On The Happy Recap radio show last night, we talked a little about the known candidates for the Mets’ GM job and which one I’d choose if I were in position to make that decision. I waffled and hedged like I always do, and stuck to my stance that I really have no idea. But I said something about personality that doesn’t jive with anything I normally write here, so I think I should probably clarify:

I don’t know any of the men interviewing to run the Mets, but I would like to know that whoever gets hired is confident enough to ignore the inevitable onslaught of nonsense he or she will face at some point in the near future.

It has always seemed as if the Mets are run by people conscious of public perception. Omar Minaya, as I mentioned on the show, talked about how he heard from Mets fans about addressing the bullpen whenever he went to get bagels in the winter of 2008.

That’s just a quote, a joke Minaya made to make the J.J. Putz acquisition seem like a no-brainer.

But it would be nice if the Mets could find a general manager cocky enough to turn to the guy on the bagel line — or the guy on the radio, or the guy writing for the newspaper, or the guy who owns the team — and say, “Bro, I appreciate the feedback, but I know a hell of a lot about how to build a baseball team, and I’ve got things under control.”

In other words, while I think the bluster about the particulars of the New York market is normally little more than the New York media overemphasizing the impact of the New York media, in this one instance I think it’s important the Mets hire someone they feel can withstand the pressure to compete immediately, shoulder the comparisons to the winning team across town, and exercise the requisite patience to turn the Mets into a successful, sustainable franchise.

Does that mean anything at all? I don’t know. Theoretically all of the candidates have reached the top of their profession, and that type of climbing usually requires a good deal of confidence.

The Mets have a nice crop of halfway decent young players and, in the right hands, I suspect it won’t be as hard as many think to turn the club around. But it’s going to take some time, and in the interim there are going to be a whole lot of airwaves and newspapers and blogs to fill, and so every move the new GM makes and doesn’t make is going to meet with a hell of a lot of criticism.

And so, basically, the Mets need to hire someone who won’t care.

“You got me confused with a man who repeats himself.” – Omar Little.

There was nothing in my post here about “grit” and perception that I felt I misstated and so there’s no good reason to revisit it besides the one irksome assertion, in the comments section, that I do not watch the games.

I don’t mention that now to defend myself against that ridiculous charge, but rather to turn it around on anyone who ever brings the same criticism against me or anybody else making the argument I made yesterday:

Do you even watch the games? Do you see how unbelievably f@#$ing good these guys are at baseball? Do you really believe that Carlos Beltran just coasted to the Major League level on sheer physical ability, then became one of the very best baseball players in the world without really giving a damn? Do you really think it works like that?

(It is, of course, massively ironic that Beltran the lightning-rod is again thrown in the middle of this discussion. Unclutch Carlos Beltran of the 1.302 career postseason OPS. Soft, selfish Beltran who fights his way back from a bone-on-bone knee condition to play in meaningless games. Apathetic Beltran who has a special Carlos Beltran practice machine written into his contract.)

And look: No one’s saying ballplayers aren’t human. Of course they are. But they’re humans who managed to stomach years of awful Minor League living, countless long bus rides, and endless hours of practice, often very far from home. It’s so much easier to give up at some stop along the way than it is to make the Major Leagues.

In other words, I guess, all Major Leaguers have a hell of a lot of grit. And all our armchair psychology and body-language expertise doesn’t provide a fair shake to guys who have worked their asses off to reach the Major League level.

Sure, there are moments when players don’t hustle. Isolated incidents. But no player lasts in the Majors without hustling because remaining at the big-league level requires perpetual hustle.

And you might say that it’s not black-and-white. Maybe the guys on the Mets have some of those qualities, but the Phillies have more of them: more attitude or swagger or grit or whatever talk-radio buzzword we’re using to describe the same silly thing.

But those are things we notice and appreciate in winning teams, partly because players inevitably behave certain ways when they’re winning and mostly because we seek out and identify those things in a team once we know that they are winners.

Ask Mets fans over 30 to name the grittiest team they can think of and they will almost universally tell you it’s the hard-fighting, hard-partying Mets of the late 1980s.

