Mets Pay Rickey!

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Let's get right to it. No point in avoiding mentioning today's METFLASH. The Mets brass is apparently trying to shake up the team, so out goes hitting coach Rick Downs and his syndrome, and in comes...

Rickey Henderson, a card-carrying member of the happy Bobby Valentine-era Mets family!

There has been some initial confusion as to whether Rickey was hired as a replacement for Rick Downs or HoJo. No team in its right mind is going to let Rickey near first base in a uniform, so the money here is on Rickey being the new hitting coach. Plus the Mets don't want to have a situation come up where Rickey and Julio Franco, a player older and less adept than Rickey, find themselves fighting over the first base bag in the middle of the game, should Franco ever make it down to first base again.

When discussing Rickey's salary, the Mets decided to pay him using the "unintentional comedy scale."

Players will certainly benefit from Rickey's lessons. Reyes has already reaped the benefits of Rickey's toutledge, for example the past week when he declined to run out ground balls on two occasions.

But again, all eyes will be on the kind of relationship Rickey "the greatest leadoff hitter of all time" enjoys with Julio Franco, "the greatest pinch hitter of all time" and a few years his senior. Will they butt heads, or share egg white shakes and hold each other's feet for crunches during workouts?

For any novelty sports blogger, Rickey's new appointment and his new visibility is like Dan Quayle to David Letterman. We likes Rickey. In any event, look for Rickey and his fabulous dress shirts to be playing a big role in the Mets' second half, which just got a whole lot more interesting.