A lot has been written over the last couple of days (in the New York area at least) about the firing of Mets manager Willie Randolph. It’s not so much that he was fired as much as how the deed was done.
How terrible, the sports pundits cried, to do it in the middle of the night (a little after midnight Pacific time, following the team’s win over the Angels; a little after three NY time). I heard the news when I woke up and, of course, there was nothing in the paper about it, just more positing about whether or not it should be done.
Richard Sandomir, the sports media guy at the Times, wrote this (nearly) blow-by-blow description of how the Mets cable channel, SNY, became all-Randolph, all-the-time for the day, giving the event the kind of coverage usually reserved for the deaths of heads of state or other calamities.
In addition to covering the dismissal in its sports section, the Newark Star-Ledger ran a story on the front it the business section, regarding the manner in which the Mets front office handled the affair. Four business “experts” rated the procedure with 2 Ds and 2 Fs.
And taking a page from David Letterman, SI.com’s “Ten Spot” blog lists the reason’s Randolph was canned thusly.
Perhaps these two old titles will get an update in the near future:
The Amazon Report on baseball managers:
The BILL JAMES GUIDE TO BASEBALL MANAGERS: From 1870 to Today
The Man in the Dugout: Fifteen Big League Managers Speak Their Minds
Toughest Job in Baseball: What Managers Do, How They Do It, and Why It Gives Ulcers
The Man in the Dugout: Baseball’s Top Managers and How They Got That Way
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.