10
2012
M. Donald Grant, Chairman Of The Board
An article by Barry Duchan
The person most responsible for the Mets’ worst years was probably M. Donald Grant. He is best known for sending Tom Seaver away, but his influence in the organization was a detriment toward building a competitive team, or keeping one, and things didn’t get better until he was out of the picture when the Mets were sold to Wilpon and Doubleday.
Grant, a stockbroker, was Mrs. Payson’s close personal advisor when she became the original owner of the Mets. He probably had very little influence in player movement for the first several years, and in the days before free agency, no one could say that the Mets were particularly cheap. But unlike, say a George Steinbrenner who took full advantage of baseball’s free agent system from the start, Grant did not believe that a ballplayer deserved to be making as much money as a stockbroker or real estate magnate, and probably didn’t think they belonged at the same parties or meetings, either.
Grant could be described as a patrician, a snob, a man with a plantation mentality. He was known to bring his fellow Mets’ stockholders to the clubhouse, where he would introduce his players as a fine bunch of boys and single out the recent trade acquisitions and players up from the minors by calling out “new boys over here”. He, indeed, belonged to a different generation, but at a time when his fellow owners were prepared to face baseball’s new reality, he was lording over the Mets in a manner befitting Charles Comiskey and the 1919 White Sox.
Grant’s meddling, no doubt, played a part in driving Mets’ GM Bing Devine,who was doing a nice job of trying to build a winner, back to St. Louis. It was probably after Mets’ GM Johnny Murphy passed away in 1970 that Grant’s influence began to increase.
Whitey Herzog was Mets’ player development director and heir to the GM job, but Grant passed him by because he knew he wouldn’t stand for any interference from someone who in Whitey’s words “knew nothing about baseball”. The next two Mets’ GM’s Bob Scheffing and Joe McDonald probably had their hands tied by Grant, his frugality, and his belief that ballplayers should be quiet, sign their contracts, and just play ball. When a player became outspoken about salary issues such as Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman did, it was only a matter of time before they would be sent away. When Gil Hodges died just before the 1972 season began, Grant again chose to bypass the outspoken Herzog, driving him out of the organization, in favor of Yogi Berra.
Probably the best example of how out of touch M. Donald Grant was with the average fan was when he tried to explain the Tom Seaver negotiations and subsquent trade in terms of bluffing and playing tricks in a hand of bridge. How many Mets’ fans have any idea how to even play bridge ?
The above are my thoughts and recollections of Grant, but if you want more, check out this thread at Ultimate Mets.
About the Author: Barry Duchan
I've been following the Mets since 1962. Have to admit I was a Yankee fan as a kid, but I found it to be so much more interesting to see how a young team could build itself up rather than following a team where the season didn't really begin until October. I remember them all - Casey, Marv, ChooChoo, Don Bosch, The Stork, etc. As the years went on, I became more and more of a Mets fan, and a Yankee hater once Steinbrenner and Billy Martin entered the picture. After retiring, I relocated with my family from Long Island to Chapel Hill, NC in 2005. I spend a lot of my time now checking out all the various Mets blogs. Fortunately, I still get to watch almost all of the Mets games (except those that are blacked out here).
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Somewhere Jody McDonald got a chill and wondered did someone just write an article about my dad? Now I can’t get that lame WFAN Jody Mac jingle out of my head. LoL
Off Topic: Today is the 50th anniversary of the Mets 1st Spring Training game. The NY Times has a nice article on it with bonus audio of the radio broadcast.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/sports/baseball/on-50-year-old-tape-sounds-of-mets-awkward-first-steps.html
You know I hate the guy as much as anyone for the Seaver trade, But in the name of fairness I will mention the following names….
Lee Mazzilli
Neil Allen
Wally Backman
Mookie Wilson
Hubie Brooks
1986 isn’t possible without them!
The fact he was a SBAG GM in an age of SBAG GMs really isn’t what bothers me about him!
He was violently opposed to Free Agency preferring to believe that someone getting paid to play a game should not be worth more than someone who saves your life!
Was he wrong abot that? Perhaps but I don’t see how that sentiment has changed much since Flood won his case in the Fans eyes!
Take the tact some fans took on Reyes and Beltran, and those who now take it on Wright!
Grant thought they were just money grubbing whores!
And many people CONTINUE to think that way in regards to what players get paid!
Love him or hate him….
if you think about it, He wouldn’t have been able to trade Seaver if he never had him!
No Nolan Ryan or Koosman either!
I know most weren’t born in time to see the 69 Mets and some not even alive when the Seaver trade was made!
And while trashing a GM who is dead and got all of that seems like a safe bet and fair I have to wonder why we aren’t spending our time trashing all the GMs who since that time have not produced even ONE Seaver or Koosman hell not even one HOF candidate that was homegrown!
As they say better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all!
Grant may in some way be the worst AND one of the best GMs this team ever had!
If you happen to judge your GMs by how many WS titles they won and how many WS they went to!
I personally don’t like the guy because he broke my heart by trading our only HOF homegrown but I can’t really say he didn’t get the job done!
And for that I give credit where it is due!
I don’t know how much of The Mets unbelievable young talent could be ascribed to M. Donald Grant’s baseball acumen.
He was the Club’s President, not the GM.
The ’69 Mets were built from the ground up most before there even was a MLB draft so almost all of the talent had to first be spotted and second be signed and then developed.
Any one could have signed Cleon Jones, Jerry Koosman, Tug McGraw, Nolan Ryan, Swoboda, McAndrew and Harrelson.
Gentry, Kranepool, Shamsky, Boswell, Dyer came from the draft
Grote, Agee, Weiss, Clendenon and Cardwell were trades.
