unfuckingbelievable Here we go again

Thank goodness! I have the AZ PS all week!
Has been tough checking the scores...
9 pts in a win, 27 pts in a loss -- crazy!

I should just shut this off. I'm getting chest pains.

I'll have to play the rest on XM in the car... hopefully I won't crash.

I feel better now

I agree. I think they're hyper-critical of Willie here.

That was tough to watch.

Santana did splendidly... not so Wagner.

Oh boy! What are the Mets going to do without Wagner pitching better?

ds

Finish in 4th place.

If the Mets lose two today, I bet Wilie is gone tomorrow.

Willie's gone. It was just a question of time.

Wow. Just woke up to that. They didn't even wait for another lose. I like Willie, but he may just be too soft for a team full of so-called stars.

Willie Randolph is out as manager of the New York Mets, fired in the middle of the night 2 1/2 months into a disappointing season that has followed the team's colossal collapse last September.

Bench coach Jerry Manuel takes over on an interim basis for Randolph, who led the Mets to within one win of the 2006 World Series. They got off to a strong start again last year but plummeted down the stretch and have been unable to rebound.

A preseason favorite to win the NL pennant, the $138 million Mets (34-35) had won two in a row when Randolph was let go early Tuesday morning — making him the first major league manager to get fired this season.

Pitching coach Rick Peterson and first base coach Tom Nieto also were dismissed in an enormous overhaul that was revealed in a fact-of-the-matter Mets news release at a stunning time — about 12:15 a.m. PDT, nearly two hours after New York's 9-6 victory over the Los Angeles Angels.

Ken Oberkfell, the club's manager at Triple-A New Orleans, and Dan Warthen, pitching coach for the Zephyrs, will join the major league staff along with Luis Aguayo, a Mets field coordinator.

A message left for general manager Omar Minaya was not immediately returned. The Mets said Minaya and Manuel would be available to reporters at Angel Stadium at 2 p.m. PDT on Tuesday.

Reached by phone nearly three hours after Monday's game, Mets utility man Marlon Anderson said he didn't know that Randolph had been fired and he didn't want to comment until he heard the news from a member of the team.

"Not tonight," Anderson said.

It was a frustrating end for the 53-year-old Randolph, who was set to be an NL coach at the All-Star game at Yankee Stadium next month.

Signed through the 2009 season, Randolph won't be able to move with the Mets into new Citi Field next year, either.

Randolph was known for his exceptionally steady play as a six-time All-Star second baseman and even-keel demeanor as a coach with the Yankees.

Yet Randolph's time in charge of the Mets was marked by highs and lows from the get-go.

Hired by Minaya to replace Art Howe for the 2005 season, Randolph lost his first five games as a major league manager, then won the next six.

He nearly guided the Mets into the 2006 World Series, losing Game 7 of the NLCS to St. Louis on Yadier Molina's tiebreaking home run in the ninth inning.

The Mets and their fans were convinced 2007 would be their year. Poised for a big run, what followed was one of the biggest collapses in baseball history: Leading the NL East by seven games on Sept. 12, they lost 12 of their last 17 and missed the playoffs as Philadelphia rallied to win the division title.

Several times, Randolph tried to separate last season's failure and this season's struggle.

"I really felt we put last year behind us," he said last month. "Any pressure we feel is because of staying in the mix and not reverting back to last year. I don't sense that at all. No one ever talks about it, no one ever brings it up, so if we are looking a little like we were last year, there's no correlation."

Many Mets watchers, however, felt there was a carry-over effect. Injuries to Pedro Martinez, Moises Alou and Ryan Church, another down year by Carlos Delgado and a sudden slump by closer Billy Wagner didn't help.

With each stretch of inconsistent play, chants of "Fire Willie!" grew louder at Shea Stadium and on New York's sports talk radio station.

Despite a $138 million payroll, the highest in the National League, and the offseason addition of ace pitcher Johan Santana, the Mets never found their groove. Even when things briefly went their way, Randolph caused trouble.

Coming off an uplifting, two-game sweep at Yankee Stadium in mid-May, the first black manager in team history created a stir by suggesting in a newspaper interview that he was portrayed on Mets broadcasts differently than a white manager might be.

Randolph brought up the race issue as he detailed the way he's been shown by SNY, the team's TV network.

"Is it racial?" Randolph was quoted. "Huh? It smells a little bit. ... I don't know how to put my finger on it, but I think there's something there."

A couple of days later, Randolph apologized to Mets ownership, SNY and his players "for the unnecessary distraction" he'd created.

Late last month, Randolph got a temporary reprieve when he met with ownership.

"Willie's job was never in danger going into this meeting," Minaya said after the session. "Willie has my support. He has the support of our ownership. ... There is no limbo period. Willie is the manager."

But no promises for the future were made.

Raised in Brooklyn, Randolph enjoyed many of his favorite and finest moments in the Bronx.

He played for the Yankees from 1976-88 and was a member of two World Series championship teams.

Surrounded by stars Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson, characters Sparky Lyle and Mickey Rivers and volatile George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, Randolph merely went about his business. He made for a good fit in pinstripes, and later became a Yankees co-captain.

Randolph batted .276 lifetime — he got 2,210 hits in 2,202 games — and never made an error in his 47 postseason appearances.

After finishing his playing career with the Mets in 1992, Randolph served as an assistant GM with the Yankees in 1993. The next year, he moved back onto the field and became their third-base coach, a post he held for 10 seasons.

He was part of the Yankees team that won four World Series titles, and was manager Joe Torre's bench coach in 2004. Before landing the Mets job, Randolph said he interviewed unsuccessfully for 11 or 12 managerial openings.

Randolph had Torre's full backing for the move over to Queens and they remained friends, filming a series of popular local TV commercials together.

