Takin' Care of Business

The Mets did what they had to yesterday, and I'm not talking about firing Tony Bernazard. No, the Mets -- the ones who play on the field, the ones we cheer for -- did what they had to do yesterday by taking the opener of their 4-game set with the Wild Card-leading Rockies.

As regular readers are probably aware, I'm pretty sure this Mets team is dead and buried. But I'll say this, if they're going to make this thing interesting, they would do very well to start this week against the New Rox.

Having won the opener of the series and with Pelf, Johan, and New Niese set for the remaining three games, the Mets have about the best pitching breakout they could have asked for.

Winning the Wild Card would take a lot more than winning this series against the Rox; there are still six other teams between the Mets and Rockies, after all. But over the weekend the Mets got the ball rolling by taking two of three from the Astros (currently 6th in the running for the Wild Card, two spots ahead of the Mets).

If they can manage it, winning these series back-to-back would be an excellent way to reenergize a wary fanbase made all the more incredulous by Omar's bungling of the Bernazard firing.

Firing Bernazard had to happen. I'm sorry, there is no context that could ever, EVER, excuse whipping off your shirt and challenging subordinates (which, when you think about it, is what those minor leaguers were relative to Bernazard) to a fight. I mean, this is supposed to be a professional enterprise, not the corner of 78th and Broadway after a Collegiate-Horace Mann basketball game.

Bernazard's behavior made the Mets an embarrassment, and dismissing him was the only possible recourse; period, full stop. That being the case, Omar's insinuation that Adam Rubin orchestrated some sort of witch hunt to get Bernazard firing so that he could take his job is entirely beside the point.

So long as what Rubin wrote was accurate (and no one has denied it, and the Mets saw fit to fire Bernazard over it), Omar had no business questioning his motives. His motives didn't make Bernazard whip off his shirt and act like a lunatic.

But hopefully when we look back on this season, this week will be memorable not because the Mets fired a member of senior management or because Omar put his foot in his mouth; hopefully it will be memorable because it was the start of something special.

Believe me, I still don't expect anything special to happen this season. 10.5 out in the division, 6.5 out in the Wild Card with seven teams ahead of us. But if something special WERE going to happen this season, this is as good a time as any to start making waves.

We did it over the weekend and we did it again last night. As Gary Cohen reported in his happy recap, the Mets have now won three in a row for the first time since May.

What better time than now to make it four in a row?

- A.F.O.M.G.