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According to the Sports Hernia, the Mets took a ‘classless route’ in the way they chose to fire Willie Randolph.
The blog continues on to list 13 Ways the Mets Could Have Gone about this Better, such as, “Hit Willie over the head with a steel 
chair while he makes a pitching change; then spray paint ‘F-I-R-E-D’ on his back,” as well as, “Drive him to the woods so Silvio can chase him down and shoot him in the back.”
The following two comments seem to reflect the hundreds upon hundreds of e-mails that are bombarding my inbox this morning:
Mike from Lake George writes:
“The morning, radio stations are calling the Mets, ‘The laughing stock of Major League Baseball.’ Today, I’m more embarrassed to be a Mets fan than I was last September. Jerry Manuel may be a great manager, but the way Willie was fired was disrespectful and tasteless.”
Similarly, Michael Brendan Dougherty, a writer living near Washington D.C., writes:
“I never thought that a professional sports team could make me feel personally humiliated. Honestly if the marrow in my bones was not orange and blue, I’d be looking for another team to root for…The Wilpons and Omar Minaya have made baseball a source of frustration, for me, a fan. It would be offensive to call my relationship to the Mets organization one of domestic abuse, but there is no other proper metaphor to express the situation of Mets fans who cannot leave (we are married to this team) yet suffer the stupid, almost drunken blows of management…
“An intern at my office is (a Phillies fan). As a fellow-baseball fan he wants to empathize with me, but behind his eyes, he is smiling at the humiliation of the Mets.”
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Almost 40 years as a Met fan and I don’t remember ever being so embarrassed to be a fan of this organization. If it wasn’t in my blood I’d strongly consider not giving another penny to this inept organization. Unfortunately, I am stuck and will die a Met fan for better or for worse but I am nonetheless completely disgusted.
…and by the way, I have been wanting WIllie to be fired for quite some time now; longer than most people. I wanted him to be fired, but not like this.
How did you want him fired? Would 3pm feel better than 3am? Would you prefer he went out after a few ugly losses and embarrassed himself? A firing is always bad.
The only thing I wish could change is that the media never heard about this before it happened.
You could handle it with some class. If the Padres/Diamondbacks debacle didn’t do it, why would winning the next 3 of 4 do it? Why would flying to Cali do it? They are a classless organization. If you wanted Willie gone, snake, that’s fine. You have your wish now….now you have a REAL lame duck dud as manager.
I feel a sense of humiliation for the Wilpons, who clearly could care less about the papers and blogs and fans and WFANs. It doesn’t matter to them. It’s a big joke. And this organization is a joke. I won’t be going to any games this season, and I’m not lying about that either. I’ll watch and sign on here but I’m not giving a dollar to this team. And I sincerely hope that many of you follow.
The point I think he and many other Mets fans are trying to make is this.
What makes Willie any less qualified to coach the team after yesterday’s game, than he was before he boarded the plane to come out to LA, or after the San Diego sweep?
The answer is…….nothing.
They knew this was going down, and completely botched it.
I couldn’t care less that he was fired (even though I think it’s as much Omar’s fault for assembling this aging team), it was just the way they went about it. You know, if the Mets lost last night, it makes them look better - but they won. So WHAT CHANGED? Was the way Willie sent up pinch hitters? used the pen? the way he looked in the dugout? Bottom line is….nothing changed. They knew this was going down, and they f’ed it up per usual w/ this franchise.
Everything about this franchise screams 2nd rate (except for the payroll and the new building going in next door). From screwing up seemingly simple tasks…to the EMBARRASSMENT of banners they have down the right field line (1999 NLDS/Wild Card Winners????? are you kidding me - that’s like the 8th seed in basketball/hockey raising a banner that says 2008 - 8th SEED Winners)
They need to get their communication together…cause right now…its a joke.
Yes, but in the grand scheme of things, who cares? Seriously, after his collapse last year and a poor start this year, Randolph comes away looking like the good guy now, gets paid to do nothing, and the Mets are happy that the newspapers can’t print anything until after the next game. I don’t know Willie too well, but he’ll be fine, and as long as this helps the Mets, I don’t care that the media thinks this is embarrassing. I’m not embarrassed at all. I think this is a good baseball move and if you don’t want to work here because you might get fired after failing and calling out your network in an unceremonious way, then don’t fail, and don’t call out your network.
People tend to forget that they might be firing him for his SNY comments, but gave it two weeks so that it wasn’t the story. They don’t care about Randolph, after the things he said, why should we?
