Meet the Mess.
Forget the fight song, theme song, or musical mission statement. These are the New York Mess.
The club you fondly call the Mets has morphed into its normal, abject disarray. Their GM was caught on tape ripping MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred for an idea that wasn't even his – it turned out to be the brainchild of Jeff Wilpon, whose family owns the club, and Brodie Van Wagenen, who publicly suffered this foot-in-mouth malady, moonwalked from his criticism of Manfred and issued a sprawling apology.
The idea, as we currently understand it, was for the team to jog onto the field for a normal game of baseball, then head back in for an hour in protest of police brutality. And then they'd return to the field and play ball. It was tone-deaf considering the solemn realities in our country, and how other leagues are handling it, but it wasn't meant for BVW to dissect on public airwaves.
What Van Wagenen really meant to do was insult his boss. He just didn't realize he was speaking into a hot microphone, and that the sound bite would travel warp speed down the bowels of social media, where everything is digested and then, well, pooped onto our pages.
There's nothing honest about most social media, except its monolithic desire to humiliate folks from their back seats and Monday morning QB couches. But, no one forced Van Wagenen to say such things, as we have every right to feel whatever we want. The difference between those who prosper and those who don't often lies in the discipline and self-awareness to keep certain critiques to themselves.
As if the world weren't turbulent enough, right? The tremors from COVID-19 shook sports into mass cancellations and mutating schedules, and now we also have gruesome videos that have repulsed the masses. The twin blows of a pandemic and police misconduct have sports convulsing to such an extent that we wonder when, how, or why they will play. It's not treasonous to suggest boycotts or a hybrid of protest and playing our pastime, but what doesn't work is watching the Mets flounder in all of this, just as rather rich men are bidding on this baseball tanker.
Not that it's fair to compare any American sports team to the Yankees, but they happen to live across the East River from the Mets, in Biblical contrast on and off the diamond. The Yankees can take pandemics and injuries and cultural unrest and still function as a team, as a group of guys and gals who keep the low-key regularity among the players and coaches and executives.
Even at his ornery worst, George Steinbrenner wanted one thing above all else: to win. His methods could be quite questionable, perhaps even illegal, at times, but he wanted what's best for the team and you, the fans, whom he always cited as the lifeblood of the Bronx Bombers. Do you get that sense, from top to bottom, from the Mets?
Jeff Passan said Friday morning something most native New Yorkers have known since the 1970s: that this drama is typically Met - indeed, uniquely Met. They can't put a winning product on the field. They can't keep their own players on the squad. They can't hold it together long enough to sell the club sans soap operatic quotes splashed across the newspapers. They can't help themselves. They can't help being the Mets. So Meet the Mess.
