Willie Randolph is pissed
Willie Randolph played for the a Yankees team that often had fist fights in its own clubhouse and dugout. Suffice to say the Yankee teams of yesteryear didn't only hate their opponents but each other as well and that was what Randolph learned about baseball.
This week's visit to Shea by the Nationals, a team managed by former Mets coach Manny Acta, again featured the kind of affection usually reserved for family reunions. Hugs, handshakes, plenty of laughs.
Acta is a great guy, and still well liked in Mets circles. But it's a little strange after the events of last September to see the teams maintain the same close contact on Shea's front lawn. It didn't sit well with everyone.
Manager Willie Randolph, an old-school veteran of the gang warfare between the Yankees and Red Sox, was not among the intermingling groups of front-office members and players. Not this week, and rarely.
To see one of his former lieutenants fawned over by members of the Mets organization probably makes every game against Washington an annoyance for Randolph. But that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon, and neither does the inexplicable chumminess between some Mets and the team that humiliated them only seven months ago.
"How does that happen? How does that become normal?" Randolph said. "I don't know. It's just foreign to me, that's all. I'm fine with, 'Hey, how you doing?' That stuff. I wish that we could enforce it more, really. They talk about it, but I don't really see anyone policing it. You can't force people not to talk to someone."