Results tagged ‘ Bernazard ’
Media men in being impartial shocker
A little extra on the Minaya/Rubin story. Before last night’s, frankly, brilliant game (in which Jerry Manuel sent his clean-up hitter up to bunt with 2 on and no outs and then sent in a man to pinch-hit who has hit into double plays 28% of the times he has been in that situation and came away with 4 runs. Jerry 1 – 0 Me.) SNY’s commentary team of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez dissected the whole debacle. 
The Daily News ran a transcript of the conversation today that I can only describe as ‘irritating’. If you can put up with the capital letters and spelling mistakes that leave me to believe that the conversation was transcribed by some sort of rudimentary voice-recognition programme, it’s well worth reading. It’s also worth bearing in mind that SNY is owned by the Mets, in the same way YES Network is owned by the Yankess. You absolutely, positively would not hear this sort of discussion on YES. This is why Gary, Keith and Ron are simply brilliant.
The Daily News have, predictably, gone all out for Minaya today. The Gary, Keith and Ron story, you will notice, comes with a poll asking readers whether Omar Minaya should be “Fire[d], Omar’s cheap shot at Adam Rubin should cost him his job”, “Force[d] to apologize, his wishy-washy mea culpa afterward wasn’t enough” or, added perhaps as a bit of an afterthought, “ignored”. I’d venture the News don’t really want you to chose the last option.
It’s hard to be a saint in the city part 3: Ill Communication
“The stupid continued to be stupid” Steve Somers, WFAN
It’s been a pretty epic day for the Mets. I’ll try and put a cap on all the madness, if only for the sake of my own sanity. Here’s how I believe today’s events happened and the gulf between reality and what Omar Minaya intended to happen.
- All the reports about Bernazard have said that he is friends with Minaya and Mets owner Jeff Wilpon, we can pretty much take this as fact. David Lennon of Newsday said tonight that “a guy who’s best friends with the owner gets a lot of protection”. 
- Minaya and Wilpon were hacked off about the campaign in the media to get rid of Bernazard, especially after the bandwagon really took off and his position became untenable.
- Minaya became aware that, ultimately, the buck stops with him. The team are losing right now, Omar is drawing criticism from all quaters for his lack of a back-up plan and the ineffective players the team are having to field right now. If the media succeed in getting rid of Bernazard and the Mets continue losing, the attention could then turn to the Mets’ General Manager.
- Minaya accepts that Bernazard has to go but decides to use his sacking as a warning shot to the Daily News and the rest of the New York media by slandering Adam Rubin’s conduct and getting him sacked in retaliation for Bernazard. This, in Minaya’s mind, sends a clear “don’t mess with me” message to the rest of the press.
- It could even be Minaya meant to say that what Rubin wrote was true but he had to stop and consider it for a while because, incidentally, Adam Rubin has been asking us for years to give him a job in the organisation, just saying, y’know. This is where Minaya’s offensive fell down, his poor ability at public speaking and the fact that everyone jumped on the “Rubin wrote these stories cos he wanted Bernazard’s job” angle, rather than the “Rubin was right but we had to stop and question his motives” line that he was trying to pull dilluted his original point.
End result: Minaya appears to have made an unnecessary gamble and lost, quite badly. I don’t think he’ll be sacked tomorrow, because I believe Jeff Wilpon was just as annoyed at Rubin and the News for getting Bernazard sacked. What will happen though is that the pressure will continue to mount on the Mets’ GM.
Well, I hope that’s kind of done. Fernando Tatis put a far more pertinent full stop on the whole episode than I ever could by hitting a tie-breaking grand-slam in the 8th inning today to put the Mets on a 3-game winning streak. The first time they’ve won 3 straight since May. This offense that, before the weekend, I would have classified as ‘some AAA guys and David Wright’ has now scored 29 runs in 4 games. Omar Minaya has, unexpectedly, been bought some time by his team winning games
It’s hard to be a saint in the city part 2: Omar comin’
As soon as the Mets stop being so ridiculous I’ll write about something else.
You’re Omar Minaya. Since the initial Tony Bernazard story, follow-ups have been appearing in the papers everyday about other incidents involving Ferocious B. It’s clear his position has become untenable. Your only option is to sack him. Fine. It’s not exactly hard, you call a press conference, tell the gathered reporters what everyone knows already, we all write it off as a ridiculous incident, move on.
What you probably shouldn’t do is to tell the press that Bernazard has gone and then accuse one of the gentlemen of press (who is there in the room) of writing these stories to get Fightin’ Tone fired and take his job. 
The journalist in question is the Daily News’ Adam Rubin and what resulted from today’s press conference is the biggest Mets PR disaster since the 3am firing of Willie Randolph last year.
