The Amazin' Mess, er, Mets....

If you're a sports fan, you've undoubtedly heard that the Mets fired their manager Willie Randolph along with a couple of their coaches. This event has been a long time coming, and rumors have been circulating in the news for a while now. Evidently, when the team's payroll is in excess of $130 million, people tend to expect the team to actually win a majority of is games. Fans have even been chanting for management to fire Randolph after repeated disappointing series. What's surprising me is that there's an awful lot of criticism surrounding the decision today. I'm not going to detail everything that went down - for that, you can check out ESPN.com or some similar site.

Personally, I'm happy it happened. I've got nothing against Willie Randolph. He was a darn good player in his day, he had plenty of success as a coach on the Yankees around the turn of the century, and I'm sure he'll be a heck of a manager on another team. But his mild-mannered approach just doesn't cut it. I don't think that kind of personality often works on a big market team with big market salaries and big market egos. The Mets have gone that route before and have done even worse. Unfortunately, I remember the Art Howe era and the Dallas Green era all too well.

But their greatest historical successes have come with a manager that has a true passion for the game that they wear on their sleeve. The Mets of the mid- to late-90's were managed by Davey Johnson, a no-nonsense kind of guy that didn't hesitate getting right in your face. He guided the team to the 1986 World Series championship and the 1988 NL East title, not to mention the team record for wins in a season. The Mets of the late 90's and early 00's were managed by a guy named Bobby Valentine. Valentine was certainly a "unique" individual, and his approach to the game certainly ruffled a few feathers. But no one could ever doubt the excitement he had for the game, and he would go to any length to make sure his team win. Heck, how many other managers would sneak back into the dugout after getting ejected from the game, sporting a set of sunglasses and a moustache to conceal his identity? I think Randolph can be a successful manager in a smaller market. Which is not to say he has to be on a bad team. Check the standings today and you'll see that there are plenty of small-market teams having big success this year (Tampa Bay, Florida, and Arizona come to mind).

I've been checking out plenty of articles about the current Mets situation and their handling of the coaching dismissals. Suddenly, it seems that all of those "Fire Willie" chants have been replaced by people crying that the process was unfair for Willie. Some people are even going so far as to say that they are embarrassed to be a Mets fan. Well, I'll never say that and I think that a true fan would never let those words come out of his/her mouth. What does bother me, though, are the "facts" that are used to claim that Randolph was fired unfairly.

For example, its been often repeated today that Randolph was fired at 3 am, and it would be pretty mean to fire someone at 3 am. That time alone conjures up images of the phone ringing while someone's asleep (and I'm not implying any Hillary Clinton references here). The truth of the matter is that it was 3 am eastern time. The team, and the general manager that did the firing, were all in Los Angeles for a series against the Angels. That would make it around midnight. Given that the game didn't end until around 10:30 or so Pacific time, and this was immediately followed by the post-game press conference, midnight doesn't seem quite so outrageous anymore. There are a few things that are questionable, and I'll admit that they should have just fired him a day or two earlier when he was still in New York. But that 3 am thing is ridiculous and just plain wrong. It was late afternoon in Australia at the time. Is that a more acceptable time for a firing?

Many people also complain that it wasn't Randolph's fault for the team's lack of success. The argument is that the blame should fall on the players and on this topic, I somewhat agree. The players are underperforming and many of them are just old and past their prime. But I think that the job of the manager is to do more than fill out a scorecard at the beginning of a game. Its a large part of the manager's job to get the most of his players and motivate them. It may be a bit unfair, but major league baseball is a business. When teams don't play to the level of expectations, someone's got to take the fall and historically its been the manager. This is nothing new. Its happened many, many times before and it will continue to happen many, many times in the future. When the owners put up $130 million for the team, a sub-.500 record just isn't going to cut it. This is a team that was put together to win now. There's no "rebuilding". Most of the current players are over 30, and their farm system is rather depleted after some off-season trades.

Finally, I was convinced that this was for the best when Randolph was quoted as saying that he was "stunned and surprised" that he was let go. REALLY? Could he really be either stunned or surprised? Did he think he was doing the job for which he was hired? Wasn't the fact that the media has been talking about this for weeks a bit of a clue? How about the nearly 50,000 people at Shea Stadium chanting "Fire Willie"? Either he's full of crap, or he's out of touch with the team and what's expected of him. Either way, its time for him to go.

