No Respect

On the heels of being relegated by ESPN to the afternoon slot yesterday, comes the gems of wisdom I saw earlier today prior to the Yankee game, as Eric Byrnes, Peter Gammons and a couple of other guys gave their predictions for tonight. No surprise that 3 of the 4 people said the Dodgers would win.

Byrnes takes the cake. He said if not for the DP at the plate, the Dodgers would have won 7-6. Um, Eric, do you really think that if the Mets were down a couple in the 6th that Willie STILL would have had Mota hit with the bases loaded? You may be a good ball player, but not a very good analyst.

Gammons said he likes Kuo's stuff. Byrnes said he did not think the Shea crowd would get to Kuo. First Gammons, Peter, what about Glavine, the 40 year old 290 game winner? You think he is going to be outpitched by some rookie? Eric, you think a rookie is not going to be affected by 57,000 screaming mad lunatic Met fans? You wanna rethink that there buddy?

So, once again, we are the underdog. There is no respect for the lineup. There is no respect for Glavine. Stick it to them boys. Hard.

Next, we get to my old friend, Wally Matthews. Wally decided to take on Willie today. The column was titled "Manage to win despite Randolph". He started by saying it took WIllie 12 years to manage his first playoff game. Wally, since he has only been a manager for 2 years, you mighht want to rethink your math. Then, he said it took Willie two hours to nearly manage his team out of it. Then he bashed to decision to pull Maine in the 5th, citing the fact he had only thrown 80 pitches. Wally, in the game I watched, Maine was in trouble. He also cited the fact Mota was allowed to hit, tying it to the decision to pull Maine early.

Now, this is not as bad as the other hit jobs Wally has put out there, but it still stinks. The day after the Mets, despite all the experts saying they would lose game 1, win the damn game, this guy has to write a column saying Willie almost lost it for them. No Wally, they did not almost lose, they WON. Almost doesn't count, except in horseshoes and hand grenades. Had they lost, yeah, Willie would have looked bad batting Mota, but they did not. The choice worked. Yet he still gets hit. Had he not pulled Maine, and he gave up a run or runs, Willie would have been blmaed for that. They won because Willie wrote out the lineup, putting in Floyd, despite his struggles, going to Maine to start, and relying on his pen to get the Win.

Of course, tomorrow Wally will write a fluff piece on the Mets, since that is what he usually does after bashing them or a single player. Fans of the team are going to start taking all of his columns with a grain of salt.

Show Wally how wrong he is too guys. Let's hang another W on the board tonight.