Cal Koonce was bought from the Cubs. Ron Taylor bought from Houston. Ed Charles bought from the KC A’s.
Wayne Garrett and Amos Otis were that generations version of rule 5 draftees.
Seaver’s signing with Atlanta was nullified and he entered a draft that only the Mets, Braves and Indians participated in because Kuhn told everyone the winner had to pay Seaver what Atlanta had offered.
The Mets under owner Joan Payson not only spent whatever necessary to assemble all this young talent but also spent to acquire some of the greatest collection of baseball talent evaluators in the history of baseball to identify and develop it. Grant did the opposite of both these things when he was in charge.
George Weiss, Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges, Yogi Berra, Johnny Murphy, Bing Devine, Whitey Herzog, Rube Walker. They couldn’t have been cheap to hire and this is an area where M. Donald cheaped out the most after being able to take over with Mrs. Payson and Gil passing, Devine and Herzog leaving and Lorrinda De Roulet defrosting over the cost of providing baseballs.
By 1975 it was Roy McMillan, Joe Frazier and then player manager Joe Torre at manager with Grant pulling the strings.
Not sure how much Grant had to do with drafting Wally, Hubie, Mookie, Maz or Neil Allen but I am pretty certain about how much he had to do with running intelligent baseball people out of the NY Met FO and good/great players off the roster.
Well your also one who thinks being a manager of people means you get ZERO credit for anything INCLUDING the hiring of those people!
In your world Not even Cashen deserves credit for 86!
Just as Phillips and his Asst Minaya don’t deserve credit for Wright and Reyes!
It’s all the guy who read the names off the paper the GM gave him at the draft table!
You really need to figure out who you give credit to things happening more consistently!
The guy at the top gets credit for bringing in the people NDER him who get the job done!
It’s his job to see that he HAS those people and gets rid of them when they are not part of the solution!
Want to knock Grant then knock him for not keeping the folks that do but thats about the only thing you can take away from the accomplishments made under his management!
I do give Cashen the credit for ’86 as do most people.
Facts are the person at the top when the Mets assembled all that great young talent and accomplished baseball people was Joan Payson. I give her all the credit in the World. Grant was her assistant and that was probably the one bad move she made as owner of the NY Mets.
The person at the top when they were all shipped out was M. Donald Grant. For that I too give him all the credit.
As for the draft if you think the GM is telling the Scouting Director who to draft you have a lot to learn.
Yes you do seem t move the Credit criteria at will and without any reason no one will deny that! LOL
But you on the same hand don’t give Phillips or Omar credit for Wright and Reyes,
And I have yet to see anyone applaud Omar for all the starters and Kids Sandy is getting credit for in the MiL rankings!
First of all I have given Minaya credit as the International Scouting Director for Reyes, numerous times even though it’s been well documented that Eddy Toledo wanted to sign him and called Minaya for an OK on the 15 K signing bonus. Still and all, under his watch. Credit assigned to Minaya. High marks to Toledo (hired by Frank Cashen) as well.
Phillips as GM gets the credit on Wright (and Kazmir) as well but takes the hit on busting on 15 out of 17 1st, 2nd and 3rd round draft choices. His Scouting directors (Gary LaRoque, Carmen Fusco and Jack Bowen) take the hit on those even more though because the draft is the full scope of their part of the business and their results sucked and set the Franchise back decades with 6 years of **** drafts.
See the difference here is that people get credited and discredited based on what they do. You just want it one way and even seek to credit your favorites with the work of other GM’s as you’ve done in the past.
And I’ve been very complimentary of Minaya’s work in the farm, even with situations that didn’t or haven’t worked out to date like Fern and Havens and especially how he didn’t raid the players he procurred to bring in Roberto Alomar or Jeremy Burnitz for example.
I like some of his kids very much. I’m not as big an afficianado of the one tool 1B/LF/DH type draft pick of Minaya’s but I’ve often stated how handicapped he must have been with those ridiculous slotting guidelines he was the only one forced to adhere to.
I just wish he had concentrated twice the energy and resources available to him on the farm and if he had, I would bet he would still be here……………………sitting on a top 10 farm and only having one first basemen in the starting lineup.
I was a Met fan back in the days of Grant. Cheap, short sighted, egotistical, out of touch are my memories of the man who was responsible for some of the worst years of this franchise. His single, most glaring mistake was believing he was better than the players he paid to play the game. His ego was such that he actually believed he was bigger than the game itself.
Trying to smear Seaver’s reputation in the papers was the last straw. For those still pissed off that Reyes won’t be a Met for his entire career, well then you should understand how us Met fans felt about this trade. Low point in Mets history.
You ain’t kidding. 6-15-77. A date which will live in infamy.
Very enjoyable article, Barry.
[...] An article by Barry Duchan 8 Comments [...]
Wait, wait, wait….he chased away one of the greatest managers ever in Whitey Herzog out of the organization? Wow. This guy really was a stupid POS.
Whitey was our scout back in the 60′s.
Hey Barry, I just wanted to say I really enjoy the departures from the everyday Mets grind that you bring to MMO. It’s a pleasure to have you on our site.
If anyone remembers, M. Donald Grant called a press conference so Cleon could make a public apology after found sleeping in a car with someone other than Mrs. Jones.
Grant was worried the bad publicity would cause aghast fans to no longer go through the turnstiles. Money was his only concern and if had he any sense of decency he would not have subjected Cleon’s wife to such further public humiliation (who was sitting by her husband’s side and answering questions by the press).
And though Grant is right that those who play baseball should not get paid better than one who saves lives and puts his or her life on the line day in and day, he obviously didn’t believe those standards applied to him as a stockbroker, one who also doesn’t save lives. Stockbrokers please take note that I’m talking about Grant and his world of hypocrisy.