The Mets baffled everybody by holding a nine-hour press conference on Monday to announce . . . the firing of two coaches (and reassignment of a few others). Yes, that was it. Did they really need to hold a press conference for that? Omar Minaya, Jerry Manuel and Jeff Wilpon took turns showing that there’s no accountability in the world of the Mets. Here’s what I heard Wilpon saying on Monday (keep in mind, I’m just paraphrasing here):
“What happened this season was unacceptable. But we decided to keep Omar Minaya around because when he came onboard after the 2004 season, he took a Mets franchise that was seemingly irrelevant and in five short years turned them into an embarrassing laughingstock. Not everybody has the talent to do that. Instead of creating a plan and vision for future stability, we’re going to continue to put our finger in the dike and keep on plugging holes.
“Today we’re announcing the firings of Luis Alicea and Sandy Alomar Sr., because, …
It’s only three games into the season, but we’re already seeing differences between last year’s Rangers team and this season’s version. A (relatively) new coach and an overhauled roster will do that. Here are seven contrasts between the Tom Renney 2008-09 Blushirts and John Tortorella’s 2009-10 edition.
1. Only one minute and 24 seconds into Monday’s game against the Devils, Tortorella called a timeout and ripped his team a new one. And the players actually responded, by going out, working hard and winning the game. Renney would have politely implored his players to at least act like they were trying, and then been just as politely ignored, resulting in a 6-1 shellacking.
2. The safe, boring, sit-back-and-wait-for-bad-things-to-happen style of Renney is gone. And when the aggressive, all-hands-on-deck attacking mode that Tortorella favors isn’t working that night, the team is showing it can adapt, like they did in New Jersey, settling into a blue-collar battling approach.
3. The defensemen are scoring. Last year the D couldn’t score …
Mike Vaccaro has been the lead sports columnist for the New York Post since 2002. A New York native, Vaccaro has also covered the local sports scene for the Newark Star-Ledger, as well as working for papers in Kansas City and Arkansas. He’s just written a book entitled The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, the Giants, and the Cast of Players, Pugs and Politicos Who Reinvented the World Series in 1912. He’s also the author of 1941: The Greatest Year in Sports and Emperors and Idiots. His latest book details the ninth World Series, and third one for the Giants (the only New York team to make it to the fall classic up to that point). And it had it all: Intrigue, drama, hatred, gambling, cheating, a tie game, an extra-inning deciding game, an all-time goat to rival Bill Buckner, day games, fans sitting on the field of play, no Joe Buck or Tim McCarver, the rebuilt Polo Grounds, brand-new Fenway Park, the Royal Rooters, Christy …
The Giants went into this game as heavy favorites, and won easily, 27-16, with most of Kansas City’s points coming in garbage time. The only way the Chiefs could have beaten the Giants was if they had Len Dawson, Otis Taylor, Ed Podolak, Curly Culp, Buck Buchanan and Jan Stenerud still playing.
The star of the game for New York was Steve Smith. He caught 11 passes for 134 yards and scored two touchdowns – and he barely played in the fourth quarter. And guess what? He now leads all NFL receivers in just about every major category. He’s #1 in receprions (34), #1 in yards (411), #1 in yards per game (102.8) and #1 in TD’s (4). He runs his routes with perfection and always seems to be open. He and Eli Manning have a great chemistry going. Best off all, he doesn’t suffer from the prima donna syndrome that most star receivers are afflicted with these days. I really don’t think Smith will be …
Sunday afternoon was a New York sports fan’s dream (or nightmare) as the Giants, Jets, Yankees and Mets all played at the same time – and they all won (even the Rangers played at noon on Sunday and lost, but we won’t count that because it was preseason). I’m jumping on the bandwagon and doing one of those running diary things that are so popular with the kids these days of that afternoon. Here we go:
12:30: Watch the last half of the first period of the Rangers game and eat a turkey, ham and cheese sandwich.
12:36: Yell at my daughter to quit jumping on the couch.
12:50: Bring plate into kitchen.
12:51: Sit back down in front of TV, and watch Terry Bradshaw, Michael Strahan, Jimmy Johnson and Howie Long laugh.
1:02: Giants game starts. They drive down field with ease and score their first red zone touchdown of the year. It was done so easily, I don’t think there was even another team on the field.
1:21: Switch to Channel 2 to check …
Glen Sather magically and miraculously got rid of Scott Gomez this summer and signed Marian Gaborik. But, much like going into last season, this year’s Rangers are ruled by “ifs” and question marks. Sather overhauled the team yet again – does he ever have a plan? (“This isn’t plans one through eight in outer space, this is plan nine! This is the one that worked!”) Maybe this is the team John Tortorella wants, though, with his faster, attacking style of play. Last season Sather tried to replace the offense of Jaromir Jagr, Brendan Shanahan and Martin Straka with Nikolai Zherdev, Markus Naslund and other assorted characters, and it didn’t quite work out. The 2009-10 Rangers are thin on defense and have a number of unproven forwards – the only constant is the goaltending, with Henrik Lundqvist and Steve Valiquette back again.