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None of this is about caring for Randolph. It is about caring about the organization. We all rationalize various moves by reminding ourselves that this is a business. That is exactly the point here. There is a way that an organization should conduct business and this is not it. This is different from making a stupid trade or firing someone undeservedly. People can criticize ownership for being stupid or misguided in those cases. Here, whether or not Randolph deserves it has been made irrelevant. Ownership handled this in a completely unprofessional way. Here, when we remind ourselves that this is “only a business” that is a painful realization rather than a way to rationalize.
I can honestly say I am embarrassed as a Mets fan today and will be for a long time…This is one of the most disgraceful, gutless, unprofessional firings have ever witnessed in all my years of watching sports…Omar Minaya was a hero for the mets fans for 4 years now he is a marked enemy..The Wilpons are greedy bastards and I will not donate a single dollar to the organization for the rest of the year…I will continue to use this site and watch every game on TV…but will not endorse a business that mistreats their employees like this…why allow WIllie to fly all the way out to LA, win a game, then fire him after midnite…a new manager might have been necessary but do it after the break or next season…Omar, Fred, Jeff, I hope you know you destroyed your business for this year, not helped it…I love the Mets and I will fight to the death for them, but like I said I am embarrassed today more than ever.
If this team starts winning, we’ll all forget about the bad feelings very quickly. Winning changes everything.
Just win, baby.
This is how we feel, imagine the players. What free agent would really want to sign here now?
A free agent that we will pay money to. What free agent would want to sign here after we were a 70 win team for 5 years? Oh yeah, Beltran and Pedro didn’t mind, because they got huge deals. You are all un-real. This is all what you wanted, and now you got your wish. Who cares how he was fired. By the way, all of you threatening to stop rooting for the Mets, go ahead… losers. When will you all understand that nobody in the Mets organization cares at all about what any of you want? They fired him, he is gone, boohoo. Get over it.
Yea, brillaint concept there nrmax. Players will always go where the money is but it has nothing to do with how this situation was handled. You can fire a man with dignity or you can humiliate him.
I’m just happy for Willie. Go home, see your family, and thank god the Mets are longer a part of your life. Now sit back in your living room and laugh away. I hope he laughs at our next 4 game sweep to some inept team. I hope he laughs and then calls into WFAN cursing out Benigno. This team is classless.
Personally, I will root for the Mets, not Willie Randolph.
Jerry Manuel is seriously the new manager? I didn’t like Willie but Manuel is no better. I blame Omar for this teams current state as much as or more than Willie. Now with the way this was handled I really dislike Omar and the Wilpons. Sell the team, get a new GM, get a new coach and maybe this organization could get its act together.
I understand the embarrassment, but I think the media is portraying things worse than they really are and making many of us feel more embarrassed than we should be right now.
When a human being is let go from any organization, it is not something that is decided that morning. It takes days to figure out the plan. That the media got wind of it and exploited it for the last couple of weeks is not the Mets fault. The plan was to do this after the weekend, on the road trip at some point, to remove the annoying media from the equation. Unfortunately, the media heard about it last week and started asking questions. The Mets were not prepared to go forward with this yet, and they handled the damage control poorly. That they won 3 of 4 is meaningless, Willie had four years to do something. Four games is nothing. The Mariners won 3 of 4 last month too. If anything, this gives Willie a chance to go out with his head high, and the Mets have something to build on with Manuel. Besides, momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher, and that would be Johan.
And who cares if it is a long flight home, they fly charters very comfortably. This was the plan and if Willie doesn’t like it he can pretend it’s because SNY hates him. He dug his own grave and the media kicked him in it, tho the Met organization did a poor job trying to ease his fall.
Sure, it seems classless, but in the grand scheme of things, if the media never heard about this last week and no rumors had been swirling, the Mets could have waited until another losing streak to do this. Their hand was forced by a leak, and I am more embarrassed about that than anything they are claiming was classless.
Right now Willie is on a charter home, unsure whether to throw away his peanuts even though they taste great, because Rick Peterson told him from the next row that 20 peanuts is the limit.
That’s a great post. This surely could have been handled better, but a lot of the media backlash has to be due to the fact that the papers didn’t get their headlines today. Who cares what time of night he was fired? The Mets happened to be playing a game earlier in the evening, so firing him during prime time would have been pretty difficult. The idea that they did Randolph some great injustice by letting him travel and then firing him is, at best, very exaggerated. How about the fact that he managed this team into the ground the last 12 months and he’s getting a $3.5M severence package? I’d love to get treated that badly.
