240, Earl Averill 238, Gabby Hartnett 236, Paul Molitor 234, Jim Bottomley 219, Kirby Puckett 207, Joe Medwick 205 and Bill Dickey 202.

Let's get some of the misleading stuff out of the way first:

Cepeda, Kiner, DiMaggio, Wilson, Campanella, Molitor, Puckett and Medwick all missed significant time due to injuries. (In Wilson's case, boozing caused teams to give up on him.) DiMaggio and Mize also missed significant time due to serving in World War II. Perez, Mize, Brett, Simmons, Hornsby, Yount, Goslin, Clemente, Averill, Molitor, Bottomley,

Puckett and Dickey were much more renowned as contact hitters. Dickey, Fisk, Berra, Carter and Hartnett were catchers, who generally don't hit as many home runs anyway, and were elected as much for their defense as for their offense, which was also true of Sandberg and Morgan, and Robinson was elected almost exclusively for his defense, although he did win both regular-season and World Series Most Valuable Player awards, and collected over 2,800 hits despite playing in a pitcher's park, so he was a very good hitter.

That leaves Klein, who had the benefit of a very short right-field fence.

Barring further injury, Giambi will finish with over 400 home runs, maybe 450, but almost certainly not 500, which, prior to the steroid questions, was considered an unofficial "automatic induction." He also won the American League MVP in 2000, and nearly did so again in 2001. He's had 7 seasons of at least 100 RBIs. He's had 4 .300+ seasons.

The players with between 381 and 499 who are in are: Johnny Bench 389, Al Kaline 399, Duke Snider 407, Billy Williams 426, Cal Ripken 431, Carl Yastrzemski 452, Dave Winfield 465, Willie Stargell 475, Stan Musial 475 and Lou Gehrig 493.

Kaline, Ripken, Yaz, Winfield and Musial all have over 3,000 hits. Bench was a catcher and his career was injury-shortened. Snider might not be in if he didn't play in New York. Same with Williams in Chicago. And Stargell and Gehrig were each one of the great power hitters of their or any era.

Players between 381 and 499 who are eligible but not in: Albert Belle 381 (injury-shortened & steroid-tainted), Jim Rice 382 (not enough for a Fenway guy), Frank Howard 382 (huge guy's last good year was at 34, fits the steroid profile even though they almost certainly weren't available, will never get in anyway), Harold Baines 384 (newly eligible, 2,866 hits gives him a shot), Dwight Evans 385 (see answer for Rice, but was also an excellent defensive right fielder), Graig Nettles 390 (not enough for a Yankee Stadium short-porcher, and his .247 BA dooms him, but a great 3rd baseman), Joe Carter 396 (won't get in, not even with the big one he hit), Dale Murphy 398 (not enough for a guy who played in Atlanta's "Launching Pad"), Andres Galarraga 399 (Coors Field and the new Turner Field in Atlanta, not enough), Darrell Evans 414 (.248 BA dooms him), Andre Dawson 438 (would have had 500 if not for injuries, will get in eventually), Dave Kingman 442 (.236 BA is pathetic) and Jose Canseco 462 (even if we didn't know about the steroids, it's his only stat that qualifies him).

Players between 381 and 499 who are not yet eligible: Larry Walker 383 (won't make it), Chipper Jones 402 and counting (might make it), Mike Piazza 427 (also .308 BA, he'll get in), Juan Gonzalez 434 (how do you say "Steroids" in Spanish?), Carlos Delgado 442 and barely counting (2 more good years might have done it), Jeff Bagwell 449 (he'll make it), Gary Sheffield 484 and counting (if they give him a pass on steroids, he's got a shot) and Fred McGriff 493 (eligible in 2 years, tough call since he fell just short of 500, but he did play on a World Series winner in Atlanta).

By that standard, I don't think Giambi makes it, even if we don't consider his steroid use.

But you never know: If he hangs on and helps the Yankees win this year, and they take a chance on him, or someone else does and he helps them win, it could be another answer.

In the meantime, I welcome his resurgence, and hope that he keeps it up through the end of October 2008.

*

UPDATE: Rice, Dawson and Piazza have since been elected. Giambi retired after the 2014 season. He finished with 440 home runs, and a 139 career OPS+ -- meaning that, over the course of his career, he was 39 percent better at producing runs than the average player. He was an All-Star 5 times, but never a Gold Glove winner.

