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Adam Rubin, offering superlative analysis of late, [url=http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2008/06/21/2008-06-21_melting_pot_stirs_up_mets_but_players_sa-2.html?print=1&page=all]explores[/url] the tension or lack thereof in the Met clubhouse between those born in the USA and those not:
]Melting pot stirs up Mets, but players say they're finding ways to get along
BY ADAM RUBIN
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Saturday, June 21st 2008, 9:39 PM
DENVER - Two truisms exist regarding talk-radio personalities: One, the louder they shout, the less they actually know about what they're saying. And, two, they are by and large never in the clubhouses about which they purport to be experts. Yet it's on the radio airwaves and on SNY's afternoon shout-fests that you get a sense that the Mets' clubhouse is beyond repair - that a Latin American faction and an American faction have developed, and that animosity pervades their locker room.
How untrue.
That said, the beautifully written cover story by Gary Smith in Sports Illustrated during happier times in June 2007 is also a fairy tale. Featuring a cover photo of Cuban-born Orlando Hernandez, Mexican-born Oliver Perez, U.S.-born John Maine, Venezuelan-born Endy Chavez, Dominican-born GM Omar Minaya and New York's first African-American manager Willie Randolph, the headline blared:
"Mix Master: The Unlikely Story of How Omar Minaya Created the Melting-Pot Mets."
In actuality, while Minaya brought diversity to the Mets, he didn't bring full integration. Could anyone have?
It is true that Mets players generally gravitate to others with common backgrounds and interests - Carlos Beltran to Carlos Delgado, Joe Smith and Mike Pelfrey to Maine.
But that makes them no different than any other MLB clubhouse … or workplace.
"Anywhere you go in life, that's normal," Mets utility player Marlon Anderson says. "It gets touchy because of the Latin player thing. I just think it's people you have things in common with, whether it be language or whether it be the city or part of the country you're from.
"Guys from California tend to hang out together. They tend to like the same kind of music. I don't think it needs to be touchy. Unfortunately in our society it is, but for me it's not."
Anderson says the diverse makeup of the clubhouse is not relevant - what matters is whether players respect each other.
"It's like going to work every day," he says. "Whether you work in an office building with a bunch of lawyers or a school with a bunch of teachers, you're dealing with people from different backgrounds, with different personalities. Everybody is not going to get along, but everybody respects each other. That's all you ask for on a team. You don't ask for everybody to like each other and want to go to dinner. But once you step in the clubhouse and on the field, you do expect for everybody to respect each other."
Adds Jerry Manuel, the second African-American manager in New York history and about as deep-thinking a baseball man there is: "I don't think there's any tension at all. Not at all. I think any time you get different cultures, then you tend to gravitate to that in which you are culturally comfortable.
"That's in any clubhouse."
As Manuel is saying this at the completion of an early batting practice session Wednesday afternoon in Anaheim, he turns to see Delgado, a Puerto Rican, tossing a football with Florida-born hitting coach Howard Johnson. Minutes earlier, Brian Schneider and Delgado completed passing routes to each other. Then, after winning that rubber game against the Angels and touching down in Denver, Ramon Castro entertained the entire group on the team bus with an awkward 4 a.m. version of Metallica's "One."
What does distinguish the Mets from other clubhouses is that the number of Latin American players (14 active) exceeds the number of U.S.-born players (11) - essentially making the American majority in other clubhouses the minority with the Mets.
For the third straight season, the Mets' Opening Day roster had more internationally born players than any other team.
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When Pedro Martinez came to the United States as a teenager, he was immersed in an unfamiliar culture, and forced himself to learn English by reading road signs as his Great Falls, Mont., team traveled by bus to other remote locales.
Here, in the Mets' clubhouse, the shoe is on the other foot, to some degree: It's the U.S. players who may not understand the pregame chatter or blaring music, which can create unease - the kind of unease a Hispanic player arriving in the United States might feel, only exponentially less so. The postgame clubhouse staple is typically the Latin American cuisine of rice and beans (with Boston Market on Saturdays), which makes the majority of the players feel welcome, although perhaps not all of them.
Coach Sandy Alomar Sr., during spring training in 2005, after the makeover of the Mets under Minaya, suggested the organization's new-found diversity had made the Latin American players comfortable. He pointed to a staff at the time that included himself, a Puerto Rican, as well as Dominican Manny Acta and bilingual trainer Ray Ramirez. It was only a few years earlier that Alomar's son, Roberto, complained that he felt isolated as a player in the Mets' clubhouse and was lobbying for the organization to hire a liaison for the Latin American players.
"By us coming from the same type of environment, we have a way of knowing what's going on with them," Alomar said that spring. "It's much easier for us to understand when there's something wrong with them than for the American guy that doesn't know the barrier or culture."
