Thursday, September 16, 2004

Take Me Out to the WULAD
I've never been a huge fan of Mike and the Mad Dog, but it served as some kind of balm to the gaping wound the Mets' season has created to hear their beseiged owner call up and take his medicine for 45 minutes before the New York radio audience and the world.

And the kvetching duo did not disappoint, taking Fred Wilpon to task for the myriad sins of his club—let us count the ways:

  • the foibles of the last offseason's half-pursuit of Vlad Guerrero
  • the tragedy of errors by Kazuo Matsui
  • the fiasco of Mike Piazza's move to first base and back again
  • the meddling of world-class real estate agent Jeff Wilpon in baseball decisions
  • the listless play of the team's veteran core since the All-Star break
  • the crappy attitudes and grumbling of said veterans
  • the trade of "untouchable" Scott Kazmir and immediate doublespeak about why
  • the betrayal of "the plan" laid out before the season that this trade signified, which resulted in the rusty dagger-in-the-heart for fans of watching Kazmir—who we were told after the trade would not be ready for the majors for two years—beat Pedro Martinez at Fenway Park
  • come to think of it, the "decide-by-committee and then immediately change rationales" approach to, well, everything
  • the fall-guy firing of Art "Trust Us, He's Better Than Lou Piniella" Howe
And so on. You know who I want Fred Wilpon to fire, if he's really committed to turning this team around? Himself.

P.S. Replace "the Mets" with "the United States of America," "Fred Wilpon" with "President Bush," "Art Howe" with "George Tenet," "Jeff Wilpon" with "Paul Woflowitz," and baseball fiascoes with political, economic, military, environmental, social, and cultural ones, and this post is still pretty accurate, except for the "take his medicine" part. The owner of our national team has never been a fan of the accountability thing.