It also didn't help that the Yankees won the World Series the year after he left. He's reached the postseason 9 times, with 3 different teams (2000-01 A's, 2002-07 Yanks, 2009 Rockies), but only won 1 Pennant (2003 Yanks) and never won a World Series.

On its Hall of Fame Monitor, on which a "Likely HOFer" is at 100, Baseball-Reference.com has him at 108, meaning he should get in. But on their Hall of Fame Standards, which is weighted more toward career statistics, and on which the "Average HOFer" is at 50, he's at 44, meaning he falls a bit short.

They have his 10 Most Similar Batters, which is (more or less) weighted toward players of the same position, as Delgado, Paul Konerko, Canseco, Stargell, Willie McCovey, Galarraga, Mark Teixeira, Bagwell, McGriff and Andruw Jones.

Stargell and McCovey are in. Bagwell and McGriff should be. Delgado, Konerko and Jones could be. Canseco, Galarraga and probably Teix never will be. So 2 in, 4 should be, possibly as many as 7.

It's not encouraging. He'll be eligible in the election to be held in January 2020, but, even if HOF voters decide to forgive everybody who used PEDs for using them, he'll never get in. He just doesn't have the numbers or the other achievements.

Jerry Manuel and George Carlin: Two Honest Men

Jerry Manuel is the new manager of the New York Mets. So far, he's done a good job. But it's the Mets, so we all know it won't end well.

Met fans, whom I have dubbed the Flushing Heathen, don't deserve it. According to today's New York Post, Manuel called the Met fans crap.

Well, not exactly -- and since when do I believe anything the Post says? When it makes me laugh, that's when! (I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The Times is the face the City prefers to show the rest of the world, the Daily News is the face the City prefers to show itself, and the Post is a face only a mother could love. Not my mother, though, and not her mother, and definitely not me.)

Manuel was actually comparing the atmosphere at the William A. Shea Municipal Stadium to... that stuff. From the Post:

<< "It's very, very fertile ground for growth in Shea Stadium," Manuel said. "It's fertile ground for a team's growth and development. Sometimes, fertile ground has fertilizer... Fertilizer is a good thing," Manuel said in Denver before his team's victory over the Rockies. "It's a good thing. You get the greatest results - get the most beautiful plants - when you put it in that type of fertile soil. That's what we have the opportunity to do."

Manuel, who will make his first appearance at Shea as manager of the Mets tonight against Seattle, pleaded with reporters to forget the "fertilizer" reference - and not do "something crazy with this." >>

He asked the New York media... especially for a tabloid newspaper... not to do something crazy with his comparison of Shea Stadium, or the inhabitants thereof, to fertilizer? I guess managing in Chicago (with the White Sox) didn't teach him enough about big-city media!

I could think of a better word to use than "fertilizer." On a related subject...

*

Rest in peace, George Carlin. Until now a serious candidate for the title of The Funniest Man Alive, the heart trouble he'd had for many years finally did him in at age 71. He didn't make it any easier with substance abuse. He recently left alcohol rehab, and after beating his cocaine addiction years ago, he admitted, "I finally figured out that the purpose of cocaine is to run out of it."

Carlin was from Morningside Heights, the Manhattan neighborhood where Columbia University is headquartered. To make themselves sound tougher, he and his childhood friends said they actually came from "White Harlem." (Hey, there was a "Spanish Harlem," and "East Harlem" is still mainly Italian, so why not?)

He was a Yankee Fan whose favorite moment in sports was the Yankees not just winning the 1996 World Series after so long not having won, but beating the Atlanta Braves to do it. Carlin called Atlanta "a fake city" that didn't have "real fans." He was very perceptive.

He would've appreciated a New York manager calling his team's fans a variation on one of the "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." In case you're wondering, the original 7 words he started the bit with in 1972 are "shit," "piss," "fuck," "cunt," "cocksucker," "motherfucker" and "tits."

(NOTE: When I originally wrote this piece, I hate them censored, as "S---," and so on. Except "Tits": I don't remember why I left that one alone. It certainly wasn't because of a fixation on breasts. At the time, I was concerned that people I know who are sensitive to this kind of language wouldn't like to see it in my blog, and it would be a while before I started using profanities in the blog. Well, as Carlin would have said, "Fuck that shit!" So, in going over these posts years after the fact, I put in the uncensored version.)

He would occasionally replace some of them. When he appeared on Bravo's program Inside the Actors' Studio, host James Lipton asked him what the 7 words are, and Carlin's words were broadcast as follows: "(Bleep), (Bleep), (Bleep), (Bleep), (Bleep), (Bleep) and Ass!"

