Enjoy the moment, Mets -- dysfunction doesn't last forever

No team can be The Worst God-Awful Mess On Earth forever. Such things run cyclically, as the New York Knickerbockers will tell you with great relief. They spent almost two years as The Bad Team, and only new faces have pulled them out of the bottom.

All of the Mets seem to be on different pages. (US Presswire)

The Oakland Raiders have been there recently, too. Their dysfunctions and judgmental errors have made them the worst team in the NFL over the past five years, capped by the horrific 2006 season that saw them win two games and be lucky to have done so well.

The Seattle SuperSonics were really bad this year, could move to Oklahoma, and in any event are currently owned by a guy whose gifts for subtlety and subterfuge could be easily matched by an explosion at a paint factory.

The Cincinnati Bengals had their incarceration period. The Atlanta Falcons had their Michael Vick thing. The Miami Dolphins have 1-15 and Dancing With the Stars. The Detroit Lions have forged a proud legacy of nothing whatsoever. And then there are the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose sins include bad players, bad results, a dreadfully incompetent front office, and to top it all off, an almost palpable arrogance. Worst combination there is.

But for the moment, it's the Mets. Like the song goes, "Meet the Mets, beat the Mets."

The latest knee in the nethers came Tuesday, when experts in concussions said that the team was mismanaging Ryan Church's ongoing head injury by allowing him to play despite dizziness, lethargy and headaches. The outfielder got skulled on a slide a week ago, but has played since before finally seeing a neurologist and being sent home Tuesday.

The fact that it took so long, though, is troubling. I mean, how hard is it to say, "Ryan, we'll get back to you when your vision isn't quite so blurry"?

This comes on top of the thick rumors that the Mets have several clubhouse cliques, that Willie Randolph is about to be fired, and worst of all, that they are keeping the Yankees off the back page.

Do you have any idea how hard that is to do in New York?

The Church thing is inexcusably stupid and reckless, no matter what the Mets' explanation or lack thereof might be. But taken on its own, it is an error that can be rectified without people going, "What's wrong with those nitwits?"

It's the apparent ethnic and cultural splits in the room, the manager's almost daily savagings (and now that people have taken a closer look at what he's working with, general manager Omar Minaya as well), the mediocre results and the typical New York mega-hysteria that have taken an alleged pennant contender and reduced it to an expensive and non-achieving team that probably needs to be dismantled at the first opportunity.

As a global phenomenon, this isn't the disaster it seems; the Mets still seem to have it together slightly better than the Leafs, for example, and the Raiders are always teetering on the edge of unwatchability.

But the Mets have proven to be fine sprinters, getting out of the blocks quickly and moving to the front of the Mismanagement Stakes. A fractured clubhouse, sandbags around the manager's office, a general manager whose judgment has gone from intriguing to head-scratching to unfathomable, an ownership that gives no real indication of leadership or comprehension.