The Willie Randolph Firing

In the New York area, the media is going through a Gothic melodrama concerning the termination of the New York Mets manager Willie Randolph, and it brings up a number of interesting factors concerning sports, the media, and the psychology of fans. Randolph's firing in and of itself was not a surprise--he had been on the "hot seat" for several weeks, as the team that has one of the largest payrolls in baseball has been underperforming. This comes on the heels of a historic collapse last season that saw the Mets missing the playoffs.

What has everyone's feathers ruffled is not that he was fired, but in the manner in which Randolph was fired. Those calling for his head are now crying crocodile tears over his demise. The press release went out at three-something in the morning, New York time, after the end of a game against the Angels on the West coast (a game in which the Mets won). It was the first game of a road trip, so it is a bit puzzling why the Mets brass pulled the trigger on this with such awkward timing.

The head coach in U.S. sports is a tricky job to hold. It's one of the few where a person in a managerial role makes far less than his charges. You are almost certain to be fired, as few men leave these posts on their own terms. The title should probably be scapegoat rather than manager or head coach, because the firing of one is almost always a public relations ploy. If teams aren't doing well, it's easy to fire a manager instead of overhauling the team's players, and a manager getting the boot gives a general manager some time to hold on to his own job. Randolph was one pitch away from getting the Mets to the World Series in 2006--did he get stupider over those eighteen months? Of course, there could be other factors we aren't completely privy to, such as a roiled clubhouse, which would probably require a change of stewardship.

Many Met fans and talk-radio hosts were calling for Randolph to be fired, but have gotten on their high horses about the nature of the firing--I guess the fact that he was let go in the middle of the night and at the beginning of a road trip, so he would have to fly back in some sort of shame (I presume the Mets picked up his return air fare). Yes, that's certainly shabby treatment, but let's have a little perspective here. Would it really have made Randolph feel better to be fired the next morning, or on the Sunday before the Mets made the trip? Minaya says he decided to fire Randolph Monday morning, and if we take him at his word then he couldn't have fired him over the weekend, so the alternative was to wait until Tuesday morning. Instead he waited until the game was over (firing a manager mid-game might be problematic). Because the game was on the West coast the timing was in the wee hours. Had the Mets been at home, or in an East Coast city, and the firing was announced at 10:30 PM, would that have been okay?

Now, those who follow the Mets closely may cry bullshit, that the hand of Jeff Wilpon, one of the owners, is in this. If that's true then this does stink.

I really don't think what time of day Randolph was fired would raise or lower his hurt feelings. It's never pleasant to be told you're not doing a good job, especially when you're in the middle of the public eye. But every time one of these managers get hired, and they have the little ceremony where everyone is all smiles and they put on the cap of their new team, there is the realization that nine times out of ten, this scene will one day have an ugly little counterpart, when the manager is given the heave-ho, because the team "wants to go in a new direction." Fortunately they are well-compensated, because men with any delicacy in their egos will take a bruising.