Randolph was hired in November 2004 and, boosted by the addition of Carlos Beltran and Martinez, the Mets showed immediate improvement. They went 83-79 in his first year, stopping a slide of three straight dismal seasons.

The Mets did far better the next year, tying the crosstown Yankees for baseball's best regular-season record (97-65) and winning the NL East for the first time since 1988.

Making their first playoff appearance in six years, the Mets swept the Dodgers in the first round despite an injury-depleted pitching staff and went into the NLCS against the Cardinals with high expectations — those ended in Game 7.

Minaya has been criticized (mostly by fans) for favoring Latin players. Now he has fired a Negro manager and two Caucasian coaches. Bench coach Jerry Manuel (Latino) takes over. Willie may be right "It smells a little bit." The highest paid National League Team.....as the Beatles sang, "Can't buy me love".

It's tough to defend Willie. They blew the NLCS in 2006. They had one of the biggest collapses in 2007. And they are severely underachieving in 2008. You can't fire the players, so the coaches have to take the hit.

It doesn't help that the Mets have the highest payroll in the league and have (on paper, anyway) a lot of talented players. SOMEONE has to be a scapegoat when they fail to win regularly, and Willie was elected.

I'm glad "The Genius" Peterson is gone too.

No offense, JL, but your posts are bugging me now.

I figured I'd have some fun for a few days, and see how many people are smacking their screens.

Yeah, I just don't like the way they fired him; having him fly cross country, then fire him in the middle of the night.

Plus, I hate the fact that Minaya gets a pass. It reminds me of the Steve Phillips/Bobby Valentine situation. Bobby got scapegoated, while Steve preened (I can't stand that guy), only to be fired a year later.

Minaya has to answer for signing every Tom, Dick and Harry over 40 years old. I mean, is this MLB or the AARP?

From THE NEW YORK POST ONLINE, by Mike Vaccaro

ANAHEIM - The e-mail was time-stamped 3:14 a.m., Eastern time. In a simpler time, in a different world, maybe the Mets would have succeeded completely in this cowardly purge of their baseball team. Maybe then they would have been able to hold off on telling everybody what they'd planned to do until long past their vessels in the media were fast asleep.

Ah, but there is this wonderful thing known as the Internet now, and here we are, telling you that while you were sleeping, at 3:14 a.m. New York time, at 12:14 a.m. California time, two hours after the Mets beat the Angels 9-6, the Mets finally got around to firing Willie Randolph.

Maybe that seems a simple proclamation. Maybe you think everyone knows about the Internet. Well, the men who run the Mets are quite obviously simple men, and sinister men, cowards cloaked in "no comments," who have seen the way their baseball team has performed this year obviously decided: people don't just need to be fired.

They need to be humiliated.

What a crowd these bums are, all of them, from the Wilpons at the top to Omar Minaya down below, all of them who conspired to botch this firing worse than any firing has ever been botched. Ever. You wouldn't trust these guys to run a 7-Eleven, let alone a National League baseball team. What a joke. What a cowardly, dastardly joke.

A midnight massacre.

A 3 a.m. thrashing.

Disgraceful. Utterly, completely, disgraceful.

And here's the ridiculous part: They could have gone through the transaction of what they did — firing Randolph, firing Rick Peterson, firing Tom Nieto, elevating Jerry Manuel and Ken Oberkfell and Luis Aguayo and Dan Warthen, at any time across the past few weeks and they would have been perfectly justified.

Hell, if they wanted to raze the whole staff last October, after the epic collapse of September, that would have been all right, too. You may not have agreed with it (although a loud segment of Mets fans surely would have). But that would have simply been a baseball decision. And the baseball was enough to warrant it.

This? This is unspeakable. These men couldn't have been fired in New York, before heading on a plane and flying 3,000 miles to their doom? They couldn't have been spared the ignominy of a public perp walk back east, their dignity thrown into their carry-on luggage?

Really?

Is this the best the Mets can do? Is this really what they are about? Can they really consider themselves a professional operation when they do the simplest task in sports, firing the manager, this wretchedly?

It's entirely possible that Randolph fell on his sword over this one, because it was being swirled that he would be spared and his coaches sacrificed, and if that indeed happened we will laud him and praise him for that later on. Randolph was never going to be confused with John J. McGraw as a manager. But he wasn't J. Edgar Hoover as a person, either. We already knew that.

What we know now is that Randolph was so much better than the men he worked for it's as if they were playing a different game in a different league. What a fiasco. What a joke. Less than two years after Game 7, less than nine months from opening their signature ballpark, the Mets reveal themselves, again, for what they've been for too long.

A cheap, unfunny joke.

Run by a miserable cast of miscreants. Good for Randolph, Peterson and Nieto. They may not know this, but their lot in life just got a bit brighter, getting away from this batch of bums.

OK, that bug is making me CRAZY!!!!!!!

Santana gives up a grand slam homer to Seattle's pitcher? Yikes! Johan is supposed to make headlines, but not for that.

It was the first grand slam hit by an A.L. pitcher in 37 years!!

Who'd have ever thought that Santana would only be 7-6 near the end of June?

Not Paul. He's his boy. I could see him debating why Johan is not having a great year so far.

"His losses are on days when the sun was high in the sky, he had a splinter in his throwing finger and he was wearing blue socks."

And I would've come back with, "Well, Windbag, that's what he gets for signing with the Mets. If he signed with the Red Sox, he'd be 11-3 now".

That would have only made him create a 10 paragraph post on Santana's stats of National league vs American league, his ERA in each ball park, and his batting average. Superceded with a
and a

Six in a row . . . one game out in the loss column . . . Pizzaboy is cautiously optimistic.

Maybe Willie was the problem after all.

Shhhh....