If you put all the pieces together, it appears that the powers that be finally got their wish. Willie Randolph was removed last night as the field manager of the Mets. Although this was an act that appeared to be thoughtlessly carried out, it’s a move that has been in the making since some time last season.

We heard the reports about how assistant GM Tony Bernazard is constantly hanging around the Mets players in the lockers room. How he wishes Manny Acta was the manager and spends more time with him then his own coaches when facing Washington.  We have also heard that Tony never wanted Randolph as the manager to begin with. Apparently Bernazard has more power than any one of us know. I thought Omar Minaya was the general manager of the Mets. Perhaps we are wrong.

The question is one of the chicken and the egg. Did Willie begin to falter and loose respect from the clubhouse which caused an alliance between many of the players and Bernazard or did Bernazard drive the wedge between the players and the manager. All I can say is to Bernazard and his following is to be careful what you wish for. What if nothing changes? What if in a month’s time the Mets are still floundering around the .500 mark falling further away from the Phillies? Who gets canned then? You can bet Bernazard is on the short list.

Right or wrong, Bernazard becomes the villain toiling his mustache in this melodrama that has unfolded in Anaheim. If anything, he will become the scapegoat if the decision to fire Willie backfires.

Although the Mets performed like bush leaguers last evening the fact is they do have a new manager and new coaches and must play a game this evening. Life for the Mets, the media that covers them and their fans goes on. But once again Mets fans are left scratching their head. Just two short years ago we were riding high as the Mets played great ball and won the division title. The future looked so bright and now it looks so uncertain. We root for a franchise that can never sustain any kind of success. The way the Mets carried out this hit is indicative of how they operate. This is an organization that is so terrified by the perception of its fans and the media that they have become completely dysfunctional.

The difference with how the Mets operate as compared to the Yankees is painfully obvious. While the Yankees are no better than the Mets in terms of many of their back room decisions at least they have the guts to carry out their missions in a more professional manner. I just hope that whoever came up with the idea that it would minimize the backlash by firing Randolph, Peterson, and Nieto in the middle of the night across the street from Disneyland is not making baseball decisions. That would be very scary.

For a franchise that is now going into its 47th season, isn’t it time they grow up?

It’s at times like these that I’m embarrassed to be a Mets fan. Not because they fired Willie Randolph, Rick Peterson, and Tom Nieto but in how they did it. Yesterday I wrote that I did not want to see Willie or any of the coaches fired because generally moves like this do not make much difference. Ultimately it’s the players that can only turn things around.

Once again the Mets brass comes across looking like nincompoops, a bunch of amateurs without the guts to do the job right. I said all along that based on last season’s collapse, their 140 million dollar investment, and their less than mediocre start this season, they had all the justification in making changes. So why all the shenanigans at midnight California time? Did they think we wouldn’t hear about it? Maybe the Mets thought that when the team returns home next week everyone wouldn’t notice that Willie was no longer the manager. Perhaps the Wilpons and company were not aware of things like telephones, television, and the Internet. It’s a common problem.

You wonder what kind of thinking went into this decision. Why make Willie Randolph, Rick Peterson, and Tom Nieto fly out to the west coast just to be fired after the first game of the road trip. It’s truly bizarre. Why didn’t they do it Sunday morning or even after the double header? According to Bill Madden, Jeff Wilpon has been advocating Randolph’s dismissal for a long time. Apparently the younger Wilpon was annoyed ever since Randolph squeezed the Mets for a bigger contract after the 2006 season. Last year’s uninspired play ending with the collapse only fueled the fire.

Based on these utterly weird developments, you have to assume there was a lot of internal fighting going on behind the scenes. According to Metsblog.com’s Matthew Cerrone, many players and clubhouse people new that Randolph was going. I wonder if he knew himself. That might explain his relaxed and comical state this weekend. I was once laid off from a very dysfunctional company. As worried as I was about my future, I was giddy as can be knowing that I know longer had to work in such an impossible environment. I couldn’t stop grinning.

I get the feeling that for a long time now, Willie has been working in an impossible situation. Perhaps part of the problem was of his own doing. Willie can be very stubborn. At times, at least in front of the media, you wondered if he was watching the same team we were. Last year, he benched Jose Reyes for not running out a ball that appeared as if it may have gone foul yet defended other players who honestly looked as if they were dogging it. Willie’s in game strategies at times were puzzling but it’s hard to argue with success and Randolph leaves as the second most successful manager in Mets history percentage wise.

The positive in all this is that the Mets can move forward now. Someone has finally paid the price for losing the division last season with a 7 game lead with only 17 to play. And with the dismissal of Rick Peterson’s, we can no longer look to anyone in the Mets organization every time we hear the name Scott Kasmir. I’m still not quite sure what Tom Nieto did wrong.

But for today, the Mets are going to be taken apart piece by piece by the media and rightfully so. The manner in which they handled this situation, not unlike Ryan Church, is extremely questionable. Willie deserved better, perhaps he did not deserve to keep his job, but they should have dismissed him in a more honorable way. They should have given him at least till the All Star break when Willie was to have been a coach on the NL squad. The fact that the firings happened in this manner dictate something more sinister than meets the eye. If what goes on in the clubhouse is anything like what apparently is happening in the front office, this will be a very long season indeed.