The issue of race has swirled around the Mets for so long that is has become practically accepted that it is a divisive issue and was even a factor in Randolph's demise.
Just last month, Randolph wondered whether the fact that he is African-American affected how he was viewed by the fan base and created a lightning storm. Minaya acknowledged at the press conference in which he announced Randolph's firing last Tuesday that those comments contributed to the chaos that led to a managerial change.
When Minaya first arrived, there was a dramatic change in the clubhouse demographics, prompting an ugly backlash from a segment of the fans, who derisively tagged the team "Los Mets," a moniker the organization at first ran away from.
Then the front office embraced it and even launched losmets.com. They had two seasons of wildly popular segments on the DiamondVision scoreboard in which "Profesor Reyes" taught Spanish to the game attendees. Banco Popular was enlisted as the team's official bank, demonstrating how diversifying the fan base made for good business.
Delgado originally signed with the Marlins as a free agent four years ago when the Mets were recruiting him because, he complained, team brass approached him as a Hispanic and not a man. Mets front office official Tony Bernazard and Delgado share Puerto Rican heritage, and Delgado complained at the time that the recruiting seemed to be based on that, which turned him off.
The wild success of the 2006 NLCS run made the outside chatter mostly go away, at least on talk radio, but Paul Lo Duca's comments in June of last year about how media gravitated to certain U.S.-born players brought it back to the forefront.
"I'll do this (interview), but you need to start talking to other players," Lo Duca announced after he was approached by a radio reporter. "It's the same three or four people every day. Nobody else wants to talk. Some of these guys have to start talking. They speak English, believe me."
Then this season, Billy Wagner broached the subject of accountability, looking in the direction of the row of lockers occupied by Delgado and Beltran and said in slightly more politically correct fashion:
"Someone tell me why the ---- you're talking to the closer. I didn't even play. They're over there, not being interviewed."
Wagner paused at that point for dramatic effect. Then, the closer sarcastically added: "I got it. They're gone. ----ing shocker."
As for the media availability issue - which seems to have largely subsided, although Delgado did upset a radio reporter on-field Friday night by blowing off a postgame request - part of that can be attributed to players being uncomfortable speaking in a second language.
During spring training, when Oliver Perez did a live, in-game television interview after completing his pitching performance, his Latin American teammates mocked him mercilessly for his difficulty with the language rather than praising him for his courage. They meant no harm, but it seemed hurtful. And no one would blame Perez if wanted no part of another comparable TV interview.
Part of the issue with the disproportionate comments from American-born players is that the most dynamic personalities among the Latin American players, Pedro Martinez and Moises Alou, have been absent for prolonged stretches due to injuries.
The media are culpable, too. There's only one legitimately bilingual beat reporter among the seven newspapers that cover the Mets on the home and road.
Some shirking of the media burden has more to do with specific players' personalities than anything cultural. Wagner has the gift of gab - an understatement if there ever was one. Beltran, who has been abundantly available to reporters of late, is introverted. Delgado has other priorities, such as working out and tending to a 15-month-old son, and just doesn't make interviews a priority. He'll often be at his locker well after the team's other standouts. Media generally don't wait for him because his quotes are often guarded and unremarkable and the reporters will be pushing their deadlines by allotting the extra time to camp out by his locker.
As much as which players are at their lockers for postgame interviews, the disparate number of public appearances made by different Mets has been a bigger issue in the clubhouse at points during the past four years.
Mets public-relations staffers generally rely on a core group of American players to make the team's massive number of appearances with sponsors, for charities and on television live shots. In fact, chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon once issued an edict to reduce the demands on Wright out of concern that too much of a burden would affect his play.
The disproportionate participation is perhaps understandable - again, players whose second language is English may not be as secure appearing in public. Of course, like any valid excuse, it can be a crutch also used to shirk responsibility. Anderson thinks, to some extent, Mets officials just stopped asking certain segments of the clubhouse to make appearances.
Still, as Wright says: "It would be the same way if I went and played winter ball in the Dominican or Puerto Rico. I wouldn't feel comfortable necessarily speaking Spanish to reporters, or going out in public and speaking Spanish. For the most part, these guys are accountable.
"There have been a few days where guys have gotten out of here early. But everyone is not like us single guys where we hang around all day in the clubhouse. These guys have families to go to. These guys have other things to do other than sit around and answer questions.
"It comes along with the responsibility, but I understand some of the guys feel uncomfortable maybe going out in public speaking English because it's not their first language. I completely understand it."
The public hasn't seen that, instead relying on often uninformed opinion from talk-show hosts who spend as much time in the clubhouse as the fans do.
"We're like a family," Jose Reyes says. "We almost like live in the same house. We see each other every day. It's like brothers here. That's the way I see it." |
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