Mets Continuing To Mets

DeadlySplitter

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Thread title should be updated?: a former Mets manager, and current Angels manager, has been accused of lewd acts. (Athletics, paywall)

https://t.co/pW4aCIhb0Y
Mickey Callaway, the former New York Mets manager and current pitching coach for the Los Angeles Angels, aggressively pursued at least five women who work in sports media, sending three of them inappropriate photographs and asking one of them to send nude photos in return. He sent them unsolicited electronic messages and regularly commented on their appearance in a manner that made them uncomfortable. In one instance, he thrust his crotch near the face of a reporter as she interviewed him. In another, he told one of the women that if she got drunk with him he’d share information about the Mets.
 

jon abbey

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Also if we remember, the final two choices for Mets GM were Brodie and Chaim Bloom and Sandy chose Brodie, just wow.
 

Dewey'sCannon

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I am not going to doublecheck that this was all actually under Alderson's regime, but man how does he still have a job? The Brodie hiring on its own was fireable, he hired Robinson Cano's agent as GM and then traded their best prospect for him and his big PEDeal. Failing upward...

View: https://twitter.com/FrankiesTwoLoud/status/1356424439873822723?s=20
Not everything here is correct.

Alderson did hire Callaway. But he was gone from NY before Brodie was hired (he took a leave of absence for cancer treatment, and then stepped down, so Brodie was hired to replace him), and he was not there for the Beltran hiring/firing.
Not clear whether he had any involvement in hiring Porter. My recollection is that Porter was hired before they announced that Sandy was coming back.
 

ColdSoxPack

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And Calloway kept his Mets job after they found out. From today's LA Times:

But that knowledge didn’t appear to reach many team officials. According to The Athletic’s report, the Mets were the only employer of Callaway to receive notice of a complaint against him. The Mets said they investigated the claim in August 2018. The Mets declined to reveal the particulars of the incident, which they told The Athletic took place before Callaway was hired as manager in October 2017. Callaway finished the season and stayed on for another campaign before his performance-related firing in October 2019.

That doesn't look good unless I am not reading this correctly.
 

Van Everyman

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More:

In the summer of 2018, three women who worked for or had previously been employed by the Mets spoke with a member of the team’s human resources department to complain about the behavior of hitting performance coordinator Ryan Ellis.

One woman told The Athletic that she informed Aubrey Wechsler, then the Mets employee relations manager, that Ellis told the woman that “I stare at your ass all the time. If only I could have 15 minutes alone with you.” The woman, who was in her early 20s, says she read those comments to Wechsler from a journal she kept at the time, copies of which she shared with The Athletic. She says Ellis also told her he wanted “to put her up against a wall.”

A second woman says she told Wechsler that she and Ellis had a brief sexual relationship in 2017, but that she ended it. For months afterward, she received persistent, unwanted text messages from Ellis that were sexual in nature. The woman, who was in her 30s, says she told Wechsler about those text messages and shared at least one of them with her.

A third woman, who was in her 20s and the first to flag Ellis’ behavior, says she told her supervisor that Ellis often made sexually suggestive comments to her and other low-level female employees and that he would call her late in the evening and ask if her boyfriend was home. She later spoke with Wechsler and relayed that information again, the woman says.
https://theathletic.com/2393176/2021/02/17/mets-ryan-ellis-sexual-harassment-in-2018/
 

DJnVa

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The Indians knew as well:

What the Indians, MLB knew about Mickey Callaway’s behavior – The Athletic

Additionally, in 2017, an angry husband repeatedly called the team’s fan services department to complain that Callaway had sent “pornographic material” to his wife. Those calls were brought to the attention of Antonetti, manager Terry Francona and general manager Mike Chernoff; the Indians spoke with Callaway about the matter. A Cleveland attorney spoke with the wife and said – in a phone call that was recorded – that Callaway had expressed remorse to him. The attorney added that “the Indians are frickin’ pissed as hell” at Callaway and offered to have Francona call the husband.
Over the past month, The Athletic has interviewed 22 people who interacted with Callaway during his years in the Indians organization, including 12 current and former employees. They say that Callaway’s sexual indiscretions permeated the workplace to such an extent that it would have been difficult for top officials to not be aware of his behavior, and they push back against any assertion that Callaway’s actions, when made public by The Athletic last month, caught team executives or MLB by surprise.

“I laughed out loud when I saw the quote (in The Athletic’s original report) that said it was the worst-kept secret in baseball, because it was,” said one Indians employee. “It was the worst-kept secret in the organization.”
 

DJnVa

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Hey, Tito had priorities!

Mannion continued: “I’ve actually talked to Francona and he told me he was willing to talk to your husband and you, and he said this has cost Mickey huge financially. It has cost him huge within the organization … he told me, he said, ‘Tom, I’m not losing my pitching coach.’”
 