Carlin's famous bits included Willy West of "WINO, Wonderful Wino Radio!"; Al Sleet the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman ("This weather system is a Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high!"), Daytime TV ("Russia and the United States are at war, details ahead, but first, this word about your laundry!"), Long Hair ("Be fair with your hair, show it you care, wear it to there, or to there, or to there if you dare!" -- I guess "derriere" wasn't a word you could say in TV in 1971), Stuff ("Where do you put your stuff?"), various musings about God ("I have begun worshipping the Sun, because I can actually see it"), and, of course, "Baseball and Football."

We've all heard the bit, even if we only remember parts of it. The beginning is familiar: "Baseball is a 19th Century pastoral game. Football is a 20th Century technological struggle."

Now that I think about it, maybe Carlin didn't really understand baseball.

"Pastoral?" Shea Stadium?!? Are you freakin' kiddin' me?

He closed that bit by using all kinds of military metaphors to describe the object of football, and said, "In baseball, the object is to go home! And to be safe!"

Since last fall, the Mets have not been "safe at home." Maybe, instead of looking to a new manager, general manager Omar Minaya, or to their full-of-fertilizer fans, maybe the Mets should look to, as Carlin put it, "that Invisible Man in the Sky."

Willie Randolph and the Chicken Feathers

I've read some blogs from the Flushing Heathen saying that Willie Randolph did not do the job he was hired to do, and that's why he was fired; and, for that reason, the time of the season, the game of the day, and even the location of his firing don't matter.

These guys have a point. Willie did not do the job he was hired to do, which was to turn the Mets into World Champions and New York's Number 1 baseball team.

The Mets came within one run of a Pennant in 2006, came within one game of a Playoff berth and a Division Title in 2007, and now in 2008 are a sub-.500 team in a not very strong Division. And the Yankees, for all their difficulties since the bottom of the 9th inning on November 4, 2001, remain what they have been since the Met "dynasty" collapsed in 1992: New York's Number 1 baseball team.

What does this mean? It means that Met general manager Omar Minaya did not do the job he was hired to do: Get his manager the players he needed to do his job. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken feathers, to use a cleaned-up version of a classic analogy.

Jose Reyes is Rickey Henderson circa 1988, i.e. a player with a lot of talent but a bad attitude who has thus far underachieved while fooling fans and media into thinking he's great. Henderson eventually got sent to a team that was good enough for him to make the difference, and he did. He proved he had what it takes. Reyes may one day become a 1989 Rickey Henderson, but can he do it with this bunch? So far, no.

Carlos Beltran is a SPORT magazine article short of being what Reggie Jackson was in the spring of 1977. Minus the three World Championships, that is. (Lucky for him, SPORT went out of business in 2000 -- coincidentally, the last year the Mets won a Pennant.)

David Wright is a can't-miss prospect. Which is also what he was 2 years ago when the Flushing Heathen thought Willie Randolph knew how to manage.

Carlos Delgado is a switch-hitting Mo Vaughn -- minus about 50 pounds.

John Maine and Oliver Perez are starting to look like Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon, pleasant surprises when they weren't being counted on to be regular members of the starting rotation, but when they were counted on, so much for all that early promise.

Billy Wagner... Let's just say if he stood up as well on the mound as he does in the locker room, he'd be closer to Mariano Rivera than to Kyle Farnsworth.

And Johan Santana and, when able to pitch, Pedro Martinez, have made no difference at all. At least Santana's not a headhunter.

Just 3 months ago, the Flushing Heathen were so sure that this team was going all the way. And, thanks to the Three Stooges -- Fred Wilpon, Jeff Wilpon and Omar Minaya -- they have gone all the way down the drain. As they always do.

At the rate the Washington Nationals are going, Willie could be their next manager. Wouldn't that be something, Willie leading the Nats against the Mets 18 or so times a year, 9 or so times a year at Citi Field, and showing the 46,000 or so fans -- 20,000 or so coming dressed as empty seats because they don't want to see a crummy team -- what they wanted gone.

Willie Randolph has the moral high ground. Met management, and the Met fans who wanted him gone, wouldn't know a moral high ground if it bit them in the Keith Hernandez. (Maybe Kramer and Newman were right about him. After all, as a broadcaster, he's spit on plenty of people.)

Something is rotten in the neighborhood of Flushing Meadow. The food is spoiled. Blame the distributor. Not the cook.

