New York Mets: The Challenge Of Being Terry Collins

New York Mets manager Terry Collin has risen to meet the challenge of working in New York, a place capable of crippling even the strongest of men, and if the Mets fall short this year it won’t be because of him.

In the 1970’s, New York Mets manager Terry Collins was a minor league shortstop playing first in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization and then later with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He never had a major league at bat. However, a turning point in his career came when Peter O’Malley, then the owner of the Dodgers, offered him a chance to manage.

In those days, the Dodgers weren’t the mega corporation they are today and the O’Malley’s made a point of treating everyone in the organization as family. Collins went on to get his managerial apprenticeship with Houston and Anaheim, finishing second in five of his six seasons as a manager.

He never forgot though the core of the Dodgers way of thinking back then – it’s all about family. And when you think back to last year when Wilmer Flores was seen crying on the field, it was Terry Collins who came to his defense essentially saying, “Hey look, these guys out there aren’t robots – they’re human beings.”

There are a few axioms that apply to all major league managers, but if you manage in a city like New York, Boston, or Chicago, where the fans are rabid and knowledgeable and the media is relentless and the competition is severe, they apply ten-fold. In each, Collins gets an “A” at least for effort and probably more.

Terry Collins is the glue that holds the Mets together

The first axiom is that you manage the players on your 25 man roster at any given time. You don’t blame injuries and you don’t throw the front office under the bus. Does Collins go to bed every night imagining if he had Jonathan Lucroy in his lineup tonight? Probably, but he doesn’t let it bother him because he knows that’s not his job.