Hey Omar, can we talk?
Sure thing, Carlos. How’s that knee?That’s what I want to talk to you about. I spoke to you about this surgery earlier this week, and I thought everything was cool.Yeah, definitely, sounds like something I’d say.But today, your assistant GM made it sound as if I went behind your back to do this. What the fuck?! If you had some problem with how this went down, why didn’t we just handle it internally? Why did you go after me in public, by proxy, and make me and everyone else on this team look bad?
I didn’t go after you, Carlos, my assistant GM did. But it’s clear that somebody pulled a real choke job here on the whole communication thing, and we’ll take care of that ASAP. Right after we work out that 7-year extension for Bengie Molina.
You’re responsible for this whole mess! Why are you talking like it’s somebody else’s fault?!
Carlos, you’ve never been in charge of a multimillion-dollar operation…I am a multimillion-dollar operation……so you don’t understand how this works. I am not responsible for the Mets. I am in charge of the Mets. Being in charge is not the same thing as being responsible.You’re right, I don’t understand.You see, people who are responsible are held responsible for their actions. If I were responsible for things, I would’ve been fired a long time ago. Remember that time we assed away a postseason berth in the last month of the season?Yeah, that happened two years in a row.Really? I have no memory of it happening two times. Then again, there was that one season where I took a lot of naps. You see, Carlos, only schmucks are responsible for things. Men are in charge. Men lead. They lead by standing there, immobile, staring straight ahead while their ship runs aground.How do you get to be in charge?You thrust yourself ahead blindly, like a bull in a china shop, barreling all your competitors out of your path. Other guys in charge will admire your spunk and grit and determination, and they won’t care that you have no idea what you’re doing, because they don’t know what they’re doing either, and they’re afraid to have anyone too smart or principled around them to make them look bad in comparison.Well, unlike you, my job is based on performance. In the big leagues, you can’t fail upwards and hope to be rewarded.You can’t? I assume you’ve met Oliver Perez.
DID SUMBODEE TAKE MY FUNYUNS BECUZ I CAN’T FIND THEMM
Tag Archives: omar minaya
Omar and Jerry Plan for the Future
Jerry, I don’t need to tell you that this year didn’t go the way we planned. But it would help both of us out if the team could play well down the stretch. You know, salvage some of our dignity, and maybe our jobs.
We’re still playing? Sorry, I blacked out sometime in July as a psychological defense mechanism. Besides, I thought you traded you traded your dignity at the waiver deadline a few years back for Luis Ayala.
In any case, we need to some up with a plan for next year. Most of our prospects are 12 years old or going to the Red Sox. I thought I was getting a couple of minor leaguers back for Billy Wagner, but Theo Epstein made me sign all these forms…I still don’t know how it happened, but they get our first and second round picks for the next eight years.
It’s just as well. I don’t like young players anyway, full of spunk and promise and hope. Makes me sick.
So we’ll need to address our needs via free agency. First up, the hole in left field.
I heard about that. Big patch of quicksand ate up Jeremy Reed.
Angry Mets Fan Shakes Fist at Cloud
That last post was my funny-ha-ha one over the current Mets mess. Here’s my Howard Beale extravaganza.
First off, I shouldn’t have to give two rats’ deuces about the VP for player development. I doubt a fan of any other team could even give you the name of the man who fills this job for their favorite squadron. Only the Mets could staff this position with a shirt-ripping, street-fightin maniac.
As for Omar Minaya accusing a beat writer of trashing Tony Bernazard because he wanted a job with the team, that has to be straight-up the rock stupidest thing I’ve seen a GM in any sport do during a press conference.
Many writers have compared this mind-meltingly idiotic move to Bobby Valentine imitating someone who’s high trying to play baseball, which he did during the now-forgotten “the Mets-love-pot” kerfuffle. But at least Valentine did what he did as a failed attempt at humor. He wasn’t trying to ruin a man’s reputation.
The Mets are one of the richest teams in baseball. They play in a huge media market that attracts the biggest and the brightest in every conceivable profession from all over the country. All over the world. Are you telling me they can’t hire better people for their front office?
I’m not even talking about whoever scouts/develops talent–that’s a whole 17-volume set in itself. (Long story short: If the Red Sox can fill their FO with sabermetric geniuses and make a killing in the draft every year, despite big free agent signings, so can the Mets.) Are you telling me that their PR department can’t handle bad situations like these without making sure they turn into raging shitstorms?
They didn’t all just fall off the back of the turnip truck. These people should be very aware of the shark tank that is the New York newspaper world. In preparation for this press conference, did no one raise their hand and say, “We’re going to accuse a reporter of having a vendetta against us. A beat reporter for one of the biggest tabloids in the nation. Excuse me, but isn’t that fucking insane?!”
And let’s just assume for a moment that Adam Rubin, the Mets beat reporter for the Daily News who broke the Bernazard story, did write his stories because of some personal vendetta. Why on earth would you say that during a press conference, even if you had irrefutable proof? And how would that in any way mitigate the fact that Bernazard should be fired?
Woodward and Bernstein couldn’t have broken the Watergate story without Deep Throat. Everyone assumed that Deep Throat was some White House insider who was morally repulsed by the Nixon Administration, who felt the Republicans had gone too far and must be stopped. Turned out it was Mark Felt, an FBI lifer who was annoyed for getting passed over for a promotion. He mostly blabbed to the Washington Post out of spite, not out of some sense of patriotic duty. That’s disappointing as a storyline, but does it make Richard Nixon’s acts any less despicable?
Obviously, what Tony Bernazard did is nowhere near the level of Watergate. But my point is, how or why his offenses came to light has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. Even before yesterday, I assumed the Bernazard reporting had some sort of personal motive, since it was so unrelenting. When somebody gets slammed in the press again and again, it’s because some editor has decided he wants to get that guy fired–and it’s usually due to one agenda or another.
Regardless, if Bernazard really did what he was accused of doing, he deserved to be fired. And if Rubin was truly operating under a conflict of interest, he would have been more seriously accused of doing so. Once again, the Mets were able to take a nasty little molehill and transform it into a huge, festering mountain of stupid.
If my team is gonna engage is Machiavellian tactics, is it too much to ask they be good at them?