Chef Manuel, I don't envy you your new job. Here's your, uh, chicken feathers. See what you can make of it. I'm just glad I'm a Yankee Fan and I don't have to eat it.

Met fans, the Flushing Heathen, can eat it.

On the Celtics' 17th Title (Yuuuuck... ) & Other NBA Matters

Kobe Bryant is a very low form of life. And it doesn't matter how many titles the Lakers win with him but not Shaquille O'Neal: Shaq has won the argument.

Kevin Garnett deserves a ring. So does Ray Allen. So does Paul Pierce. So does Doc Rivers. They are good guys, good for the game.

It doesn't matter: The Lakers should have won. No matter who in the Celtic organization deserves a ring, those New England fans do not.

Despite those opinions of mine, the Celtics were the better team, and the organization deserved to win. No question about it. That 131-92 Game 6 clincher was an absolute anvil dropped on the Fakers' head, as if they were in a cartoon. (Hey, they do play in Hollywood, don't they? Well, close enough.)

But we all know that Celtic fans are the worst of the New England fans, front-runners who stayed away from the Boston Garden in droves during the Bill Russell years, 1957 to 1969, all the while they packed the place for the Bruins, who stunk for much of that period.

Why? Because the Celtics were led by black men (at least on the court, and then, after Red Auerbach left coaching to only run the front office and Russell became head coach), on the bench; while the Bruins were all white. (They were also virtually all Canadian, with hardly any Americans, but did you dumb Chowdaheads evah considah that?)

But when Dave Cowens came in as center, and teamed with John Havlicek to become a Celtic team led by 2 white stars (coinciding with the Bruins’ 2 Stanley Cups in the Orr-Esposito-Bucyk-Cheevers era), suddenly they were claiming the 11 NBA Titles the Celts had won under Russell. The bastards.

And while Spike Lee was wrong in one regard (there were plenty of MF’ers in the league who were uglier) and it’s hard for a New York-area fan to now say that Isiah Thomas was right about something, Larry Bird did get called as great as he was called because he was white. A black forward with just as much talent would have been called… the Mailman. Karl Malone.

Since that time, Celtic fans have embraced black players, from the ill-fated Reggie Lewis to the current triad of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and their spiritual leader, Paul Pierce. We can look forward to seeing Numbers 5, 20 and 34 raised to the rafters at whatever they’ll be calling the New Gahden by then.

But I really don’t want to hear another word from New England fans. We can’t accuse the Celtics of cheating, the way we can on the Red Sox and we already know for sure on the Patriots. But these people have been sorer winners than they ever were as sore losers.

(NOTE: I forgot how the Celtics cheated by turning off the air-conditioning in the visitors' locker room at the old Boston Garden during those 90-plus-degree Boston Mays. But, as far as I know in 2014, the 2008 Celtics were clean.)

*

And while I enjoy a good insult of Kobe Bryant, whether it’s from Shaq or the guys in his “hometown” of Philadelphia…

Curt Schilling, of the Boston Red Asses and 38pitches.com: You have freedom of speech, but you abuse it by taking Kobe to task for doing what you have always done, and just did again by dismissing the Manny Ramirez-Kevin Youkilis incident: Putting yourself ahead of your teammates. No matter what your achievements, Curt -- even if you haven't used steroids, and since you're a bigger Roger Clemens acolyte than anybody, who's kidding who -- you will always be a bum.

*

Despite the exhortations of the likes of Michael Wilbon on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption and NBA Shootaround, it's hard for me to watch the NBA now. By the time the Barclays Center finally opens -- if it does -- and my team becomes the New York Nets again (or the Brooklyn Nets, or whatever Bruce Ratfinkner ends up calling them), they will have been a "lame-duck team" even longer than the Montreal Expos were. And for a New York Tri-State Area team, that's a bigger disgrace than anything that happened in the quarter-century between Dr. J and J-Kidd (1976 to 2001).

Which is a lot: The collapse from the top of the ABA to the bottom of the NBA, the Secaucus Seven, Dennis Hopson, Yinka Dare (the Three-Minute Egg), John Starks' clothesline on Kenny Anderson turning a really good player and a really good team into a whiny brat and a dysfunctional roundball unit, Derrick (Whoop-Dee-Damn-Doo) Coleman, Shawn Bradley wearing Number 76 because of his total games played rather than his height, Ed O'Bannon, and, of course, becoming the second of the now four teams messed up by Stephon Marbury, the biggest "clubhouse cancer" in Tri-State Area sports history.

