National Innocence Update: The Willie Randolph Firing

by Freneau on Jun 19, 2008 2:38 PM EDT

Willie Randolph was forced, FORCED, to get on a plane and fly from New York to LA, when he could have been fired on Sunday.

This assault on our national innocence WILL NOT STAND.

Willie Randolph was forced to fly cross-country! The horror! The botching!

As we all know from personal experience, there is nothing worse than flying in a private/chartered plane. Its awful. And as a baseball man -- and this is the cruelest part -- Randolph only very, very, very rarely flies. Maybe once or twice a year, and that's it. For his entire life, Randolph has probably only been on a plane five or six times, and they were all very short flights. Even without his job hanging on a thread, he was probably stressed out and terrified, simply because he had to fly. And again, it was one of those miserable private flights. According to what I've seen online, the Mets' flight stopped in Wilkes Barre, Cleveland (changed planes), Chicago, Des Moines, Kearney (changed planes), Grand Junction, Salt Lake City (refuel on runway) and Reno before they landed in LA 28 hours later.

And let's not even mention how terrible it was that he was in LA in the first place or the substandard, roach-infested motel rooms he stayed in. Call the Red Cross for this man.

I am sincerely sorry that Willie Randolph was forced to endure thus, and a earnestly hope that the media can properly shed light on this injustice.

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I like how

He was the only person in America surprised by his firing.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jun 19, 2008 4:58 PM EDT reply actions

I think Buddy Bell was surprised

A mind without purpose will walk in dark places.

by NHZ on Jun 19, 2008 5:31 PM EDT up reply actions

Why he was surprised

According to him, he had a conversation with Minaya before the trip and said that he didn’t want to fly to LA if he was about to be fired. Then Minaya assured him that he wouldn’t be fired on this trip, that only some of his coaches would be fired. So he got on the plane, flew across country, won a game and then got fired at 3:00 am. If I were him, I would have been surprised at the timing, and the fact that Minaya lied to him.

This is just my opinion. I could easily be wrong.

by Scott McKinney on Jun 19, 2008 5:52 PM EDT up reply actions

Cross country flights suck

The suck even more when you fly across country, do your job for a day and then get a message at 3:00 am that you’ve been fired. Apparently Omar Minaya wasn’t quite sure that Randolph didn’t need to be fired until 3:00 am.

This is just my opinion. I could easily be wrong.

by Scott McKinney on Jun 19, 2008 5:50 PM EDT reply actions

Yeah,

I will be honest: a lot of the time this stuff gets overblown, but Minaya deserves to take some flak for this.

A mind without purpose will walk in dark places.

by NHZ on Jun 19, 2008 5:59 PM EDT up reply actions

+1

I think the “Flying Across the country” thing was just icing on the cake of them jerking him around and giving vague affirmations ever since last seasons collapse.

OMG Banny. FWIW I am only crdtng u w/3 runs allwd bc of DDJ OMFG

by Matt Klaassen on Jun 19, 2008 6:21 PM EDT up reply actions

But to clarify my feelings on this pretty unimportant issue...

I don’t think the firing was handled in the right way, but they had every right to fire him and it wasn’t really a big deal. It could and should have been handled better, but there’s no really good, nice, fun way to tell someone he’s out of a job. A week from now, few will remember this and virtually no one outside of the Randolph family will care.

This is just my opinion. I could easily be wrong.

by Scott McKinney on Jun 19, 2008 9:40 PM EDT reply actions

The articles being written about how unfair it is

The guys writing those articles must have missed the last few times KC sports teams got rid of major personnel.

Gunther Cunningham found out that he was fired from the internet when he learned Vermeil had been hired.

Pena skipped town to avoid a trial.

Glass left Baird hanging for a couple weeks, looking for a successor while still employing him. After finally dropping the axe, asked Baird to stick around and run the draft. And then refused to comment on the situation at all, leading to him pulling press passes after the DM press conference.

While Cunningham and Baird both deserved to lose their jobs, their situations were just as bad as Randolph’s—but neither of them got nearly as much post-love from the world wide leader.