To fire up Mets, Collins gets tossed

Terry Collins has a naturally caffeinated vibe to him, always energetic and emotional. So after he waited more than a decade to return to the major leagues as a manager, is it any surprise that he would feel the constant tug to do something to try to will the Mets out of this season-opening funk?

Frustrated, agitated, irritated -- Collins has gone through the gamut of emotions while the Mets have played as if it were 1962 all over again. "I care a lot," he said Thursday afternoon. "I care about how the team plays. I'm sitting here searching every night saying, 'What can I do differently?' "

That's easy. On Thursday night, Collins employed the oldest trick in a manager's playbook in an effort to fire up his team: Get yourself ejected.

After the eighth pitch of the Mets' 9-1 win over the Astros, Collins came out of the dugout to argue with plate umpire Doug Eddings about a disputed caught-third-strike call. For a few minutes, Collins was in Eddings' face, screaming and gesturing until Eddings agreed to give him the heave-ho.

Video replays show Collins' argument was sound, that Mike Nickeas actually did catch the foul tip off the bat of Houston's Angel Sanchez for what should have been the third strike.

But this scene was about so much more than that. This was a perfectly timed opportunity for the new manager to show his fire to his struggling players and the frustrated fans.

"He wants us to bring that energy and he wants to lead us with that energy," David Wright said, "so I think a lot of it had to do with trying to get the fans into it, trying to get us into it and trying to bring that energy."

Collins said he wasn't out there trying to get himself thrown out; he said he argued only because he wanted Eddings to get help from another umpire on the play. But Eddings refused, and Collins never relented.

"I just wanted to get the call right," he said. "That's all."

But given the way Collins spoke before the game, frustrated about having lost 12 of the past 14 games, he admittedly was prepared to try something new to fire up his team. Understandably so, too.

"You sit and try to analyze every phase of what you're doing," he said. "Am I saying the right things? Am I doing the right things? Should we change up something?"

Collins even went so far as have the Mets wear the same color scheme they wore during spring training, with black shirts under their white uniform tops. If they look like the talented, competitive team he saw every day in March, maybe they'll start playing like it, too.

That hasn't been the case this season, with too many mistakes. Collins said he's turned to his coaches during games after a mistake and asked them if they went over that play in spring training. Of course he knew the answer, but things had gotten so bad so quickly that he needed to hear it for himself.

"As the manager here, I'm responsible for a lot of this, so I take it to heart because this is my team that's making those mistakes," Collins said. "And if that's a reflection that I'm not doing my job, I take that to heart and I take that very serious."

So Collins acted.

How much of a role did his ejection play in the Mets' best offensive output in nearly three weeks? Hey, no one is going that far. But this much is true: On this night, Collins made a public demonstration of just how much he cares, and his players responded with a much-needed feel-good win.