Which is all the more reason the Tri-State Area needs the Knicks as a live franchise. They may never be what they were with Willis Reed, Walt Frazier & company, or even what they were with Bernard King and Trent Tucker, and I couldn't root for them when they were a bunch of thugs (Starks, Latrell Sprewell), but if they can get their act together in the next few years, who knows?

*

Some closing thoughts on the Celtics winning Title 17:

It took the New York Yankees 54 years to win their 17th World Series, in 1956.

It took the Montreal Canadiens 62 years to win their 17th Stanley Cup, in 1971.

It took the Celtics 62 years to win their 17th NBA Title, exactly as long as it took the Habs, and a bit more than it took the Yanks.

And the drought between the Celtics’ last title and this one was 22 years (1986-2008). Even counting their dreary first few years of existence, the Yankees have never gone 22 years without winning a World Series – their peak is 21 (1903-23), 18 if you don’t count that beginning (1979-96). The Habs’ longest drought is their current one, 15 years (1993-2008), 14 if you take out the 2004-05 season that wasn’t played and the Cup that wasn’t awarded.

On the other hand, the Canadiens left the Montreal Forum, moved to the Molson Centre (now the Bell Centre) and still haven’t advanced as far as the Conference Finals. The Celtics left the Boston Garden for the FleetCenter (now the TD Banknorth Garden) the same season, and had only advanced to one Conference Final until now.

That they have finally won a World Championship in their new building is a good sign for those of us who are concerned about what might happen after the Yankees leave the one and only Yankee Stadium we ever wanted. Maybe the “sports gods” won’t be mad at the team after all.

The Overnight Massacre: No Class By the Mets (Or Their Fans)

In 1985, George Steinbrenner said that Yogi Berra would be the Yankee manager for the entire season. The Yankees got off to a horrible start, 6-10, which makes the starts of these last 4 seasons look like gangbusters by comparison. And George fired Yogi.

Yogi had been fired as a manager before. He knew: That's life. That's baseball. That wasn't the issue for him.

The issue for him was that George sent Clyde King, a former big-league pitcher, a former Yankee coach, briefly interim manager in 1982 and by that point part of the front office, to tell Yogi.

George didn't call Yogi up to his office to tell him man to man, face to face. George didn't go down to Yogi's office to tell him in person. George didn't even call Yogi and tell him over the phone. (At least he didn't fax Yogi his firing, the way Pat Riley quit on the Knicks -- and they called Dennis Rodman "the Worm.")

That was why Yogi stayed away from Yankee Stadium for 14 years, because George was running things and wasn't man enough to tell Yogi to his face that a change had to be made. It wasn't the decision, which may have been right; it wasn't even the timing, which may have been a little too soon; it was the method. The method was madness.

In 1999, prodded by a dying Joe DiMaggio and a few others, George finally made amends. He told Yogi he should have told him in person. And Yogi had the perfect words to describe the feud: "It's over."

*

Now, Willie Randolph has been fired as Met manager. It happened this morning, at 3:11 AM New York time, after a win -- the Mets' 2nd straight win! -- on the opposite end of the country, when very few local fans were liable to be awake, and after the New York papers had their morning editions ready to hit the streets.

This is reminiscent of June 15, 1977, the Midnight Massacre, when general manager M. Donald Grant traded Tom Seaver for Steve Henderson, Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn and Dan Norman. The best righthanded pitcher in the National League (the best lefty being Steve Carlton, and it's a toss-up as to which was better) and the best player in Met history (still, 31 years later) for a good young outfielder, the defending NL Rookie of the Year and a good starting pitcher, a good-field-no-hit 2nd baseman, and a reserve outfielder. None of those 4 players turned into a long-term Met regular.

Grant also traded slugging (but strikeout-prone and atrocious-fielding) 1st baseman Dave Kingman to the San Diego Padres for outfielder Bobby Valentine and pitcher Paul Siebert, who'd pitched all of 72 innings in the majors. Valentine was damaged goods, and Siebert was totally forgettable.

Henderson, Zachry, Flynn, Norman, Valentine and Siebert: By Opening Day 1983, none of those guys were still with the Mets, while Seaver and Kingman were hardly done, and had increased their fame with other teams -- and both had come back to the Mets, with considerably less success than their first go-arounds, and both would be productive after leaving the Mets again.

