Target Field covered in ice and snow a day before Twins host the Mets.
The bleak Minnesota landscape can really get to you, especially when you’re experiencing mid-January weather in November. I tend to be cranky when it’s so cold your nose hairs crackle. As a New Yorker who likes to complain I’ve run into problems confronting my neighbors with questions like “what the hell was wrong with your ancestors that made them want to live here?” They politely chuckle failing to appreciate the seriousness of my query and go back to their jovial salting and shoveling.
See I possess kind of a trifecta of tribulation that has often caused me to run afoul of the stoic and obdurate happy people … I’ve got the New York disposition, the Mediterranean blood, and worst of all I’m a Mets fan, which pretty much seals the fist-shaking “F.U. polar vortex” deal. This triad of ill-temper limits my patience for whatever annoyances may cross my path, like a dog hair on my couch, or a cap left off the toothpaste…
So the other day when I read John Harper’s article about Jon Niese in the Daily News, I found myself looking for a snow bank to swing a shovel at. It sounds like Niese was upset after being “top-stepped” by Terry Collins because he didn’t bunt after being given a bunt sign. Now here’s the thing … you can’t expect me to believe that casual fans can point out a poo-poo platter of bizarre late inning permutations orchestrated by our cantankerous white haired gnome of a manager, and that the players who are actually following his orders don’t notice …
Unfortunately, the team, as constituted, is an odd assemblage wide-eyed rookies who don’t have the service time to question anything, and veterans who either tend to be reclamation projects or who have one foot in the proverbial grave – either way there are few viable mid-career veterans with backbone on this team and, oddly enough, it sounds like Jon Niese is one of them. The other veteran in this category is of course David Wright and boy it sure seemed like there were times Collins got under his skin as well.
It kind of reminds me of when I first moved to Minnesota. I was a winter rookie back then. I did stupid stuff like wearing wire-rimmed glasses on a bike ride to the good old U of M in January. Nothing like having a nice chunk of skin torn off the bridge of your nose as you walk into class screaming, the whole room turning and wondering what is wrong with that guy? See I didn’t complain much those first couple of winters … I figured I was the problem. Now-a-days having been here 19 years, I push back. Sure I’ve got my 800 gram Thinsulate Red Wings and my arctic parka, but still I complain … especially to some of my more docious neighbors. I will routinely accost them as they shovel a particularly chunky snow-plow drift blocking their driveway with questions like, “Did you know, home prices in Florida are at all time lows?” It’s a rhetorical question of course.
Anyway, the Mets by and large lack the sort of player who might push back when Collins emerges from his mushroom forest to manage the team and proceeds to throw wrenches out of his penny-arcade bag of tricks. Maybe the team was purposely constructed to conform and obey, but if that’s the case, someone should let management know that this docile persona runs categorically at odds with a fiery and temperamental fan base. Not to mention the fact that they’re going to have to somehow manufacture a backbone if they ever want to win. So the Niese story is really not a story at all, it’s more like growing pains.
Nevertheless John Harper gets wind of this tidbit about how Jon Niese lost his temper last season (I especially liked the “F#%& You … Take me out if you don’t like it” part – which is pretty much how I feel about the weather) … and he holds onto this little nugget, keeping it in his pocket protector like a chunk of beef jerky he found under his car seat that still looks maybe good enough to eat. Harper then decides to feed us this rotten little morsel, but not just any time … noooo … he waits until worst possible moment, the day the Mets made some positive headlines with the signing of Michael Cuddyer. How dare the Mets try to energize their fan base…
I don’t know if it’s like this with other major league teams, but I doubt it. Maybe the press corps in New York have this dog-eat-dog mentality because they work in the media capital of the world. They are presumably the best at their trade in spite of their tasseled penny loafers and weird hats. It’s a tough gig in a tough town … I get that. I might even excuse a haughty air in press boxes across Midwestern cities that barely rival Staten Island … what I don’t excuse is the old guard’s “kingmaker” mantle and the wrecking ball approach to covering a young team struggling to find its identity.
It isn’t all of them. Mark Carig is a throwback in his honesty and he genuinely seems to take his role as a journalist seriously. Ackert and Rubin are articulate and exacting respectively… Diamond, DiComo and Vorkunov are young, refreshing and insightful…
I think there was a day when a journalist would have taken Neise’s little explosion and kept it to himself if he ever wanted to interview Jonathan again. What purpose does the story serve? It undermines the player’s value at a time when the team’s GM is actively shopping him, it damages the player’s reputation, it harms the relationship between the press and the team… and for what? A few thousand additional hits on a web page and a nascent twitter storm?
The team is young and maturing and as it does it will outgrow not only some of its rookie errors but its complacency and acquiescence too. At some point they will discover they can in fact swim … even in the shark infested waters of the New York media landscape. It’s a shame that one of the lessons young athletes have to learn in NY is to be wary and guarded towards the press, their comments scripted, generic, Jeteresque …
We already know what most players are going to say, so why bother with a quote? Why bother trying to cultivate the sort of rapport with your host-team that might make for interesting insightful journalism if they know full well you will throw them under a bus the first chance you get? All for the instant gratification of kicking up a shit-storm in next morning’s sports pages. And they wonder why the print media is going the way of Polariods and the fax machine.