Excellent point — the media is upset at the timing. The Mets were smart to do this on the West Coast at 3am so they play a game before the newspapers can print anything.
Then why don’t they wait until something like 9 am or 12 pm EST? 4:00 in the morning seems like crap.
Great post. All your points are what I’m argueing here at work. When was the right time to fire him? On Sunday, on father’s day? After the road trip IF they have a losing road trip? Wait for losing streak to fire him?
I think the timing was perfect, Mets are sort of surging (4 out of last 6) and have Santana tonight.
And Willie not has the empathy of everyone who wanted him fired. Works out for everyone.
Excellent points and it is what I have been saying all along. The media has made this story bigger than the team. Was this really that classless? I mean, to me it seems like they were almost trying to protect Willie and the coaches. These guys are all paid well and they know the pressure that is on them in New York. I know Willie is disappointed, but he is a classy guy and I’m sure he will handle this well. I just don’t see the big deal in the way this was handled. He wasn’t fired at 3:00AM. It was 12:00 PM on the west coast and they had just finished playing a game. Should they have waited until batting practice today. Then everyone would have been going nuts…”They should have let him go after the game, blah blah blah.”
So sick of all of this. I hope now everyone can just shut up and talk about the team and talk about baseball. I have no problem with the way the team handled this. The 4th branch of government forced their hand and they did what they had to do…move on.
…..last September’s collapse was mortifying but came in the context of “that’s baseball” (always unpredictable, sometimes very painful).
Last night’s shenanigans comes in the context of spoiled, buffoonish ownership who confuse wealth with class.
Seriously, I wanted WIllie gone more than anyone, but don’t make the guy fly out all the way to the west coast and then dump him. Sometimes I really hate this organization, just classless.
Seriously, I wanted Willie gone more than anyone, but don’t make the guy fly out to the west coast and then dump him. Sometimes I really hate this organization, just classless.
sorry about the double post
We’ll consider it a complaint that he also has to fly home.
i thought the mets went to anaheim??? no one said anything about going fishing with tony soprano…
… disgraceful.
say it with me: bob-by v, bob-by v.
The worst part is that Yankee fans are all over this saying that their organization is classy, that this would never happen with them, etc. etc.
What they forget is the silliness with their own managers… and also the buffoonery from Hank about losing the DH. (I was glad to hear Gary Cohen call him out on that on last night’s broadcast… Too bad Kevin Kernan of the Post takes Hank’s side— the Post is becoming too pro-Yankees (as if it wasn’t already…))
Yeah, I really could care less about Yankee fans opinions
Seriously, I wanted Willie gone more than anyone, but don’t make the guy fly out to the west coast and then dump him.
whoops, sorry for the repeat
We’ll consider it the possibility of a layover.
Look, there has to be some reason that this was done in this manner. I simply refuse to believe that a group of men who run a New York baseball team can be so incompetent that they would allow their terribly expensive baseball club to be a pawn in a spite game between themselves. It’s an unbelievable thing to assume.
But, of course, I need to hear the press conference before I say anything, but we’ll see. As of right now, I’m pretty ashamed to see this go down, but I expect an explanation.
Here’s my take how things went down. The decision was made last week that Willie is gone after the San Diego series that Willie has one last chance on the home stand to keep his job. He failed against Arizona and the ugly loss on Sunday was the decision maker. Of course, it is Father’s Day so imagine how “classless” that would be? So now they have to wait an extra day but they team was already leaving for LA. So can really keep Willie in NY since it’s still Father’s Day. At the same time, can’t fly Oberkfell and the other coaches out to LA since the media would be all over it and it was still Father’s Day.
Now you have the option to let Willie manage all 3 games in Anaheim and wait to officially fire him on Thursday. However, that would risk him winning all 3 games and what is the excuse for firing him on Thursday? They can’t keep him since the decision was already made to fire him. Awkward situation. And hence, the best option was the midnight massacre.
What people do not realize is that in pro sports these things happen. Always looking over your shoulder at your replacement. Pro sports is like any job with a lot of politics involved. People have to realize and stop over-reacting what time he was fired. Lets just hope this lights a fire under the players and they perform to what they are expected.
The Three Stooges (Wilpon’s and Omar) should be ashamed for this.
3am …3am !!
Randolph deserved better then a midnight phone call at his hotel room like his was being sent for to see some mob boss. Disgusting ….