I realize that the tone of this posting isn't exactly positive. Those that know me know that I'm a rather passionate Mets fan, and this is an issue that's been bothering me all day. Sometimes blog posting can be a bit therapeutic. I think that the Mets needed a change. Whether or not they have the best person at the helm remains to be seen (I don't think they do), but nonetheless a change was needed. I hope for the best for Randolph in his future endeavors because I think he's a good guy and one of the smarter guys in the game. But it just wasn't working on the Mets. Heck, he's in Los Angeles now. Perhaps his old boss Joe Torre can give him a job on the Dodgers?

Wordless Wednesday: Memorial Day

This is a representative photo of one of my favorite features of Madison. Actually, it's located in Middleton WI, which is just outside of Madison. Several times throughout the year (Memorial Day, 4th of July, etc.), the local VFW lines the medians of the streets with American flags. For more pictures, check out the Flickr Set.

Exemplary food in not-so-exemplary locations

I happened to stumble upon another blog yesterday that, to summarize, was about restaurants within gas stations. In particular, this guy was talking about a gyro restaurant within a gas station, somewhere in Knoxville, Tennessee. You can find it here. And if you're curious, I came upon this blog by following this path:

ChrisDellaVedova.com --> Malfeasance --> The Prettiest Denny's Waitress

All of them provide some good, entertaining reading, and they are all much better about maintaining a blog than I am. I'd recommend checking each of them out.

Anyway, it immediately made me think of an equivalent place here in Madison. At a local Shell station a bit north of Madison, you'll find arguably the best gyros around. Perhaps life in Tennessee isn't so different than Wisconsin after all.

After reading this other blog yesterday, I thought that a visit to Trader Gus' was in order, especially since I was heading in that direction anyway for a softball game last night. Don't think that I tend to eat all of my meals from a gas station. The whole concept is still a bit weird, and the only food I would usually get might be a bag of chips or the like while I'm on a road trip. I'm not even sure how I found out about this place. Certainly it was word-of-mouth, and its still a bit weird to walk up to the counter and place your order, with the possibility of a quart of 5W30 as an impulse purchase. But my point is that sometimes the real gems are in hard-to-find places.

(Yes, that is gasoline surpassing the $4 per gallon mark. Sucks, doesn't it?)

The experience also reminded me about a conversation I had with a friend a few weeks back. We were discussing the restaurants in Madison that we like to go to, and it dawned on me that there really is a certain "type" of restaurant I prefer. Sure, Jenelle and I will hit up the local Chili's every now and then (especially when we have a gift card burning a hole in our pockets), and I've been known to head over to Qdoba for lunch every now and then. But I do prefer giving the local restaurants a shot when I get the chance. They usually have a more interesting selection of dishes, and its kind of nice to know you're helping the local community, I suppose.

When choosing a restaurant to visit, clearly my preference for a restaurant tend to have something to do with the atmosphere almost as much as the food itself. As for the food, it has to be something tasteful, filling, and somewhat savory. If it has ingredients I wouldn't be able to pick out at the grocery store (e.g. Bok Choy or fennel), I'm likely to pass. This might run the spectrum from pub food, to sushi, to Chinese...and everything in between, I suppose. As long as it meets the aforementioned criteria.

The atmosphere is rather important too. A new place recently opened up just down the block from where I work. It's billed as an "organic smoothie bar". I've never been there, and their fare might be wonderful. But I have trouble seeing myself at a smoothie bar in general, much less an ORGANIC smoothie bar. Maybe its something about the air of pretentiousness that pervades parts of Madison. Perhaps it also says something about the type of people I'd rather be around. I saw a guy walking into the organic smoothie bar the other day, and he was predictably wearing a tie-dye shirt and a kicking pair of Birkenstocks...with socks as well, of course. As for the people in front of me in line at Trader Gus' Gyros? One was a cop, and the other guy had a Brewers jersey on. Certainly the kind of people I'm more likely to hang out with compared to Mr. Organic Smoothie. It's funny how the atmosphere of a restaurant can affect your opinion of the place too.

