When a man’s right, he’s right.
Terry Collins finally had one of the meltdowns for which he’s so famous on Wednesday night (6/1). Who could blame him?
In a game which took on an all-too-familiar pattern, the Mets got outstanding starting pitching from Chris Capuano for six innings, then drowned in two feet of water in the seventh, which he entered with a 2-0 tally. If you took all seven(!) of the Pirates’ hits in that inning and laid them end-to-end, they might reach the MoZone trapezoid. Barely. But that’s baseball and at least two of the five runs that scored that stanza can be laid squarely at the feet of your friend and mine, Willie Harris. First, Harris did a little tapdance on third with the bases loaded and – of course, it being the Mets, and all – didn’t get the call. Doug Eddings strikes again. That’s run number one. Secondly – and more egregiously, in the opinion of THIS writer – with the bases loaded and Jose Tabata hitting, you’ve GOT to come home on the one-bouncer, not what Ol’ Willie tried to do: go around the horn. That made it 4-2. As Warner Wolf used to say, “Ya coulda turned yer sets off right there.” The fact that final was 9-3 only applied some more Novocain to this frustrating year.
The night was actually just beginning, however. Apparently, manager Collins dressed down his underachieving – and yes, undermanned – squad in the aftermath and shared his frustrations with the beat guys. “The issue is not effort. It’s about execution. We need to add on points when we get the lead. I’m not looking for home runs. I’m looking for quality at bats. We can’t make careless mistakes, but we do. We give up at bats. We can’t do that. We don’t have that kind of team.” Wow! Having seen the managerial gamut, from Art Howe (“Well, we sure battled out there…”), to Willie Randolph (“These are MY guys…”), to Jerry Manuel (“We’ll be alright: we’re GANGSTA…”), it’s actually a breath of fresh air to hear Terry Collins read these guys the riot act and continue the rant in front of the MSM. That’s Davey Johnson kind of stuff. That’s the kind of stuff we fans have been moaning about since June of aught-seven, at least.
I think I like it.