Gone But Not Forgotten: Gomez, Zherdev, Naslund, Lauri Korpikoski, Nik Antropov, Fredrik Sjostrom, Blair Betts, Colton Orr, Paul Mara, Derek Morris and Erik Reitz.
This …
There are only five games left for the Mets – thank God. Once the 162nd game is played, we can then turn our attention to brighter and happier pastimes, such as starting petitions to get Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel fired, drinking so much tequila that we forget this season (or decade) ever happened and forming an angry mob while chasing the Mets out of town after Sunday’s game with pitchforks and torches.
Over the weekend, when the Mets took on the Marlins, there was a lot of talk about the team playing the role of spoiler by the SNY announcers and pre- and postgame crew. None of the talk came from the team itself. The SNY guys all felt the Mets should be chomping at the bit to knock Florida out of the wild card race after what the Fish did to the Metsies at the end of the last two seasons. They were practically begging the team to show some type of spark and …
The Giants defeated Tampa Bay as coolly, methodically and nonchalantly as John Phillips commits incest. Tampa Bay was no match for Big Blue as the Buccaneers played like they were wearing eyepatches and had peg legs and hooks for hands (though that might come in handy on defense). Bucs coach Raheem Morris summed it up best: “We were beat by grown men, a team we want to be like one day. They came in here and took it to us. Out-manned us. Out-gunned us. It wasn’t even close.” The stats back up his statement: 397 total yards for the Giants, 86 for Tampa Bay; time of possession – 43.38 minutes for the Jints, 16.22 for the Bucs; 27 first downs for the Giants, five for Tampa Bay (and they didn’t get their first one until five minutes were left in the third quarter).
The Bucs cured most of the Giants problems – at least for one day. Red zone issues? Going into the game the Giants were 0-8, …
The Giants and Jets both beat division archrivals this past week. And both are 2-0 and sitting atop their respective divisions. The Giants went down to Texas and paid the Cowboys back for beating them in the first-ever game at the Meadowlands in 1976 (Dallas won, 24-14). Of course, Giants Stadium didn’t receive quite the same amount of hoopla as Cowboys Stadium has gotten this week. Here are some reviews from 33 years ago when the Giants home first opened:
“It just looks like a regular football stadium. Where is the 60-yard JumboTron? Where are the go-go dancers? What do they plan to do here, just play football?”
“Where do you put 78,000 angry New Jersey residents to watch Doug Kotar gain 500 yards a season? The new Giants Stadium, that’s where.”
“The new stadium is a modern marvel, but can they do something about that swampy smell?”
“It just goes to show you the power of the Mob that they got this stadium built all the way out …
With ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball winding down for another season, their announcing team of Joe Morgan, Jon Miller and Steve Phillips took some time to analyze the New York baseball scene for Hot Stove New York.
Joe Morgan: The Yankees are looking pretty good, having the best record in baseball, and they just clinched a spot in the postseason with last night’s win. But you really can’t compare them to the teams of old. I mean, do they have Johnny Bench on their team? [laughs] Derek Jeter does a decent job but give me Dave Concepcion any day of the week. You can throw any stat at me you want about the Yankees – you know I don’t believe in stats [laughs]. When I played we didn’t have stats. We didn’t know what batting averages were let alone WARP and whatever else these kids are talking about nowadays [laughs]. In fact, we didn’t even keep score, but the Reds still won every game we played and were the World …
Jerry Jones threw a $1.15 billion party last night, and everybody was there – John Madden, Pat Summerall, Lebron James, one Hall 0f Fame Cowboy after another, George W. Bush – but, unfortunately, for Dallas, so were the Giants. Jones’ modern-day Roman Coliseum landed from outer space just in time for the game, giant scoreboard and all (and from the view from space, it’s shaped exactly like Jones’ ego), and the Cowboys probably want a do-over (the biggest disappointment of the night was nobody hitting the three-mile-long JumboTron). An impressive 105,121 fans showed up for the game, and they were loud. But they’re still not as loud as my daughter when she throws one of her tantrums. The most tremendous feat of the evening: Fitting Madden and that scoreboard into one building.
For the Giants, the game was beginning to look like last week’s season opener – red zone problems, rushing problems, a defensive touchdown, fancy footwork by Mario Manningham and another receiver leaving the game due to injury (Domenik …
When we last saw the Jets, the comedy team of Eric Mangini and Brett Favre were sabotaging the season. Favre confessed that he had a torn biceps tendon, but he’s just covering up for his arm – it wasn’t torn, it was drunk. The team was even fined for the subterfuge. New and improved coach Rex Ryan gave a pregame speech to remember; it basically boiled down to this: Win on for Richard Todd. And win they did. The rookie coach even shed a tear after the game – it wasn’t because his team won, though, but instead the reason behind the crying was that he just found out that NBC cancelled My Name Is Earl to make room for Parks and Recreation. And when Ryan was about to present owner Woody Johnson with the game ball, Kanye West appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the ball and yelled out, “Weeb Ewbank is the greatest Jets coach in the world! In the world!”
Meanwhile, the Giants …
