In Which I Donate My Hate Speech To Another Podcast

This past week I again partook in a conversation with my childhood friend David Simon for his “No Nutritional Value” podcast. Apparently Dave enjoyed our first on-the-record chat, so he asked me to return to his online talk show and discuss the LOST auction and the current state of the New York Mets. I thought I handled myself really well during the LOST segment of the interview, but apparently I’m ill-suited for baseball chat. As I listened back to the podcast today for the first time I became really angry at myself for not fully expressing what I wanted to say. The biggest problem facing the Mets is not a bad manager or general manager, it is ownership. People gang up on Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel when trying to find fault in the team, but Peter Gammons bluntly admitted that owner Jeff Wilpon pretty much pulls all the strings. The front office positions are given to guys who are averse to change. Ownership is so worried about saving face and good public relations that they are willing to throw their own under the bus at every opportunity, and yet are always hesitant to make a big change due to the backlash it will inevitably create. Could you imagine how the Mets roster would be different in a Bavasi or Epstein or Zduriencik were given the reigns? Suddenly more attention could be paid to numbers instead of personality and attributes like “grit” and “passion.” Jeff Franceour might have had a nice smile and played really hard every day, but his on-base percentage was below league-average. If someone doesn’t get on base and generate runs, it’s hard to win a baseball game. There’s more to the sport than being a positive influence in the clubhouse.

Anyway, one of the points I tried to make in the interview — which was misrepresented by my stating the Mets have a predilection towards reclamation projects and fifth rate Latin America ballplayers (see: Raul Valdez) — was that the organization puts a higher premium on overseas scouting and spending than it does on the actual amateur baseball draft. If the Mets were willing to sign young talent with high salary and signing bonus demands, their minor league system would immediately benefit, and in the long run their major league roster would feature a steady influx of kids with great skills whose contracts could be controlled for multiple years. Unfortunately, instead of stating that I wanted the Mets to use an equal amount of money and resources on the amateur draft as they do on international scouting, I singled out Latin America as the basis for my complaint. Whoops! I got pegged as a racist. Even though the Mets have more baseball academies in Latin American countries than in places like Europe and Japan, I probably should have just used the term “international” instead of specifying a region.

Dave called me racist. Oh well.

To access the episode featuring yours truly — entitled “The Bidder End” — you can follow that hyperlink, or you can download the podcast directly from iTunes here. It’s mostly LOST talk with a little bit of baseball thrown in to prove I’m not gay. There’s also a brief reference to the elementary school lunchtime wrestling federation we started. Dave still doesn’t want to talk about the time I painted my face black and sang a Boys II Men song to his older sister, but given the way this interview went it would have been the perfect cherry atop the racist pie I baked for him. Maybe next time…