Rubin called a press conference after Minaya’s and told journalists it was “unbelieveable” the accusations made against him by the Mets general manager. Rubin’s line is that he had asked Mets owners Jeff and Fred Wilpon questions about getting into baseball but had never approached them directly asking for a job.
Whilst it may be that Rubin is not exactly whiter than white in this incident the only person who this is going to really reflect badly on is Omar Minaya. If you go to www.wfan.com and listen to the press conference the whole thing reeks of sheer unprofessionalism. I’ve honestly never seen anything like this, the only comparable I can think of comes from English football (soccer) and the legendary calling out of a local journalist by Newcastle United manager Joe Kinnear.
Whilst not being as x-rated Minaya’s accusations are equally as astonishing and, possibly, ultimately more detrimental. Did Minaya really think that by blaming a reporter the whole issue would be put to bed? Does the guy get no PR advice? Not to mention the possible slander case he may now have landed himself, should Rubin challenge Minaya to prove his accusations.
Perhaps Omar was just so angry that the press had effectively pushed Bernazard from his job (something I suspected in my previous blog post) that he was overcome with bitterness and resentment for Rubin and just went for him in the press conference. The fact he seemingly didn’t consider the consequences of any of this just seems utterly unbelieveable to me.
What will be interesting now is what happens to Minaya. It seems to me he could have just made himself a lot of enemies in the New York press, particularly at the Daily News. Those calling for Minaya to go have just been handed another gift-wrapped set of reasons by the man himself.
It’s hard to be a saint in the city
Working on a new remit of writing about things in baseball that bring a smile to the face of this increasingly dispondant Mets fan I was surprised to run into some Mets related genuine funnyness so quickly. (I probably shouldn’t have been that surprised, to be honest).
Tony Bernazard is not a man who was really on my radar until yesterday when the New York papers and blogs were alight with the story of Fightin’ Tone and his challenge to the Binghampton Mets to fight him. If anyone thought that this season, which is fast turning into a Seinfeld episode, was limited to amusing onfield incidents they were mistaken. Mets fans are no strangers to executive incompetence, witness Omar Minaya’s laughable contracts given to Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo, coupled with forgetting to sign a left-fielder last off-season and trading for a professional baseball player who blogs about Delta airlines. However, making bad signings and giving old/bad players loads of money is one thing – coming out shirtless and trying to fight 19-year-olds is a whole other infinitely more awesome-and-funny-cos-it’s-actually-pretty-bad-or-at-least-weird type of deal.
But, who is Tony Bernazard and why was he so angry?
The Furocious B, prior to becaming Mets assistant GM, was a major league ball-player with an average-to-good mustache. During his 12-year-stay in the majors (punctuated by a brief stint in Japan, where I can only assume he had a life that was a bit like Tom Selleck in Mr. Baseball) he hit .262 with 75HRs and 391RBIs. Fairly unremarkable, in fact the only vaguely interesting thing I could find about him on wikipedia was that he tied a major league record hitless streak for a non-pitcher in 50 years, going hitless in 44 plate appearences for the Indians in 1984. He also was “famous” for eating only chicken during hitting streaks, apparently. Give me Keith Hernandez any day.
So did the Notorious BERN just lose his temper on that day in Binghampton or is he on a one-man fighting crusade? (and if he is going to fight anyone else in the organisation can he deliver punches to Jerry Manuel’s face whilst shouting “bunting with no outs is rarely productive”?) Other stories are now beginning to circulate about Bernazard having a row with KROD and various minions in the Mets front office which suggest that the guy is, at the very least, a bit of a loose cannon.
It may, however, be sensible to stop now and consider who Bernazard is fighting. Is he fighting the Binghampton Mets? Is he fighting his own frustrations at just how bad the Mets have been this season? Possibly. My suggestion would be that right now Bernazard is actually fighting the New York media. Running storys about Bernazard is great, it’ll sell papers and get people phoning in to call-in shows cos it’s just so damn ridiculous. Perhaps someone, somewhere has for whatever reason decided that they want Tony Bernazard out of the organisation, perhaps Bernazard will be sacked after this whole debarcle (I’m surprised he hasn’t already to be honest). What the Bernazard story serves to do is distract from how poorly the team are performing on the field and Minaya’s ludicrous assertations whilst in the commentary box with Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez on Tuesday that the Mets have ‘the best medical staff’ and are still in contention in the wild card race (all of this being said whilst Ollie Perez issued another walk and Francoeur dropped a ball in right field). I’ve rambled a bit but I guess what I’m saying is the Bernazard story is funny as hell but it won’t make the Mets play any better and it won’t make injured players come back quicker and all it really serves to do is take some of the attention away from MInaya. If Bernazard does get sacked it may placate some of those calling for Minaya’s head and change in the direction of the organisation. What it won’t do is have any actual impact.
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