Seventh Heaven.

While Mike Lupica examines the Mets' 2007 season with some pointless and bizarre numerology, Tim Marchman offers some thoughtful observations.


Randolph is apparently a well-liked person.

I even heard Peter Gammons inexplicably defend Randolph by describing him as "dignified," which struck me as faintly racist, to be honest. Gammons probably doesn't have a racist bone in his body. But it just sounded like one of those statements where the addendum "for a black man" is left unspoken.

Point is, Randolph is simply not a good manager.

Best case, even if Randolph is generally a good manager, or if Randolph has the potential to be a good manager, Randolph was an abysmal manager in 2007:

"This is the second time in three years he's presided over a late-season catastrophe — in 2005 the Mets were 1.5 games out of a playoff spot on August 26 and then lost 16 of 20 against weak competition — and his reasonableness no longer seems a virtue. Every day, his reticence seems a bit more like the silence of someone who's figured out the best way to keep people from realizing he doesn't quite know what he's doing.

...

The mathematical fact that the odds against this collapse were 1-in-500 is astonishing, but it's so abstract a figure that it tends to exculpate the guilty. ('499 times out of 500, Willie Randolph gets his men to the playoffs!') For a team, or some large important part of it, to visibly lose their will to win right there on the field is something else, that isn't easily forgiven."

In response, Mike Lupica said, "Seven, seven, seven, seven. I like turtles."