Valentine would also come back, as the manager, and lead the Mets to a Pennant. He ranks 3rd among Met managers in winning percentage. Davey Johnson is 1st. Who's 2nd? Willie Randolph.

Trades like that, made by Grant, left the Mets a dried-out husk of a team that had won a World Series in 1969 and a Pennant in 1973, and left Shea Stadium so sparsely-attended it was called Grant's Tomb. Tug McGraw, a star with those '69-'73 Mets, said that when he came back with a far superior Philadelphia Phillies team and saw over 40,000 empty seats at Shea for a weekend game against the (at least geographically) next-closest NL team, a very good team that should have attracted some fans even if the Mets couldn't, it was a very sad thing.

It hadn't yet turned around before Fred Wilpon and his then-partner Nelson Doubleday bought the Mets from Grant and the Joan Payson estate. Even then, it took 5 full seasons to turn around.

*

Willie Randolph did lose control of some of his players. But he didn't cause any injuries. Nor did he make any of the personnel decisions that led him to not have adequate replacements.

He should have been fired, because he was no longer able to do the job well enough to get this team into the Playoffs. But whether it was Fred Wilpon, Jeff Wilpon or Omar Minaya making the decision, that decider should have been a man about it. He shouldn't have made Willie get on a plane, fly all the way across the country, win his second straight game, and then tell him it was over. And that decider should have been man enough to face the media in the light of day.

I also think it's very telling what happened with the last notable strategy decision that Randolph made as Met manager.

Sunday afternoon, 2nd game of an interleague doubleheader (forced by rain) with the Texas Rangers at Shea International Airport. Tie game, bottom of the 6th, go-ahead runs on base, pitcher's spot coming to bat, and the Met bullpen less reliable than at any time I've ever seen it in 32 seasons of watching this franchise.

His starter is Pedro Martinez, who's approaching the 100-pitch mark, the magic number where he goes from throwing like Sandy Koufax to throwing like Sandy Duncan. It's the National League, which is still so stupid as to not put in the designated hitter.

Willie pulls Pedro back, and sends up a pinch-hitter, and it's Robinson Cancel. No, not Robinson Cano, although the Yankee 2nd baseman, as bad as his hitting has been at times this season, would still have been a better choice without the hindsight we have now. Robinson Cancel is a backup catcher, who'd just been called up, having spent nearly all of his career in the minors, not having had a major-league hit in 9 years. This says less about Willie's strategy than it does about Omar's personnel decisions.

And the Met fans boo. And they chant, "We want Pedro!" (As far as I'm concerned, you can have him.) And 65 percent of Met fans on the SNY website vote to leave Pedro in. (Have I mentioned before what I think of the intelligence of the average Met fan?) And Met broadcaster Gary Cohen called it "a major problem."

But it works. The decision to send Cancel up to pinch-hit for Pedro defies all logic, and the opinions of 65 percent of Met fans, but it works. He gets a hit, and the Mets go on to win the game, and Randolph gets to manage for one more day. (But, as it turns out, for only one more day.)

And then, having called the situation "a major problem," but then seeing it work out in the Mets' favor, Cohen calls Randolph "tremendously gutsy." Puh. Leeze. As Lloyd Bentsen might have put it if he were a Met fan, "Senator, you're no Bob Murphy."

And still, there are Met fans who say, "Witless Willie doesn't know how to manage in the National League." As if not having the DH made the NL something holy while the American League was an apostasy.

*

Well, Met fans, you, the Flushing Heathen, got what you wanted: "Witless Willie the Yankee" is gone. And your new short-term manager is Jerry Manuel, who has won exactly as many Division Titles as Willie Randolph (1, with the 2000 Chicago White Sox), and whose postseason record is 0-1 in series (Willie's is 1-1), and 0-3 in games (Willie's is 7-5). And you don't have a clue as to who your long-term manager is. One of many things about which you don't have a clue.

Willie was the 1st black manager in New York major league baseball. Perhaps the words of Martin Luther King are coming to his mind: "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."

I hope Willie Randolph is invited to the last Old-Timers' Day at the original Yankee Stadium, and -- with all due respect to Yogi, Whitey, Reggie and even the recovering Bobby Murcer, all of whom are deserving -- gets the biggest ovation of any guest. I hope it's loud enough for every Met fan to hear.

And if that happens, I don't ever again want to hear about how Met fans have any "class" while Yankee Fans have none. It will be a long time before Met fans, and the Met organization, prove they have any class.