TAMPA — It’s funny: the first time Terry Collins tries to say the word, he stops after two letters: “Co–.” That’s the sporting world we live in. That’s the bulletin-board culture that has grown in professional sports now that every uttered word and every muttered sentence is combed and sifted for tone and timber and hidden meanings.
Collins closes his eyes. Shakes his head.
“I should just say it,” he says, standing on the steps of the visitor’s dugout, two hours before the Mets’ 6-3 loss to the Yankees at George M.