It’s not about the Mets’ 8-10 record at their Queens fortress since the third week in June or the 15 errors the team has committed in the last 18 games overall.
It’s not about the Mets being 40-59 when their pitchers don’t throw a shutout or about David Wright’s 2010 epic roller-coaster ride that’s now hurtling downhill faster than El Toro at Great Adventure.
These are baseball issues afflicting a decidedly mediocre team that come as little surprise, for what you see is pretty much what you’ve gotten all along from a roster that ownership has declined to bolster since the first day of Spring Training. Five full months and not one single personnel addition from outside the organization.
Still, though, whether the Mets recognize it or not, whether the people in charge of the operation care or not, the Francisco Rodriguez incident and its lingering aftermath have diminished the franchise far more meaningfully than anything the team does or does not do on the diamond.
It’s one thing for the Wilpon ownership not to have the money to pour into their team, quite another for it to appear morally bankrupt.
Good citizenship may be second to wins and losses in pro sports, but the Mets, beaten 3-1 by the Phillies last night, aren’t good enough to withstand the stench that’s emanated this week from CitiField, from where Rodriguez was led away in cuffs on Thursday after spending the previous night in a holding cell.
If you’re asking whether we can just move on from this sorry episode and get back to baseball, the answer most assuredly would be “yes,” if someone in authority or someone in uniform had just acted like nearly any civilian would have under similar circumstances by expressing outrage and disapproval over Rodriguez’s behavior.
It’s not only what the pitcher is alleged to have done to the 53-year-old father of his girlfriend and grandfather of their two children, it’s where he did it. This wasn’t an employee or colleague acting badly somewhere else. This was an employee and colleague behaving badly in an area that should be considered a sanctuary in the workplace.
Still, neither Fred Wilpon nor Jeff Wilpon has even addressed the issue beyond one sterile sentence in a press release. Would Fred Wilpon act like such a namby-pamby if this type of incident had occurred in the offices of Sterling Equities? And would the employees of that firm have been as willing to accept a colleague back to work 48 hours later under such circumstances as the Met players have been willing to accept Rodriguez’s return?
Fred Wilpon had a chance to speak to the subject, had a chance to come clean when he appeared outside the clubhouse a couple of hours before Mike Pelfrey’s first pitch. But he declined an invitation to talk to the press.
“I’ve got to go to the University of Michigan,” Wilpon, Class of ’58, said, forfeiting the opportunity to give the Mets back their good name before hosting an event at the ballpark for Wolverine freshmen.
In the family room, perhaps?
Maybe the Mets think their fans are stupid, though declining attendance would indicate otherwise. Maybe the Wilpons think that getting their closer back is paramount for this tone-deaf organization that is ceding the New York season and a generation of baseball fans to the Yankees.
GM Omar Minaya’s abdication of authority is an old, sad story. Manager Jerry Manuel’s comments on the subject have been so divorced from reality that you hope that he’s reading from a bad script provided by ownership and not talking from his heart. The players themselves have retreated behind teammate-speak, unwilling to declare.
What is wrong with these people?
The Mets held a lunchbox giveaway last night for kids going back to school in a few weeks. Rodriguez is among the players prominently displayed on the item.
Think of the children? The Mets, not so much.