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Speedo Tracksuit confirms thing you weren't wondering about isn't an issue. Great reporting!
NY Mets are fading in the pennant race, but are closing racial divide in the clubhouse
Frank Francisco confirms white and Latino players harmonious in Flushing in far cry from Paul Lo Duca/Carlos Degado rift years ago
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012, 11:28 PM
When Red Sox pitcher Vicente Padilla accused Mark Teixeira of racial insensitivity a few weeks back, he pulled Frank Francisco into the story, too. The Mets’ closer was rehabbing in Port St. Lucie, Fla., then, but working at Citi Field over the weekend, so I could finally ask him: What was that about?
More important, Padilla’s comments created a fresh chance to dive into the loaded dynamic between white and Latino players — and to learn that said dynamic has improved inside the Mets clubhouse since the Paul Lo Duca/Carlos Delgado years.
This is not relevant to the standings. Harmonious or not, these banged-up Mets are sinking; the weekend’s sweep by the Dodgers, ending with Sunday’s 8-3 loss in 12 innings, provided further confirmation. But while the team has stagnated on the field, it has made progress in more difficult areas.
First, the back story that has us talking about this again: Padilla told NESN.com this about his former Texas Rangers teammate:
“The things (Teixeira has) done, against the Latinos, he doesn’t open his mouth about. ... He also had problems with Frank Francisco, our closer back then.”
Teixeira called the charges “completely erroneous.” On Sunday, the closer acknowledged tension surrounding Teixeira in Arlington, but said he did not personally see race as the cause.
“I never had a problem with him,” the thoughtful closer told me. “I know, like, most of the Latinos didn’t like him.”
But as Francisco saw it, the issue was less loaded — a clubhouse card game that sometimes extended past the accepted window of 45 minutes before game time.
“We used to play cards, and he didn’t like the game,” Francisco said. “It wasn’t Latin. It was me, Marlon Byrd, Kenny Lofton. We used to play together.
“I never had a problem with (Teixeira),” he added. “He didn’t have a problem with me. It was with Kenny Lofton. Teixeira (had) three years in the big leagues back then, and Kenny Lofton was playing forever. Kenny Lofton said something to him, and he said, ‘Kenny, go back to your locker.’”
But let’s cut a few layers deeper than old Rangers drama, and use the Padilla flap as another reminder of the cultural misunderstandings that divide major league clubhouses. Speaking generally about baseball teams and not the 2012 Mets, R.A. Dickey, who played with Teixeira and Francisco in Texas, agreed that race can be an “elephant in the room” in baseball.
“You feel the segregation going on in the clubhouse,” Dickey said. “It is natural to hang out with people of your own culture, and there is nothing wrong with that. But the way it gets toxic is when it keeps you from interacting with your other teammates.”
The Dominican-born Francisco agreed with his Tennessee colleague. “Sometimes Latinos have their own group,” the closer said. “Same culture. We have more in common, and probably talk about stuff that happened over there.”
Both pitchers denied racial awkwardness in this year’s Mets clubhouse. “Honestly, here it’s one of the best,” Francisco said. “I’ve been on like five different teams, including the minor leagues, and here ... everybody gets along good.”
Other seasons were messier. The way a longtime Met laid it out for me Sunday, there were lingering white/Latino tensions as recently as 2010.
The dynamic, as described by the player, was this: Some white Mets grumbled that their Latino teammates received excessive playing time and contracts during the Omar Minaya era (a ridiculous assertion to anyone who knows the fair-minded Minaya). Still, those feelings engendered the same “they’re taking our jobs” paranoia that underlies the larger debate over immigration in America.
Now, with mostly different personnel, disagreements involve simpler issues like the volume of a clubhouse stereo. “Some guys like the music, but I guarantee (others) here, they don’t like it,” Francisco said, chuckling. “They don’t like all that loud (stuff).”
But the closer believes that on issues of cultural awareness, his team is in a good place.
“We spend more time together than with our family,” Francisco said. “We’ve had to learn how to respect each other, and understand that everybody came from different cultures.”
As for Padilla dragging him into this conversation, Francisco laughed while remembering a pitcher famous for head-hunting.
“He’s different,” Francisco said. “The only problem was, he hits people all the time. Besides that, great guy.” |
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