The Hits Just Keep On Coming

You know, if not for the train wreck that is my favorite baseball team, this blog would probably die. Fortunately, the Mets keep giving me things to write about, and one day soon I will get back to weaving pop culture irreverence into this space. Until then, how about those Mets?

They finally do the smart thing by firing assistant GM Tony Bernazard who has been the source all sorts of bad press of late, but then GM Omar Minaya undermines any good press he might have gotten by attacking Daily News writer Adam Rubin, the guy who broke the story that paved the way for Bernazard's firing.

For those who missed it, Minaya essentially accused Rubin of trying to take down Bernazard in the paper as a way of paving the way for him (Rubin) to get a job in the organization. Because, as Minaya says, Rubin has been lobbying for a job with the Mets organization for years. As someone who loves the Mets, works in the media, and has covered the Mets organization, this is right in my wheelhouse.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that when I was working at Baseball America, Adam Rubin was our Mets correspondent. At the time, I was responsible for rating the prospects in the Mets organization, so he and I exchanged e-mails from time to time. We are not close and have not been in touch in years, and I don't know him well enough to know if any of these allegations are true. And as far I'm concerned, that point is moot anyway. The reality of the situation is that pretty much everything I have ever heard about Bernazard is bad, and that goes back a few years. Even Ken Davidoff, a baseball writer for Newsday, wrote the following on his Twitter account: "Bernazard firing is a victory for humankind." So yeah, Rubin is not the only writer who was not a fan of Bernazard. And based on what came out about him in the last week, he probably deserved to be fired.

That said, let's go back to Minaya's press conference and dissect this debacle step by step.

1) Let's say Rubin has lobbied for a job with the organization, that is a problem. He needs to be objective as the Mets beat writer, and this would clearly compromise him. However, he's not an idiot. He knows he was not about to go from beat writer to VP of player development, which was Bernazard's job. Omar's accusation just doesn't make sense. And if Rubin was trying to curry favor with the Mets brass, why would he be ripping them to shreds in The Daily News? If anything, wouldn't he be praising the Mets? If I want a job with the Mets, I'm not writing lengthy features in the Sunday edition that discuss how Minaya has ruined the farm system. Two Sundays ago, that is what Rubin did.

2) Even if Rubin has lobbied for a job with the Mets, that does not absolve Bernazard's behavior. In fact, by firing Bernazard, the Mets are acknowleding that everything Rubin wrote about Bernazard is true. If it wasn't true, shouldn't they be supporting Bernazard, as opposed to giving him the heave-ho? And what's even more laughable is that the press release regarding the firing said, "Prior to a series of articles published in the media, our Baseball Operations and Human Resources departments had begun looking into several matters involving Tony."

For starters, it's unlikely that this is even true. I doubt the Mets started to investigate until the press got bad, and Omar basically said as much in the press conference. But say let's it's true, and the club was looking into Bernazard before Rubin broke the story of him tearing off his shirt and challenging a minor league team to a fight. If it is true, it means that the organization was already skeptical of Bernazard's antics, and didn't need guys like Adam Rubin to point it out. Therefore, Minaya makes no sense when he questions how all the negative stories about Bernazard seemed to come from the same source, because they knew about all this stuff even before Rubin reported it.

3) Oh, and not all the negative stories came from Rubin. The one about Bernazard yelling at a Mets baseball operations employee who suggested Bernazard wait until the inning was over before taking the seat of a D-backs' scout, that was written by Bill Madden.

4) What is Minaya trying to gain? Let's say Rubin violated some ethical code of journalism by lobbying for a job, that doesn't make Bernazard (or the Mets) any less of a disaster (see #2). How is it possible for a team that seems to be consumed with PR, so bad at it? I had the press conference on at my desk, and I muted it because Minaya was so awkward in his explanation of the firing. It was only when someone alerted me to the Rubin debacle that I turned on the volume. How hard would it have been for Omar to say, "Bernazard acted in a manner that we felt did not represent this organization. It was hard to let him go because he is a friend of mine, but we were left with no choice after our internal investigation found that he acted inappropriately on a number of occasions." Seriously, would that really have been so hard? And then, all he would need to do is keep paraphrasing that in some form each time a reporter asked you a question.

All that being said, this is by far my favorite Mets-related controversy of the season, so I'm really enjoying it. But if it turns out that Omar was lying about Rubin's job inquiries, and this hurts Rubin's career, I'll feel less good about it.