The Amazin' Mess

The New York Mets are clearly having a season they'd like to forget both on and off the field. The Mets, who I picked to win the World Series this year (I'm forthcoming about my wildly inaccurate predictions), have stumbled to fourth place in the National League East far behind the division-leading Phillies, and have underperformed largely due to a roster decimated by injuries. Core members such as Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran have missed large parts of the season, and their fans can only be grateful that they are unlikely to endure another painful late-season choke to miss the playoffs. At this rate, they'll be mercifully mathematically eliminated before September.

Off the field has been just as ugly if not worse. Special assistant Tony Bernazard was outed as being an out of control executive from hell, verbally abusing contemporaries and tearing his shirt off while challenging Met minor leaguers to a fistfight. If that embarrassment wasn't bad enough, GM Omar Minaya, during a news conference held to announce Bernazard's firing, found it fit to throw NY Daily News beat writer Adam Rubin under the bus, implying that Rubin had portrayed Bernazard in a bad light in order to supplant him in the Mets' front office. The bewildered press corps (including Rubin) were incredulous, and a few hours later, another press conference was held where Minaya issued an apology... well, sort of.

Here's an excerpt of the "apology" news conference:

Question from Reporter: "Omar, when you regret saying..."

Omar Minaya: "No, I mean... uh, well, no I don't regret, I... I don't, I don't regret saying... I mean I regret saying what I'm saying, you know what I'm saying... I mean I stand by the things that I said, but uh, I don't, uh, but I don't regret. I... I regret saying it in that forum. That was not the proper forum to say it."

Huh? That's just about as confusing as "I actually did vote for the $87 billion (for funding the Iraq war) before I voted against it.”

What a mess. My condolences to all of my friends who are Mets fans.