Mark DeRosa joined BT and Sal on Wednesday during their live broadcast at the MLB Network studios ahead of Opening Day, and looked back on when he interviewed for the Mets manager position.
DeRosa lost out on the job to Mickey Callaway, who wound up being a disastrous hire for New York, and DeRosa jokingly told BT and Sal that the choice from the Mets was a reflection of how much he must have bombed the interview.
“I lost out to Mickey Callaway,” DeRosa said. “How well did I interview that day?”
Jokes aside, DeRosa detailed a conversation he had with Sandy Alderson after he wasn’t picked, and revealed that Alderson never got the sense that DeRosa was dying to manage in Queens, a message DeRosa took to heart.
“Sandy just pulled out a notepad and started ripping through questions,” DeRosa said. “Barely picked his head up to take a breath…we talked for a while, and ultimately, what he said to me was very profound. He said ‘At no point in this 4-5 hour interview that you’re dying to be the Mets manager…that’s not what I want from my skipper coming in. I want a guy who can’t sleep another night without wanting to manage the Mets.’ He wasn’t wrong. At that point in my life, I wasn’t there.
“I asked him, ‘How do me and Mickey walk into a room and you pick him?’ After the fact. And that’s what he said.”