Ex-Yankee To Manage Mets

There will be paens to "doing the classy thing" and hiring New York's first black baseball manager, giving a guy a chance, hiring a manager with NO managerial experience but it's difficult to know what to make of the Mets announcement that they've hired Willie Randolph to manage them.

This isn't one of those smack-to-the-heads, oh-christ-what-are-they-doing sort of moments like when they hired Art Howe to lead them into oblivion and Fast Freddy Wilpon was positively gushing like a schoolgirl at how impressed he was with Art Howe's commanding presence.

It shouldn't be held against him immediately that he is a 13 year Yankee veteran. GM Part Trois, Omar Minaya was pretty clear in what he was looking for: "I'm looking for a person, a manager, that's going to have good work ethics, going to communicate with the players, communicate with the front office on a daily basis," Minaya said. "I'm looking for a manager that's going to be able to delegate to the staff. I'm looking for a manager that's going to interact with the community."

Of course whether or not "interaction with the community" would be on my priority list of qualities for my candidate for manager, let's not start cursing and breaking furniture just yet. Hiring Willie Randolph could prove to be one of those sly, backhanded sort of brilliant decisions that will make Omar look like a genius. One can hope anyway.

In the meantime, the Most Selfish Player In Baseball, Mike Piazza, continues his death watch with the Mets. For Wilponian reasons it appears they are enamoured with Mike Piazza's inflexibility and even more with his stylish lack of talent behind the plate so there will be no DH For Life role in the near future, no unloading of the cancers from the team. In order to justify keeping him on as worst defensive catcher in baseball, Mike Piazza will have to hit around .375 with 45 homers and 150 RBIs. Of course he won't. And whilst he remains with the team, Omar Minaya could have announced Jesus Christ as the new Mets manager and I wouldn't be any less certain that the 2005 will be YAUD, yet another unmitigated distaster.

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On the brighter side, it appears Latrell Sprewell has one big family and cannot feed them on $10 million per year. According to Sprewell, the $30 million offer for three more years is an insult.

"Why would I want to help them win a title?" Sprewell whinged. "They're not doing anything for me. I've got a lot at risk here. I've got my family to feed."

Here's a quid for the Feed The Sprewell Family fund. Quick, somebody set it up. I'd hate to see the lovely Sprewell family go hungry.

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No End to the absurdities in sight:

As if there weren't any other infielders in the world to pick on, the rumour today is that No Mas Garciaparra wants to include the Yankees in on his offseason shopping wish list.

Maybe he, Jeter and A-Rod can stand for a late March Sports Illustrated cover shot with all of them in Yankee pinstripes crowded into a phone booth strategically placed between second and third base. It's true what my grandmother used to say:

Jaap, you can never have enough shortstops

Indeed. Words I have lived by.