“You owe it to an organization to be up front about it, and not just not show up. And further, when (general manager) Brodie (Van Wagenen) was asked where he is, Brodie says, ‘I don’t know where he is.’ How classless is that?”
Those were the words of WFAN’s Richard Neer, the first host to come on the air following the news that the reason Yoenis Cespedes did not show up to Truist Park for the Mets’ game in Atlanta on Sunday was because he had decided to opt out of the 2020 season.
Van Wagenen and manager Luis Rojas were left, after the Mets’ loss to Atlanta, to answer for Cespedes’ actions, but no one had any concrete answers. Neer would only speculate in general – as he noted, everyone is left to until, and only if, Cespedes makes a statement – but he did condemn the way Cespedes acted, if not the action itself.
“Now maybe, if he saw the writing on the wall, and all the Marlins come down with this, and maybe they’re at the same hotel, this is dangerous and I can’t risk it…okay, we’re all in sympathy with that,” Neer said. “Everyone is afraid of this virus. Young, healthy people have died from this, and there may be deleterious effects down the road, so you can be afraid of this – but you have to be honest about it, and up front about it, and not just disappear.”
With that, Neer had a word to describe that action.
“You let down your teammates, you let down your organization – and the Mets have messed up a lot, but in this case unless there’s a lot of info we don’t know about it, I think they handled it as best they could, and Cespedes acted like a coward,” Neer said. “The bottom line is that he acted in a classless manner, and it was cowardly not to confront the team.”
Cespedes has always marched to the beat of his own drum, but in doing so on this occasion, he may have cost himself his career, at least in Neer’s eyes.
“It’s not a classy way to do things, and if I’m a team looking at him next year as a free agent…if I’m the Mets, I don’t go anywhere near him in the future, and I wonder if any other team will,” Neer said. “This is a guy who is perpetually injured, looked awful in his games, and there are communications issues and perhaps character issues – we’ve given him a lot of the benefit of the doubt over the years, and this is how he repays the franchise and the fans?”
And, then, finally, Neer had one last statement about what looks to be the end of the Yoenis Cespedes era in Queens.
“If he was angry about something, he should’ve been up front about it. If he didn’t want to be public about it, fine, but he could’ve contacted the team some way. Even if it was a text – I hate it when people use texts or Twitter to deliver big news – but we’ll get more info, and maybe something will vindicate him. But right now? Good riddance.”
You can listen to Neer’s entire soliloquy on Cespedes by utilizing the Rewind function on the RADIO.COM app, and as always, check out more on-demand audio from WFAN.\
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