Look, in this regard, sports is exactly the same as real life: there’s never an easy way to fire someone, or tell them their contract won’t be renewed — to tell them, no matter how the wording goes, that their services are no longer required.
It was uncomfortable to watch the Yankees part company with Joe Torre, who made the mistake of losing a first-round playoff series to the Indians in 2007, which happened to be the 12th straight season he’d managed the Yankees to the postseason. It was grossly uncomfortable watching Tom Coughlin say good-bye to the Giants after two Super Bowl championships. It wasn’t easy to watch the Rangers fire John Tortorella, or to see the Nets can Lionel Hollins. The Knicks actually had security escort Don Chaney from the building on the night he was fired, which was awful because Chaney was as decent a man as there is.
You can also understand how sometimes there is a little satisfaction attached to a firing, if that employee has shown himself more than a little worthy of the ax. Phil Jackson hops to mind, of course. Billy Martin was fired a mind-boggling nine times — five by the Yankees alone — and almost every time you could tell that the owner or GM who made that call took special relish in it. I mean, it was funny for Martin and George Steinbrenner to do that classic Miller Lite commercial where Steinbrenner fired Martin over a frosty mug of beer — “Again?!” was the punch line Martin delivered while cracking up laughing — but Steinbrenner probably found it less amusing when Martin called him “convicted” while drunk and on the record at O’Hare Airport, which led to his first Yankee termination.
So there’s really no blueprint involved. And let’s be perfectly honest: the way the relationship between the Mets and Terry Collins is staggering to the finish line is hard on the eyes and harder on the ears and maybe not the classiest way to handle something like this — but it’s not even close to the worst way the Mets have bungled such an issue. May barely make the top three, actually.After all, the Mets really set the gold standard for such muddy divorces nine years ago when they allowed Willie Randolph — who’d only had them two runs from the World Series two years earlier, who’d never had a losing record — to fly all the way cross country on a Sunday, allowed him to manage a game at Anaheim on a Monday (a win, to boot) and then whacked him in the first few minutes of a Tuesday (which was actually 3 o’clock in the morning back home).
And lest we forget the fate of Bobby Valentine in 2002: he was only two years removed from actually guiding the Mets to the Series, was a year removed from being one of the genuine civic heroes following 9/11, yet he was thrown under the bus, the curb and the street, forced to answer for a brutal roster assembled by Steve Phillips, and when Fred Wilpon delivered the news Bobby Vee asked, incredulously, “I’m fired but not Steve?”
So no: Terry Collins isn’t the first to get bounced around by the dysfunctional mess that is Mets leadership, a no-account politburo of silent owners and decision makers who, we have learned this week, have mostly simmered at watching Collins’ work.
(Although it may apparently be a genuine note-to-self moment for all future Mets managers: in the second year after you get in or near a World Series, wear a helmet and watch your back.)
Still, what the men who run the Mets have done this week is puzzling at best and idiotic at worst. Because they either initiated or fell complicit with a whispering scheme meant to discredit Collins before dismissing him, and if they don’t know how unnecessary that is then they are even blinder — and dumber — than we thought.
Collins is a better manager than he’s often been given credit for but nobody will ever mistake him for Joe McCarthy — or Joe Maddon, for that matter. He was mostly given ready-to-fail rosters and he led those rosters exactly where they were destined to go — palookaville. Twice, he was given better than that and twice he found himself in the postseason. In many ways he is the definition of average: he neither made bad clubs substantially worse not made good teams substantially better. He had some fierce supporters. He had some loud detractors.
This much is certain: if the Mets had announced two weeks ago that he wasn’t coming back next year, the reaction would have been muted, but mostly supportive. He probably would have gotten a warm ovation on Wednesday, his last day on the job at Citi Field. And that would have been that.
Instead, his final days are filled with whispers and worse, and maybe if you truly detested Collins’ work these past few years that seems fair to you. But what the Mets have done if make even some of Collins’ detractors feel sorry for him. And with cause.
Every week it’s something else with this pathetic politburo. You wonder if they’ll ever really get it.
Or, worse, you already know the answer to that question.
Vac’s Whacks
I realize I’m already jeopardizing my Man Card status by being such an unabashed fan of “This Is Us” (whose second-season opener was terrific, I thought) … and then it’s pointed out to me that the Twitter emoji for #ThisIsUs is a box of Kleenex? I’m going to need to watch “Die Hard” a few more times to get my equilibrium back.
I always will believe that if the University of Kentucky hadn’t blown itself up in 1989, and Rick Pitino would have stuck around to finish what he started with the Knicks, that there would be a third banner (at least) in the Garden rafters. Pitino’s Knicks were the most fun Knicks to watch in my lifetime as a Knicks watcher (which, sadly, began in 1974).
There is one thing that “Vietnam” on PBS inspires you to do every day: see a man or woman in uniform (or that you know used to wear a uniform), shake their hand, and say, “Thank you.”
For the record, Desmond the Airedale terrier and Fiona the West Highland terrier, the curators of good canine taste in the Vaccaro household, are way down on Odell Beckham Jr.’s celebration of choice.
Whack Back at Vac
Stew Summers: Man, between ownership and the media, there’s quite a bit of “walking on eggshells” when taking players like Odell Beckham Jr. to task for their poor behavior. You asked “why?” Reason: Because he can!
Vac: Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.
Alan Hirschberg: Now that Carmelo Anthony is gone, Kristaps Porzingis can show Knicks fans what a real ball-stopper looks like.
Vac: This IS the kind of thing that was easier to overlook when he was a secondary player.
@crashcolucci: Is it just me, or does Sonny Gray have a lot of David Cone in him?
@MikeVacc: I think it’s scary how much Gray reminds me of Cone. Though, I don’t recall Coney taking 15 minutes between pitches. That gets old pretty quick.
Nan Workman: I don’t think I have ever seen someone who thought they were above everything, so elitist, and so entitled as Rick Pitino. Crash and burn was a very good comment.
Vac: I’m not sure anyone saw an ending like this coming for Pitino. He always seemed covered head to toe in Teflon.