Couple of years back I wrote a piece where I detailed several alternatives to Terry Collins as Manager of the NY Mets. You can read it here if you are so inclined. Well, here we are two years later and wouldn’t you know it, Terry is still our manager. I guess none of the options I so graciously put forward were considered. I especially thought the sign-language speaking gorilla would have done well, but you never know with these things. Some people just don’t appreciate the value of a gorilla in the dugout.
Anyway I thought I’d give it another shot. Maybe broaden the candidate pool … why limit ourselves to higher primates? I think a pigeon would do nicely, one of those messenger pigeons. We could name him Lefty.
You could outfit it with a little Mets cap and maybe some tiny cleats, this way Lefty can truly take the role of “middle management” and fly directly from the front office to home plate with the lineup card rolled up and stuffed in a little pill bottle around its neck …
Afterwards Lefty can waddle into the dugout and munch on sunflower seeds, giving funny sideways glances that the camera can zoom in on every time the ump misses a call. If we need to challenge a play? Lefty can fly right out to the ump with a red flag in its beak and sit on the Ump’s shoulder while they look at the video … if he doesn’t like the results Lefty can leave a little present on the Ump’s shoulder!
Or how about an unused Mars Rover prototype? NASA is practically giving those things away! I know, I know this is kind of like the robot suggestion from the earlier piece, but the Mars Rover isn’t your run of the mill robot. It’s solar powered for one so you wouldn’t need an extension cord all the way back to the clubhouse. It can take earth samples as well, so it could give a detailed reading when the grounds are getting too wet for continued play.
While we’re at it, with an inconspicuous little poke in the buttocks of opposing batters as they walk out of the dugout, Mars Rover could get an instant steroid reading — how useful would that be?
Mars Rover has all kinds of flashing lights and whistles and camera-sensors so it could speed up turn-around time on reviews.
The all terrain capabilities are nice too … and, as always Mars Rover would feel right at home in Terry’s office as a fellow deep space traveler. Also, instead of kicking dust at an umpire, Mars Rover could simply put its tracks in reverse and literally bury the Ump in dirt in a matter of seconds!
We could try and sign one of those creepy gremlins from the original “Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark” movie. Someone (perhaps Bob Geren?) would have to carry around an umbrella to shield the spooky nether-worlder from the sun’s rays.
These particular gremlins are unusually persistent and are very good at setting booby traps. The official word in the paper the next day might read “opposing player tripped and fell into a bottomless abyss while entering the visiting clubhouse.”
The nice thing with one of these guys is you wouldn’t need to pay for new uniforms as Collins is pretty much the same size. Creepy “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” gremlin could also scare the hell out of the opposition with its weird whispered-tone taunting.
And finally, unlike Collins, creepy nether-world gremlin is clearly capable of forethought — showing the capacity to lure women named Sally to their inevitable demise in a chimney shaft — so he’d probably be good at figuring out ways to get Bryce Harper to slip on banana peels and stuff, just sayin’.
There’s also the gopher from Caddyshack. Again, pretty much the same size as Collins so Jeffie could use those extra bucks on fender-bender bumper-cars at Six Flags. Gopher could create an underground network of tunnels at Citi Field and scamper out to tell Granderson to play Markakis more to pull, delivering the message himself. Of course the team would have to learn Gopher’s strange scratch & snort language but we could easily hire a linguist. Money is no object here.
Gopher Manager could scoot right out to the bullpen and see with his own beady eyes that maybe Torres doesn’t have it tonight … So he could go with, oh I don’t know, pretty much anybody else. This particular candidate has mad people skills as well, and he sports an impressive resume listing Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray, and Punxsutawney Phil as references. Gopher Manager is also good for lots of laughs (he is a much better dancer than Collins), and I have it on good authority that Gopher Manager would work for a salary of peanuts and small shiny objects.
Finally we could just hire a pastrami on rye sandwich to manage the Mets. As the diametric inverse of a ruben (on whole wheat), there is little to no chance Pastrami Sandwich Manager would pencil Tejada in at shortstop, second base, or even third base.
Pastrami Sandwich would not only rival and perhaps surpass Terry Collins intellectually, those little toothpicks that keep Pastrami Sandwich together could also be used to pin down a lineup card – a lineup card, mind you, conspicuously lacking in feather-brained permutations passed off as “unorthodox new-ageisms.”
Also Pastrami sandwich could act as quite the distraction were it conveniently placed slightly off the third base line as a runner were rounding third — they’d go right for the sandwich and totally miss home plate just as Tim Teufel pulls Pastrami Manager away with a string.