ColdSoxPack

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It's hard to see Tito or Antonetti surviving this because of the lies. Is it pathogical that Calloway was a good baseball coach who liked to cheat on his wife with everyone and anyone?
 

Marciano490

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The Absalom trilogy just go real. Good for Nick. That must’ve been brutal to write, but clearly needed to be said.
 

NDame616

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You'd have to assume with the most recent health issues Tito has had he will step down "for medical reasons " soon
 

JimD

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It would be comforting to believe that this was just one bad guy, or just a few shortsighted teams, but I have no faith that there aren't dozens of Mickey Callaways throughout MLB, the NFL, the NBA, etc., or that my favorite teams would act any differently if they were confronted by allegations of bad behavior by an employee valued for their work-related skills and abilities. We have a long, long way to go.
 

Doooweeeey!

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It would be comforting to believe that this was just one bad guy, or just a few shortsighted teams, but I have no faith that there aren't dozens of Mickey Callaways throughout MLB, the NFL, the NBA, etc., or that my favorite teams would act any differently if they were confronted by allegations of bad behavior by an employee valued for their work-related skills and abilities. We have a long, long way to go.
Well said. I hope Tito calls upon his unconditional love in hearing what Nick had to say and in repairing their relationship.

Edit: took me a while to say it right...
 

Average Reds

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It would be comforting to believe that this was just one bad guy, or just a few shortsighted teams, but I have no faith that there aren't dozens of Mickey Callaways throughout MLB, the NFL, the NBA, etc., or that my favorite teams would act any differently if they were confronted by allegations of bad behavior by an employee valued for their work-related skills and abilities. We have a long, long way to go.
The bolded is correct.

Tito is a baseball lifer. In that context, anyone who has read Ball Four (or watched Bull Durham recently) knows that the kind of sexual shenanigans that Calloway is accused of have routinely been tolerated within the game until very recently. Which is why it's not a surprise to learn that front offices and managers knew about Jared Porter and Mickey Calloway and did nothing. Their bosses just compartmentalized the information they way they had for decades because, well, that's the culture.

Thankfully, that culture is changing. Dinosaurs like Sandy Alderson and Terry Francona need to change with it or leave the game.
 

Sandwich Pick

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Callaway is obviously a piece of shit to begin with, and I realize the point of this example was to make the reader aware of the fact that the Indians knew that he was a scumbag.

But my one small nitpick is that the wife looks really bad in this, too. (The affair was consensual) And I have no idea why the husband is not as mad at his wife as he was at Callaway.
 
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DJnVa

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Callaway is obviously a piece of shit to begin with, and I realize the point of this example was to make the reader aware of the fact that the Indians knew that he was a scumbag.

But my one small nitpick is that the wife looks really bad in this, too. (The affair was consensual) And I have no idea why the husband is not as mad at his wife as he was at Callaway.
How do you know he's not? The issue is she's not a public figure and for Calloway, the husband coming forward was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back once it was out there.
 

Sandwich Pick

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How do you know he's not? The issue is she's not a public figure and for Calloway, the husband coming forward was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back once it was out there.
I don't, because the article didn't say either way the state of their marriage. I guess being cheated on was ok to him but the pics were a step too far?

That's the part I find so strange about this saga. Literally every other example from every Athletic story is absolutely horrifying and should have him blacklisted from baseball. And there were zero consequences. But the thing that is going to actually do the most (deserved) damage to the most people is a consensual affair that was brought to the team's attention by the angry husband.

Then again, Karma works in strange ways sometimes and maybe I shouldn't look this specific gift horse in the mouth.
 
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Average Reds

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I don't, because the article didn't say either way the state of their marriage. I guess being cheated on was ok to him but the pics were a step too far?
You are demonstrating a bit of a blind spot here, because right after acknowledging that you know nothing about the state of their marriage, you make a huge assumption about the state of their marriage.

There is no evidence that "being cheated on was ok to him." It's also utterly irrelevant to the story, so I'm confused as to why you continue to focus on this particular assumption.
 

Sandwich Pick

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You are demonstrating a bit of a blind spot here, because right after acknowledging that you know nothing about the state of their marriage, you make a huge assumption about the state of their marriage.

There is no evidence that "being cheated on was ok to him." It's also utterly irrelevant to the story, so I'm confused as to why you continue to focus on this particular assumption.
Fair enough. You're right that this isn't worth the focus. My mistake. I own it.

I just wish Cleveland did something about Callaway because his overall behavior was unacceptable, not because he pissed off the wrong guy and it forced their hand. Although anything that shines a light on what a toxic culture some places are should be seen as progress toward a better one.
 
