It’s a baseball problem, in the first place the result of decades of pervasive behavior of old boys’ networks that were previously ignored, then tolerated and then excused. That day is over, and the bills have to be paid. There are no more boys, and the sport will eventually be better for it.
But first it must answer for it. First, it must realize how it was that people like Jared Porter and Mickey Callaway were apparently able to get away with the most gruesome kind of behavior imaginable, and keep moving in the food chain of the sport.
Porter, the former general manager of the Mets, admitted that he harassed a female reporter with a relentless series of text messages, concluded by a photo of male genitals. His career rightly lies in ruins. Now it’s Callaway’s turn to make an open run of shame through contempt and embarrassment. Five female reporters accused him of similar unwanted advances.
Callaway has so far denied any wrongdoing, although the women have provided terribly convincing evidence through The Athletic. As with Porter, a perusal of some of the saved text messages offers an exciting tour through the legacy of relentless justice that has always gone awry in a certain way, as men were dominant in professional sports and women only bit players, both within the game as at stake. edges.
That dynamic is changing. There’s now a woman GM in Miami in Kim Ng. There are more and more women covering the sport, demanding nothing more than equal footing from their male colleagues: equal access (which they had to earn through the courts); equal respect (which they have earned with years of quality work); and lastly equivalent. “No” ultimately means no. Really. For hold.
The Mets are, of course, one of the teams that does not have to answer so much for Callaway’s alleged misconduct – if it is true, that the stain falls entirely on him – on how it is that such a character was ever hired in the first . place to really manage the baseball team. The Indians and Angels must answer the same questions about Callaway – just as the Cubs and Diamondbacks are responsible for Porter’s uncontrolled rise.
But it shines an already blinding spotlight, even brighter in the way the Mets vet presents candidates. It’s pretty clear that the Porter incident has already driven the team deep into the wheels, and Sandy Alderson hinted during the address that a stricter process should be implemented to avoid future embarrassment – around the term ‘FBI level ‘to use at some point. But Alderson also appointed Callaway in his first term as the Mets’ baseball boss.
And what should bother Alderson – a decidedly straight arrow for whom such behavior should be catastrophically nasty, and which really both hurt when the Porter fiasco comes to light and embarrassed when he is forced to admit that he did not speak did not or even sought female professional references for Porter – is it that Callaway, fair or not, is a second strike against his good name.
Alderson has been in professional sports long enough to know that not every hire you hire will be good – and from the start it was very clear that Callaway was not qualified for the job of manager and was also not blessed with ‘ a steep enough learning curve to get into the gig. Bad rent occurs even with good managers; George Young once thought Ray Handley would be a good idea.
But these are now two prominent positions that Alderson held, two men he appointed, who apparently did not have to be entrusted with any job that might even contain a little. What made Alderson naturally appeal to Steve Cohen, of course, was an excellent reputation that was mostly undone during his first forty years in the game.
And the last few weeks have been bloody – and rightly so. Baseball as a whole has a lot of explanations and self-analysis to do. And so did Sandy Alderson, a baseball supplier since 1981, who was suddenly saddled with a two-strike score.