Church-Manuel Questions Are a Symptom of Mets' Atmosphere

Matthew Artus By Matthew Artus
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on May 20, 2009 at 8:00 AM, updated May 20, 2009 at 12:54 PM

I've read a great deal of comments about the alleged Jerry Manuel-Ryan Church Cold War and I'm desperately not trying to buy into it.

On the one side, I'll forever keep Monday night's image in my head of Manuel staring a hole through Church after missing third base. He never stepped out of the dugout and didn't say a word to Church.

But then I read Manuel's comments yesterday about the incident, and I felt a little better. I do think Manuel has a doghouse and I do believe the slumping Church may be in it. But I don't believe Church won't be a Met in a month because Manuel's in the process of excommunicating him.

It's not that bad (yet). And thanks to Joel Sherman's thoughts in his NY Post Hardball blog on the Mets' atmosphere, I'm trying to keep my best face forward:

Why do the Mets seem to have only two modes: Winning and death spiral? It feels as if this team never just losses. It feels that each defeat comes with a backstory of dread and so many of the losses lead to outright losing streaks. What does this say about the Mets and their culture that a loss is never just a loss, but a reason to start breaking down the value of multiple players on the team? Why is the leadership - from ownership down to the GM and manager to the players and coaches - unable to limit their world to one-alarm fires? Around the Mets crisis is too normal a position. Can the past two Septembers be explained at all by the Mets' inability to better control their atmosphere and, thus, when things start going downhill the plunge is longer and deeper than necessary?
We're still very sensitive to Willie Randolph's comments in 2007 that "Oh, it's just one loss" before losing the season by one loss. There isn't a Mets fan that has tolerated a loss since.

But every loss has felt epic lately. And this Manuel-Church snafu is a result of it. Things may go badly from here, but I'm going to end this one in my head for now.

It's just one three losses. They'll win tonight.



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