It’s one thing to smile when Carlos Silva gets rocked again and again or Johan Santana doesn’t single-handedly pitch the Mets into first place. They will get paid handsomely no matter what happens and, barring calamity, should have their families well set for decades to come.

In the middle of the night, Willie Randolph paid for the dysfunctional culture that is the New York Mets when he was fired, along with ex-Twins catcher Tom Nieto and pitching coach Rick Peterson. The firing was announced via press release at 2:15 in the morning, our time, about two hours after the Mets had beaten the Dodgers Angels in LA. So I’m sure there will be more fallout today. I’m thinking back to the hype surrounding the Santana trade right now, some of which centered on the fact that whatever may have kept Santana from having another Cy Young-style season in ‘07 could surely be discovered and remedied by Peterson, supposedly one of the game’s elite pitching coaches. I’m sure the new guys will make it all better.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, the guy who chased Carlos (3-8, 5.79) Silva and signed him top a $48 million contract has been dismissed. Acquiring Silva and Erik Bedard while letting other key parts of the team rot (Hello, Richie Sexson and Jose Vidro) has been a recipe for having the worst record in the majors. Picking up Bedard cost the Mariners good young talent and reliever George Sherrill, who has become Baltimore’s closer while Mariners closer JJ Putz has been injured for much of the season. That Jerrod Washburn has finally become a 20-game winner looks impressive, until you realize that it took 2 1/2 seasons for the guy to win 20 (while losing 36). As a result, GM Bill Bavasi was fired yesterday, replaced by his assistant, who I’m sure had absolutely nothing to do with the mess.

Like so many things, baseball is a high-pressure, high-stakes arena. Unlike a lot of jobs, the work is played out in a very public environment with no shortage of people totally convinced they could do better and some of them ready to celebrate your demise. I’m guessing I could create a collection of suggestions and proclamations I’ve made over the years — in blogs, living rooms and bars — that could have cost me a job or two if they’d been allowed to happen.

We often have blinders to what people do well, while beating on them for their shortcomings, especially when their jobs are at the highest and lowest ends of the responsibility scale.

When I coached basketball, I would sometimes take my players aside at the end of a practice and remind them that there would be people sitting in the stands — well, maybe a few dozen at our AAU or traveling games — sure they could play or coach better than we could. I would read them this passage from Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Then I’d hand out copies to their parents. The kids really liked that part.

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 9:06 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.