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The big news in New York all week was the firing of Willie Randolph and how the Mets handled -- or bungled -- the situation. Let's deal with my personal feelings first.

This is a difficult situation for me to comment on; I would try to be completely objective about it, but having been a teammate of Willie and knowing Willie and his family and his personality, I feel bad for him. I feel like, from a PR standpoint, the Mets kind of embarrassed themselves in the way they handled it. However, I do feel good for Willie because he's got a nice lucrative contract, and he doesn't need that mess Omar Minaya has created there. I don't know if it's Minaya or the Wilpons or a combination of them, but he doesn't need that aggravation and messy situation anymore. He's much too classy of an individual to have to put up with that. So, I'm happy that he's going to get a nice payday and should be free from the stress, the strain and, in my opinion, the way they've run their organization.

From a baseball standpoint, I think sometimes guys that are good talkers have been part of an organization where they haven't had total responsibility and suddenly get jobs that do have responsibility. Omar Minaya seems to fit that description.

To me, it would be interesting whether every general manager that got a job like that would spend four or five days in uniform -- in Spring Ttraining, in the dugout, managing the teams themselves -- to find out how much they truly know about baseball. It would also be to see what kind of a mix of players they have put together, to see it firsthand instead of from up high.

Being a baseball person for 50 years, it's been embarrassing to see some of the antics that these players have pulled off with their home run celebrations. The Mets are especially engulfed in these antics. Special hand shakes, particularly when the home runs are done at meaningless times in the game, do not come off well.

I did a Mets game earlier in the year, and they didn't give me the sense that they had a real cohesive clubhouse. I think there are too many factions in that clubhouse. Everyone can draw their own conclusions on that. I just sense that it wasn't a very good mix of players, even when I saw them in Spring Training. When I was there, I could sense there was a lot of back biting going on behind Willie's back, and, obviously, there was some discourse there with coaches too.

All in all, that's kind of my take on it. They probably need a fiery manager that can come in and cut through all of the immature goings on there. They need a manager that could cut through all of the clubhouse fodder and teach these players some respect for the game and themselves. The kind of manager to teach showmanship all the way down to the way guys wear their uniforms. Probably the neatest thing that anyone has ever said was when I went to Bruce Sutter's Hall of Fame induction two years ago. He thanked a lot of his coaches and his teammates. He saved me to last. He had me stand up and he said: "In all the years I've played, I've never played with anyone prouder to put on a big league uniform than Jim Kaat." That meant so much to me because when I see the guys today and the way they act, even the way they wear their uniforms, it's an embarrassment to the game. It's disconcerting that they don't take more pride in how they conduct themselves, how they look, and the respect they have for their manager, their coaches, and probably for their fellow teammates as well. I think the Mets are at the top of this list. There are teams that should look in the mirror and address those issues.

When I just see the Mets team -- I saw them a fair amount in Spring Training, and then I did that one game -- I don't sense they have that oneness. I think in Spring Training, they had put last year's collapse behind them, and they were tying that mostly to the fact that they picked up Santana. So, they kind of put that behind them. But I just didn't sense an "all for one" atmosphere there.

As for Willie Randolph, the first thing I'm going to do is to call him. I called him when he got the job, and I called him in his early days when the Mets weren't playing too well to give him encouragement and tell him to kind of hang in there. Willie is not Billy Martin or Lou Piniella. That's not his personality. If the Mets thought he was when they hired him, then they didn't do their homework because they hired a guy who's a gentleman and a man who approaches the players professionally and appreciates the game, like he did. That's going be a very hard thing for him to swallow; to see the way his team conducted itself. The only words that I would say and that I will say to him are that on one hand, I'm disappointed that he lost his job, a job he had high hopes for and seeing a team win. However, on the other hand, I'm kind of happy that he got a nice financial windfall out of it and that he's too nice of a person to have to deal with that organization day in and day out. So go out and enjoy life.

Chien-Ming Wang Rounding the Bags

These interleague games have been going on now for 11 years, so teams know their pitchers are going to run the bases at some point. They need to practice running the bases. I don't know if the Yankees do that or if all teams do that, but I know as a pitcher, I took it upon myself to run the bases instead of running wind sprints in the outfield. I put a lot of time in running the bases, learning how to make the turn at first, second, third, and so forth. To blame the Wang injury on the National League rules is ludicrous. It's unfortunate; it's a freak thing. He probably could have run the bases 20 more times and never had that happen. It did happen, and instead of looking at the rules and blaming it on the National League, you treat it as a freak incident. It's unfortunate. The Yankees as a team have to suck it up and go forward. In 1965, my team the Twins went to the World Series. Camilo Pascual was our veteran leader on the staff and our "ace." He blew his elbow out in June and we lost him for three weeks or a month. Then, to make matters worse, Harmon Killebrew got hurt at the same time. Everybody said "Oh boy, there go the Twins". When those two guys were out, I think we gained a handful of games in the standings. Instead of looking at it and saying "Oh, what are we doing to do now," somebody on that bench gets an opportunity to step up. I think when you have leadership like Derek Jeter and Joe Girardi, they're going to instill in these guys, we have the talent to win without our 19-game winner, now let's step up and do it. So that's the attitude they need and ignore ridiculous statements like blaming it on the NL, which by the way is still the pure way of playing the game.

The one thing I will say about the Yankees' situation is that they start a pitcher every five days. It's not like you lose an everyday player. I feel bad for Wang because he's been one of the best pitchers in the league in the last few years. I think with guys like Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte, the Yankees will be fine. Mussina has been quite a surprise this season. He's seemed to do something to turn his pitching style around and become successful without the power stuff that he had early on. That's certainly a great sign for Yankee fans and you'd expect that it will get better. I think they have the kind of leadership and veterans that have been on winning teams that they're not going to let this kind of a thing upset them as if it happened to say, Tampa Bay, or a team with less experience that didn't have that successful track record. And the fact that the Yankees are playing quite well right now, I think they're the kind of team; kind of guys that turn a negative into a positive.