But recall that the 1986 Mets fielded an incredibly deep and potent lineup and got over 200 strong innings apiece from their top four starters. Then they won the World Series in part because Bob Stanley threw a wild pitch and the ball got by Buckner.

How gritty would that team be if Stanley’s pitch stayed true? And all that swagger earned those same Mets no rings in 1987 or 1988. A little less luck in October ’86 and we’d probably be pointing to all the same qualities we now revere — the fighting, the attitude, the off-field nonsense — as the distractions that prevented a massively talented team from ever winning it all.

Once again, the beast is only us. It is often our nature to create these narratives to help explain complicated things, and in sports they are likely perpetuated by the need to fill columns, blog posts and airtime.

But in this particular case it is baffling, or at least frustrating, because far too often the stories we develop only cloud a much simpler and more elegant truth: Good baseball teams win more games than bad ones. Maybe not necessarily in a seven-game series or in the five-game sets we’re watching now, but almost always in a full 162-game season.

The Phillies didn’t do this to the Mets; the Mets did this to the Mets. Carlos Beltran, David Wright and Jose Reyes are not losers, they’re just too often playing on shallow rosters filled with subpar players. Get a hold of yourselves. Fatalism fixes nothing. Good management does.

I think there is one obvious manager candidate that no one seems to mention, Super Joe McEwing. McEwing was a Met fan favorite while with the team…. Baseball America named him one of their managers of the year the past two years (High A in the White Sox organization). And unlike Backman he does not come with the baggage and potential public relations nightmare….

But the real key is his relationship with LaRussa and Dave Duncan. Joe came to the majors with the Cards and was a favorite of LaRussa, who respected him so much he requested a pair of the Joe’s spikes when he was traded to the Mets (for Jesse Orosco). Why is this important, because Dave Duncan can have more of an immediate impact than any manager or GM the Mets can hire. The timing is perfect, he would have never left the Cards in years past, but now he is upset with the way the Cardinal organization, the local media, and fans handled the situation with his son.

– Reader Dan, via e-mail.

On the surface, Dan’s case is an interesting one. After all, if the Mets are serious about considering Wally Backman — currently a short-season A-ball manager — to helm their big-league club, why wouldn’t they be willing to hire a current High-A ball manager in Flushing? And Super Joe, like Backman, led his team to a lot of success in 2010, taking the Winston-Salem Dash to the Carolina League championship series, where they (it? Are we pluralizing Dash?) lost to the Potomac Nationals.

But I have a pretty strong feeling Joe McEwing, at 38 and with no managerial experience above A-ball, will not be the Mets’ next skipper. And if we’re going to campaign for such unlikely solutions, I might as well lobby for an WPA generator like some folks at Amazin’ Avenue keep advocating.

And maybe there’s a role for Super Joe on the Mets’ bench. Brooke from SNY’s Original Programming department just suggested they could hire him to be a roving bench coach, first-base coach, hitting coach and third-base coach all in one. I remember reading that he was a popular guy in his time with the team, and that David Wright especially was sad to see him go. But though we know the Mets love hiring ex-Mets, it does seem a bit random. Plus they keep saying all hires will be up to the new GM.

I will say that I was no fan of Super Joe during his time with the Mets. I recognize now that there’s some value in a guy willing and at least vaguely able to play absolutely anywhere on the field, but the combination of his inability to hit with the media’s tendency to fawn over him turned me off. But then that really has no bearing on his ability to manage or coach a team.

Several interesting names have been floated by the Mets as potential saviors. Some are absurd: Former Diamondbacks GM Joe Garagiola Jr. has no business running a big-market franchise. Neither does White Sox assistant GM Rick Hahn. But if the Mets are serious about, say, Sandy Alderson, then their fans have reason to believe change is coming.

The former A’s general manager – pre-Billy Beane – is exactly the man the Mets need. Alderson guided the A’s to four division titles, three pennants and a world championship in 1989, which means he has a winning pedigree.

– Bob Klapisch, Bergen Record.

