Last updated: 7:42 am
July 24, 2008
Posted: 3:22 am
July 24, 2008
NEARLY a whole day later, manager Jerry Manuel was totally fine with the autopsy. The sock-to-the-gut loss to the Phillies on Tuesday was the kind of defeat that keeps on giving - at least until another pitch is thrown - and the Met manager betrayed not an iota of defensiveness in going over the gruesome details still hanging in the air.
It is the most palpable way Manuel has distinguished himself from his predecessor. To call Willie Randolph thin-skinned is insulting to the thin-skinned. Randolph was forever citing his Brooklyn heritage, brandishing his New York-ness.
But Randolph never seemed to understand how the game was played in New York, with its lava flow of praise and criticism depending on the circumstances. And this was not only with the media. Randolph was touchy with his colleagues, as well, seeing cabals in every skull session with his bosses about strategy.
Manuel is Joe Torre-like in the comfort he has in his own skin. He did not bristle at the inquiries about his choices in the series-opening heartbreak. He was good-humored, extensive in answers. When media- relations director Jay Horwitz announced one more question, Manuel dead-panned, "Dang, Jay, don't be cutting us off. We are talking baseball." The best synonym for this manager-media exchange would be un-Randolph-ish.
Yet going into last night's sandwich game against Philadelphia, Manuel suddenly faced a similar plight to Randolph - having to survive a devastating blow from the Phillies.
For the game on Tuesday had been a synthesis of the 2007 Mets: failing to capitalize on myriad chances to build an insurmountable lead before faltering so badly at the end that the Phillies could squeak by to triumph. The Randolph Mets never did get over the hangover, and the manager lost his job.
Now here in his first major crisis moment, Manuel benefited from what abandoned Randolph late last year - and that wasn't charm with his bosses and/or the media. Two players more than any others symbolically marked Randolph's downfall: Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes.
They emotionally detached from their manager, seemed to go on extended strikes of indifference on the field and sullenness off of it. Now Delgado has revived enough that the new manager restored him to cleanup last night, where he reached safely four times.
