While you were sleeping...

In one of the greatest acts of cowardice you'll ever see, the Mets fired manager Willie Randolph and two coaches today. At 3:14 in the morning. After a win, no less.

I never thought I'd see any team botch the firing of its manager worse than the Yankees did during the offseason. If you'll recall, the Bombers offered Joe Torre, a man who guided them to four World Series titles and no worse than a postseason berth every year of his 12-year career, an incentive-laden, one-year contract following the team's first-round exit from the playoffs last October -- as though the greatest Yankee manager since Billy Martin had something to prove.

But somehow, the Mets managed to go even lower than that, insulting the second-winningest manager in their history with a series of missteps that culminated in this morning's utter debacle:

a.) Oct. 2, 2007: After the Mets blow a 7-game NL East lead with 17 games to play and missed the postseason, there is speculation the team may give Randolph the ax right then and there. The Mets wind up keeping Willie on board -- but only after he has to twist in the wind for two whole days before the team makes its decision.

b.) May 26, 2008: With the Mets in fourth place and the "Fire Willie!" chants growing louder at Shea, Randolph emerges from a meeting with GM Omar Minaya and owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon with his job. The front office, however, makes no assurances that it will retain Willie for the remainder of the season, leaving Randolph on thin ice and prolonging the speculation about his job security.

c.) June 17, 2008: After Willie manages the Mets to a doubleheader split against Texas, the team allows him to take a 3,000-mile trip out to the West Coast, where the Mets will begin a series with the AL-West leading Angels. The Mets score an impressive 9-6 win in the series opener, and Randolph returns to the team's hotel assuming his job is safe for at least another day. But shortly after midnight local time, Minaya summons Randolph, pitching coach Rick Peterson, and first base coach Tom Nieto into his hotel room, where he tells them that they have been fired.

No one is arguing that the Mets were wrong to fire Willie. Certainly a manager has to take some heat when his team suffers the greatest September collapse in baseball history. Or when his team, with its $137 million payroll, sits under .500 midway through June.

But the way the team handled Willie's firing seems to suggest the organization has absolutely no clue what it's doing. First and foremost, the move was cowardly, with the Wilpons essentially sending Minaya out to California to do their dirty work for them. Say what you want about George Steinbrenner's ruthlessness, but at least he always had the guts to tell an employee to his face whether or not he was wanted.

Second, the timing was simply incompetent. The Mets had scores of opportunities to fire their manager and decided every time against pulling the trigger. Instead, they waited until after Randolph had to endure a difficult trip to the other side of the country, until after he oversaw the team's third victory in four games, and until after they had the cover of darkness. How disgraceful.

Finally, the way the decision was handled was simply merciless. Randolph is a native New Yorker and a baseball lifer who won a total of six World Series crowns in his days as a player and coach with the Yankees. He is universally-regarded as one of the classiest guys in the sport. Did the Mets really have to humiliate him like this? Did they really have to treat a man who led them to within one win of a trip to the 2006 World Series so poorly?

Only the Mets could turn something as justifiable as firing an underachieving manager into a public relations catastrophe.