Dan Mooney

It’s going to be hard to enjoy this World Series, from a subjective stance at least.

Do I root for the Phillies, who beat out my flaccid Mets for the East title, then the pennant? Or the Rays, the new team on the block who as far as I can tell play in a bomb shelter deep beneath the icy Russian surface?

It’s tough. I count two schools of thought on rooting for teams in the postseason: Root for the guys who beat you, so your neck of the woods gets some representation (Go Eastern Time Zone!); Root passionately against the guys who beat you, because you still despise them. I could root for the Phillies, but won’t – that leaves the Rays.

The Rays gave the Red Sox just enough slack to ambulate comfortably before choking themselves. They’re the new media darlings, as motley a crew and with as much upside as the 2004 Red Sox, before they won that title. The booth guys love Upton and Longoria as much as they seem tired of the same Red Sox faces who won twice in the last four years. But I still root for the Red Sox, because I went to school in Boston, support my many Red Sox-loving friends, and love any team that competes with the Yankees, which includes the Rays, who beat the Red Sox team I was pulling for.

Turning 180 and rooting for the team that sixteen hours ago I was sad to see flourishing just seems like a wimpy thing to do. And rooting for the American League is strange for me in general, growing up a Mets fan in a league where pitchers are required to bat, holding themselves relatively accountable; where games move along at a crisper pace; where double-switches exist. I don’t want to cheer in a world where double switches don’t exist.

These are the questions a fan like myself has to face. Sure, other fans have it worse, some for obvious reasons – those in Seattle, Kansas City, Buffalo – Pittsburgh doesn’t get as much sympathy because the Steelers won the big one a few years back.

The brightside for me: It can’t be as unwatchable as the 2003 Yankees-Marlins series. Red Sox-Cubs would have been remarkable; instead we got yet another expansion team with no fan base winning the World Series. Myself, I watched but five minutes of that Series, at Big City in Allston, MA. I saw Josh Beckett get that comebacker and that was it. All I needed to see. All I wanted to see.

My verdict: Rays. Heaven help us.

*clap*

*clap*

*clap*

This is me slow-clapping Jorge Posada, savvy enough to sign that 4-year deal just months before his arm fell apart.

Normally I just laugh at people who steal the Yankees’ money, like Carl Pavano, and Jorge here.  But I’d like to take in the larger picture here, to add seriously that 36-year-old catchers with abberationally productive years deserve not four-year deals.  Let ‘em walk.  All of ‘em.  Or make them sign one- or two-year deals like the players on the downslope of their careers that they are.

The steroids era has so changed our conception of productivity that we can assume older players can stay effective as long as we’d like them to, when in reality their numbers can vanish instantly.  The slope needn’t be slight.

Humanity inches its way back into baseball.

Maybe it’s too far to say that the wheels are coming off the Mets, but the bolts are coming loose and the tires are starting to shake. And it’s not just the fault of Willie Randolph, that bulldog, but he’s taking most of the blame of late and with good cause.

I, for one, have never been bought into Randolph’s famed “intensity.”  Intensity is often a crock term, tossed around and aspired to by people who are just clearly less talented than others.  The example I always give is of the 2004 Red Sox.  Were they intense?  Arguably – but also arguably not.  They wanted to win, surely.  But they were also LOOSE, which is kind of the opposite of INTENSE.  They didn’t act carelessly – but rather as if they were carefree.  They were focused.  And they had fun.

I remember years and years ago, right when Randolph started managing the Mets, that he wanted to bring some of that Yankee “intensity” to the Mets by abolishing all facial hair.  Firstly – and let’s think of the 2004 Red Sox here also, I don’t see how reining yourself so closely in determatologically necessitates better baseball.  Jason Giambi for one is a different player since he came to the Yankees, shed his goatee, trimmed his locks and covered his tattoos.  It’s a false sense of community.  It’s a granfalloon.

I also remember shortly after hearing of Randolph’s ridiculous plan that Carlos Beltran starting sporting facial hair.  In protest?  A mutiny?  Or did Randolph just renege on this carefully wrought plan to make Beltran et al better players by buying them all Bics?  Any way you slice it, the team was at a disconnect with Randolph then, as now.  Yeah, these sagging edges are tentpoled by the Mets’ trip to the NLCS in ‘06, but that wasn’t a World Series trip, was it?  And that trip was fueled by Minaya’s craftiness and wallet access, not Randolph.

You want intensity?  Gimme Jim Leyland, any day of the week.  He wears spikes in the dugout!  He’s been successful in Pittsburgh and Florida (World Championship) and Detroit (World Series app), not in Colorado, but I’m gonna chalk that up to the fact that Leyland smokes a lot and the air is thin up there.  Hard to be intense with diminished oxygen.

Willie Randolph, if he stays or goes, just plain old isn’t as tough as everyone believed him to be.  Yankee pedigree?  Who cares.  Yankee fans watched their teams win too – Willie just watched from a better seat.  He’s just trying to be something he’s not, that’s what bothers me the most.  If he’s softer-spoken and more mild-mannered, he’s gotta go with that.  He can’t pretend to be “intense” if he’s not, and his players aren’t gonna buy into that completely either.

It’s not entirely Willie’s fault.  But he’s failed to inspire, to wrangle, to get thrown out of games when that would fire a team up more than anything.  A manager must manage in all ways, the lineup, the egos, the clashes, everything.  He’s just come up short in too many of these ways to stay.