My earliest memories of watching the Mets start in the mid-90s. I can honestly say that today’s firing of Ray Ramirez is one of the most significant moments for the Mets franchise in my lifetime and that is a depressing reality as a sports fan folks. When you find yourself celebrating the firing of the head athletic trainer of your favorite baseball team in your cube at work like your team just won game 7 of the World Series, you may need to consider finding a new team or sport to spend all of your time watching.

I mean sweet Jesus Christ I’m not even kidding about the Ramirez firing being a franchise history highlight. Off the top of my head and in no particular order I can think of the following notable highlights in my lifetime:

• The 1998 trade for Mike Piazza.
• The Robin Ventura 1999 NLCS Grand Single (and the demoralizing series loss to follow).
• The 2000 Subway World Series (and the demoralizing series loss to follow).
• The 2001 Piazza post 9/11 home run.
• The 2006 Endy Chavez NLCS catch (and the demoralizing series loss to follow).
• The 2015 World Series game I attended where Noah Syndergaard threw at Alcides Escobar (and the demoralizing series loss to follow).
• Mr. Met flipping off the fans in 2017 (and the demoralizing season to follow).
• And now the firing of Ray Ramirez (and the demoralizing offseason to follow).

What else is there? I’m actually a little disappointed in the Ramirez firing because the Ray Ramirez Opening Day boo tradition is one of three annual certainties for this franchise: The Ray Ramirez Opening Day boo, the Mets win on Opening Day, and then the demoralizing season to follow. Three certainties. Without the joy that comes from the Ramirez boo all we really have is an Opening Day victory and six months of pure misery.

And we all know that this is being orchestrated by the Wilpons as a distraction. They will do anything to distract the fans and scapegoat their employees. Now the fans will move on to Mike Barwis. Terry Collins is just another scapegoat.

In the span of one week we saw a tell-all article published in the media revealing that the front office and Jeff Wilpon have wanted to fire Terry for years due to his incompetence and the only person saving him has been Fred Wilpon. Then after the public smear job Terry was fake fired. And today the Mets announced Terry will be a special assistant to the GM. Soooo our incompetent manager was promoted to assistant GM. Makes sense.

The Terry Collins fake firing/reassignment is a classic move for teams with inept ownership. It’s the signature move of James Dolan and the Knicks. It just gives fans a new frontman to blame.

Now I see fans and the media actively debating who the next manager will be like it matters.

The Mets need a manager to excite the fans? Who the hell cares about the manager? Joel Sherman in the Post already reported that the Mets are cutting payroll and will be dumpster diving for talent yet again this offseason:

“The payroll is not going up. The expectation is it is going down. One person familiar with the team’s thinking believes it could drop as much as $20 million to, say, the $135 million range.”

If the Mets don’t raise the payroll they might as well name their Gatorade cooler as the next manager. At least an inanimate Gatorade cooler has a championship pedigree given that it’s involved in almost every championship celebration. Coolers also have nerves of steel. Players smash water coolers with baseball bats in a fit of rage almost every season and the cooler is back the next day ready to rock. Terry Collins, Ray Ramirez and the rest of the staff couldn’t even manage to keep Yoenis Cespedes hydrated this season. That’s the job the water cooler was born to do. Then we can have the Mets manage the bullpen based on Twitter polls, and we should be all set. Can’t be any worse than Terry’s bullpen management.

In all seriousness though, I feel like the Mets will just turn over the manager gig to Kevin Long or something. They’ve already announced that Dan Warthen has been fired and that Kevin Long and Glenn Sherlock will return. Who the hell decides the makeup of the MLB staff before actually hiring the new manager? That’s the most ass backwards approach that I’ve ever heard. No matter who we end up hiring, I’m sure the process will conveniently last the entire offseason and prevent Sandy from adding any meaningful free agents.

P.S.

Jacob deGrom got a new haircut. The long locks are gone. I hope you like it because it’s going to be the most significant change to the Mets pitching staff this offseason.

P.P.S.

The Mets went from “five aces” to “worst in team history” in two years. We were in the World Series in 2015 and now we’re picking 6th in the 2018 draft. That is as Mets as it gets. Meanwhile the Yankees play in the Wild Card Game tonight and have Aaron Judge (aka Babe Ruth 2.0) ready to lead them on a deep playoff run. In case you haven’t seen this movie before, it plays out something like this: The Yankees go on to win 3-5 World Series rings over the next 10 years and the next time the Mets make the playoffs 1 in 5 people will own a self driving car.