I hadn't planned on getting back to baseball this week, but of course I can't ignore the Mets' hiring of Willie Randolph as manager.

Of course, first impressions of a first-time manager can be misleading or pointless. On the positive side, Randolph has been with a lot of winning teams and was a smart player himself; he seems like a level-headed, even-keeled guy; he's not the same old retread; and the Mets apparently are not paying him all that much money. On the negative side, he seems a bit too much like Art Howe, there's probably a reason why Randolph has been turned down for so many managerial jobs in the past (although it's true that the "you must interview a minority" rule means Randolph has been interviewed for a lot of jobs where the team already had someone else in mind), and he does continue the sense of the Mets as the second-class organization in town.

Time will tell. I would have preferred Wally Backman myself.