Step Right Up And Beat The Mets

Why Is This Man Smiling?

How wonderful. Today is June 8, 2008. The Mets have lost 3 games in a row, each by the identical score, 2-1. And to what pitching juggernaut have the Mets' bats fallen so silent? To what Cy Young winners, to what fire ballers have the Mets yielded? The hapless Carmen San Diego Padres. How hapless you ask? After whipping the Mets 2-1 3 games in a row and setting up a sweep of their series with them (there's another game today at 4 pm if you can bear to watch it), the Pads are still, that's right, still 10 games below .500 and in next to last place in the Western Division. They stink. But we all know who stinks even more, don't we.

The Mets are now 1 game below .500 for this season. Did I mention that they've lost 3 in a row? to San Diego? My hero, a former slugger, the aging Carlos Delgado is now batting .237, which for him is a vast improvement over last month, but he still won't get his jersey dirty. Alas, there's no individual player to be blamed for this pathetic play. No. They all aren't hitting. They all are not contributing to the offense, leave aside whether it's "small ball" or "long ball." They aren't scoring runs. And they look simply awful at the plate.

By far the bigger problem for me is that the Mets are no fun to watch. They have no passion. They have no electricity. They are dispirited. There is no excitement. You watch until they find a way to give away the game. Maybe they give it up in extra innings. Maybe they give it up in the early going. They give it up. You can bet on it. They are the opposite of "scrappy."

If I owned the Mets I would fire a bunch of them. I'd probably start with Willie Randolph. I know, I know, it's not his personal fault, and he's a nice guy and he knows baseball. But he is the manager of this joke show. So as every baseball traditionalist knows, when you lose with a team that's not playing to capacity (that would be the Mets and that would also be a grotesque understatement), you lose your job. Why? Because nobody knows anything else to do when this lackluster lack of offense malaise creeps into a locker room populated by players who used to be able to hit. You fire the manager because you can. It's the one thing you have control over. It shows that you mean business.

Casey Stengel asked in 1962, "Can't anybody here play this game?" For the 2008 Mets, the answer is, after all, I guess not.