So, I guess the point of my posting today is that one shouldn't hesitate trying out a new restaurant just because there's something different about it. I tend to like the gyros from a Shell station, and I probably wouldn't have known this if I hadn't given it a shot. Does this mean that I should give the Organic Smoothie Bar a chance? That sounds like a bit of crazy talk to me.....

Wordless Wednesday

Athletes are wimps

A coworker and I were talking about how easily professional athletes seem to get injured these days. This conversation was initiated by an article we saw online which informed us that Boston Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz was put on the disabled list recently. The injury was not due to something terrible, like a line drive hit right back to him. No, Clay Buchholz is on the DL because he has a broken fingernail. Yes, that is correct. He broke a fingernail. We're not talking about truly bad injuries, such as a Joe Theissman. These guys should just keep playing, and perhaps they can become the next "legend" like Curt Schilling and his bloody sock.

This story got us thinking about other ridiculous injuries we've heard of in the sporting world in recent years. Surprisingly, we came up with quite a few and I immediately thought this might make for a good blog posting. Here's the list of our top 5.

5. Ojeda's severed finger. Perhaps my first recollection of a ridiculous injury was when Mets pitcher Bobby Ojeda cut off the tip of his finger while trimming the bushes at his home. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had heard of back then. Little did I know what the sports world had in store.

4. Giambi's injured foot. Just a year ago, Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees tore a muscle in his foot. It happened when he was running the base path. Unfortunately, it sounds ridiculous when you learn that it occurred when he was running the bases after he his a home run.

3. Glenallen Hill, aka Spiderman. Evidently, Glenallen Hill suffers from arachnophobia. He injured himself one night when he had a dream about spiders. In his sleep, he got out of bed, cut his foot when he stepped into a glass table, and then fell down the stairs.

2. Vince Coleman all wrapped up. During the 1985 NLCS, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Vince Coleman was warming up while the grounds crew were removing the tarp from the field. As the tarp was being rolled up, no one noticed that Coleman was standing on the tarp by first base, nor did Coleman notice that the tarp was being rolled up. His legs ended up getting rolled into the tarp, resulting in a bone chip in his knee and bruises in his leg.

1. John Smoltz is....IRONMAN! In April of 1990, John Smoltz burned the b’jesus (medical term) out of his chest while attempting to iron a shirt. The only catch is that he was WEARING the shirt at the time. Smoltz commented that he had done it numerous times before, and could not believe that he burned himself.

I'm sure there are many, many more. Feel free to list some you think of in the comments section!


***Update***No more than 1 hour after I posted this, I find out that St. Louis Cardinals closer Jason Isringhausen has been placed on the disabled list now too. The reason? He has a cut on his pitching hand that he got after punching a television.

Wordless Wednesday

Goombas and Troopas and Bowzer, oh my!

Back when I was a kid, Super Mario Brothers was the greatest game that ever existed and to this day, I would still rank it pretty highly. My brother and I would spend countless hours in front of the tv playing this game with the hopes of saving Princess Toadstool. For whatever reason, I don't think we ever actually accomplished this task. It certainly wasn't for a lack of trying, and we probably only gave up when the SUPER Nintendo was released and we were in awe of the amazing 16-bit graphics that this new system provided.

I recently got a Nintendo Wii for my birthday (thanks Mom and Dad!) and one of the neat features of modern gaming systems is the ability to purchase games online and download them directly to the gaming system. The online catalog of games contains both newer releases as well as classic favorites. While scrolling through the selection, I came across the original Super Mario Brothers. It was at that moment that I realized resistance was futile. I was going to download this game.

I've put in a decent amount of time playing this game lately too, and it is truly remarkable how much of it I can remember. I sometimes look back through my high school and college classmates on Facebook and can't remember a decent number of them, and I have pretty much no recollection of anything I learned in Organic Chemistry (assuming I ever really understood anything in that class anyway). Heck, I usually can't remember what I ate for lunch the previous day. But for some reason, I immediately remembered the exact brick to jump into in world 1-2 in order to get the 1UP mushroom, and that the warp zone to world 4 was hidden at the end of this level. And while it may seem to be a trivial accomplishment to some, I can finally say that I have rescued the princess! An accomplishment over 20 years in the making....




Oh yeah, and I STILL hate those little hammer-throwing turtle guys.