Although it is far from being the most important aspect of another horrible story about the infernal sport can be for female journalists, there is only one organization that can completely stifle the acquisition of perhaps the most cheerful player in the league in Francisco Lindor. And that would be the New York Mets. And they keep going full Mets. Going to Mets that much will certainly lead to a break.
First it was Jared Porter showing himself to be a complete idiot, although the acts themselves were not under Mets’ surveillance. Supervision was. Then new owner Steve Cohen decided to play Twitter whack-a-mole throughout the Gamestop rigamarole. And now ex-businessman Mickey Callaway has been revealed as bigger trash than Porter, harassing five reporters with e-mails, text messages and repeated calls, as well as physical acts. And that was on the Mets watch.
The details of the story will be familiar to you, though no less disgusting thanks to the familiarity, because you have read them before. Cheap arrivals, naked photo requests, inappropriate physical touches, go through the whole range of shit.
The fact is that no one will take the fall here, at least in the Mets. Callaway was fired after the 2019 season (the team had 163-161 with Callaway in charge) and was in Anaheim last year as a pitching coach, a position from which he can expect to be fired in the next 24 hours. Sandy Alderson, the current president, was on leave from the team when Callaway was hired and served as manager. Alderson was the one who hired Porter without really doing all due diligence on him, but it is difficult to know where he would have gotten this information if the Cubs had not voluntarily had it. Cohen and Alderson acted quickly to fire Porter after the story came out, and perhaps they will do the same with any underlings who knew what Callaway was doing. Seeing how these women were warned before they worked with and around Callaway, it doesn’t seem like a big secret in the baseball world.
Although it is not a pleasant process, baseball and sports in general need stories like this to keep reaching the public, to clean up, so that it is safer for other women to tell their stories and keep the process going. Sports need to get rid of scum like Callaway, and this is how the process works.
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It is an interesting read (albeit close to revolting) to see that the Mets are still interested in hiring Trevor Bauer, since Bauer was a stalker of women in his past. The “zero tolerance” that Cohen promised after the Porter disaster would be very fragile if Bauer could fly under it. Hopefully, the latest black eye for the Mets (can you have three or four at the same time?) Would make them seriously analyze what it would mean to sign Bauer. The last thing that sports need is for athletes to feel that they are above acting decently simply because they make money and provide enough wins. Not hiring him would be a sign of real and significant change.
It was quite a night for baseball, along with news from Callaway, the MLBPA rejected the owners’ proposal to delay spring training and the regular season by a month and shorten the season to 154 games. Players didn’t like the idea of an expanded postseason, or the amount of power in asking for postponements and cancellations that Rob Manfred would have.
As logical as the owners’ proposal can be colored in the eyes of the sympathizers in some places, the owners are only to blame for the animosity and distrust in any negotiations between them and the players. They are the ones who salted Earth last summer by reaching 60 games and claiming losses that they refuse to recover, and are definitely not conspiring to keep players’ wages low in recent years.
The fact is, spring training should not start in a few weeks. The pandemic is still spreading. There are months left to vaccinate enough to be considered safe. Arizona and Florida are some of the worst places in the country at the moment, and are also places that won’t do much about it. It is not safe, and the amount of delays currently occurring in the NBA and NHL just proves it. It is hard to believe that things will be much better in just two months, when Opening Day is scheduled.
Still, players knew that an expanded playoff facility this year would almost certainly mean a permanent expansion, and they realized that giving teams the license to have 80-85 wins instead of 90 or more will only hurt players in the long run. . Damn, there are only five or six teams now aiming north for 90 wins.
Still, players have not revealed exactly what the alternative is to having Manfred authority to postpone games or pause a season. We know that players hated being stuck in their hotel rooms for a week or more when they needed quarantine. But players will have a positive test. What will they do then? Who will make that call? Needless to say, negotiations have not ended, even if spring training begins in time.