Look: If you’re seeking sweeping, declarative statements about who should or shouldn’t be the Mets’ next GM, you might want to avoid TedQuarters for the next couple of weeks. I mean, click over to check out stuff about Taco Bell and astrophysics and whatever else might come up, but I do not plan on endorsing any particular man or woman as definitively the right person for the job. Not my style.

Klapisch has been writing about baseball a lot longer than I have, and maybe knows something about Rick Hahn that I don’t. But everything I’ve read suggests that Hahn has plenty business helming a big-market franchise. In fact, Bill Madden, who has been writing about baseball a lot longer than Klapisch, suggested Hahn would be a great fit for the Mets today.

Of course, I’m an arrogant bastard who doesn’t put a whole lot of stock in other people’s opinions, so I’m not willing to trust that either Klapisch or Madden knows what’s best for the Mets.

What I know for certain is that the next couple weeks will feature a whole lot of writers pointing squarely at this guy, this guy or that guy, and I will do my best to assess the arguments based on the evidence presented and resist the temptation to bury my head in the sand until it’s all over then start lambasting the new GM for whatever he or she does wrong.

So as for Alderson: Klapisch pleads his case because he engineered the successful A’s teams in the late 80s and early 90s, went to an Ivy League college and is a Marine-trained tough guy. His Wikipedia page says he mentored Billy Beane. Madden dismisses Alderson because he’s over 60 and “firmly ensconced” in his current role with Major League Baseball.

As for Hahn: Madden includes him in his list of candidates, citing people “throughout the game” who believe Hahn to be “bright, organized and a workaholic.” Madden points out that the areas of his expertise — contracts, etc. — might overlap a bit with John Ricco’s, but that the White Sox have taken to sending Hahn out on scouting trips as well.

Though Alderson was the CEO of the Padres from 2005-2009 and I have no idea exactly what that role entailed, it sounds like Hahn has been a lot closer to baseball operations a lot more recently, and comes from the business background now en vogue for general managers.

So of these two, Hahn seems like the more reasonable choice to me, but then, still, I really have no clue. In the coming weeks we’re going to try to get in touch with some people with better, closer perspectives on these and all the other most-discussed candidates for episodes of The Baseball Show to get a little more informed.

But I don’t expect to come away from those shows any more confident that I know the right choice for the Mets’ next GM. Truth is, we won’t know if the right choice has been made until a year or two after the choice has been made.

The Mets need to be fumigated, stripped bare and built from the ground up. There is no patch job here.

Let’s face it. Your team is filled with losers.

That’s not harsh. Sadly, it’s reality.

Professional sports has a short menu — wins and losses. None of the other stuff really matters…

– Rob Parker, ESPNNewYork.com.

I read this article and planned to just let it go because I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for Parker’s writing since he wrote a Newsday column about the dedication of the 4,000-some die-hard fans at Shea at a rainy August game I attended with my brother.

But I got three e-mails pointing me to this “disaster” piece, so I figured I should at least mention it. Here’s what I’d say: Not even worth our time. It’s so heavy on brazenly worded platitudes and so thoroughly devoid of substance that it reads like the very worst of Bleacher Report.

I have almost no doubt some editor said, “Mets fired Minaya, we need someone to stir some s*** up for pageviews… What? Wally Matthews is already on his way to Minnesota? OK, Parker, you’re on it.”

And Rob Parker was like, “Here’s the scoop: The Mets are losers and should trade everyone.”

And the editor was all, “That sells. Think you can squeeze 800 words out of that?”

And Parker said, “Meh, barely, but I’ll really stretch it out.”

And so we have this column. The Mets are all losers. Because Omar Minaya tried to make a World Series winner and didn’t, you shouldn’t keep any of the players from the team he assembled. Logic!

Oh, and the only substantive solution: Cliff Lee. Cliff Lee will win the NL East on his own next year, even though he’s a 32-year-old pitcher who will likely require a contract that will ultimately become an albatross.

Wait, what am I doing? I thought I said I wasn’t going to bother. Carry on.