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DeadlySplitter

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deanx0

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Another story.

https://theathletic.com/2519652/2021/04/16/ive-barely-hit-on-you-inside-a-mets-culture-rotten-beyond-mickey-callaway-and-jared-porter/

"Amidst the talk about looking ahead, the “constructive steps” that the Mets and MLB are implementing, Alderson expressed frustration that the organization continues to face a reckoning for past deeds.

“Is there ever a statute of limitations on coverage of some of this stuff?”"
There's an ESPN story as well, and Alderson has an even worse quote in that one:

"Let me try to make a point as strongly as I can, OK? Not every instance involving men, women in the workplace is a capital offense, OK? Every time something happens, it doesn't mean somebody has to be fired," Alderson told The Athletic. "There are a lot of intermediate steps that can be taken, and we've done that in a variety of different cases. And have included capital punishment as a consequence in some cases, but not every case rises to the level of execution. And that's what honestly I think is happening with these articles."

The dude needs to go...

EDIT: The ESPN.com article: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31268618/report-complaints-mets-staffers-dismissed-two-more-accused-inappropriate-actions
 

Fred not Lynn

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Another story.

https://theathletic.com/2519652/2021/04/16/ive-barely-hit-on-you-inside-a-mets-culture-rotten-beyond-mickey-callaway-and-jared-porter/

"Amidst the talk about looking ahead, the “constructive steps” that the Mets and MLB are implementing, Alderson expressed frustration that the organization continues to face a reckoning for past deeds.

“Is there ever a statute of limitations on coverage of some of this stuff?”"
Minus Callaway and Porter, we’d probably never have heard of DeVito and Newman...which to me means almost every team probably has a few DeVitos and Newmans - creepy, bothersome and inappropriate, but not high profile or over-the-line enough on their own to merit media attention (yet). If I were an MLB executive today, I’d make it a mission to go find my DeVitos and Newmans now, before The Athletic finds them for me...

Also - can we rename the thread to “Mets behaving badly”?
 

jon abbey

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Minus Callaway and Porter, we’d probably never have heard of DeVito and Newman...which to me means almost every team probably has a few DeVitos and Newmans - creepy, bothersome and inappropriate, but not high profile or over-the-line enough on their own to merit media attention (yet). If I were an MLB executive today, I’d make it a mission to go find my DeVitos and Newmans now, before The Athletic finds them for me...

Also - can we rename the thread to “Mets behaving badly”?
Good call, done.
 

Sandwich Pick

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Minus Callaway and Porter, we’d probably never have heard of DeVito and Newman...which to me means almost every team probably has a few DeVitos and Newmans - creepy, bothersome and inappropriate, but not high profile or over-the-line enough on their own to merit media attention (yet). If I were an MLB executive today, I’d make it a mission to go find my DeVitos and Newmans now, before The Athletic finds them for me
"Katie Strang is writing an article about you" has become shorthand for "Your workplace culture sucks. Clean it up ASAP."
 

jon abbey

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And the Angels just fired him, in response to the MLB investigation.
 

santadevil

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Two high ranking Mets officials will be terminated after the WilmerHale investigation and a "transition" period, per ESPN

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31681490/new-york-mets-fire-two-high-ranking-employees-workplace-review
Executive vice president and chief legal officer David Cohen -- no relation to the owner -- and senior vice president for human resources and diversity Holly Lindvall will both be terminated as Steve Cohen rebuilds the legal and HR departments. David Cohen has been with the Mets since 1995 and Lindvall since 2010. Both will remain with the team during "a transition period," Cohen wrote.
 

Van Everyman

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She may be Ghislaine Maxwell but it’s always great when a woman takes the fall for a culture of toxic masculinity.
 

Spelunker

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I don't have nytimes login, does she name names?
I choose not to name him because it would only open me up to the possibility of having dirt thrown on my reputation; even all these years later and in the wake of the #MeToo movement, a former professional athlete wields considerable power. I hope I can help bring about systemic change rather than seek unlikely-to-come justice for one horrible act.
 

Mystic Merlin

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Thanks for posting.
Initially I was going to post a name I speculated, because he played for both teams. But if she doesn't want to name names and I have no first hand knowledge, it won't add anything
I know what you’re referring to, but luckily I don’t think you can pinpoint the assailant based on the article, or the ‘All Star teammate ’ who gave her grief for it. She was careful not to say or imply either player was on the two teams she name dropped (though I think the teammate of the alleged assailant wasn’t on the Rangers at the time of the assault because she encountered him in the visiting locker room).

I think she covered the tracks she meant to pretty well.
 

DeadlySplitter

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CarolinaBeerGuy

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Zack Scott (former BOS assistant GM) busted for DUI.

https://nypost.com/2021/09/01/mets-gm-zack-scott-busted-for-drunk-driving-in-white-plains/


Jeff Passan
@JeffPassan


On the night of New York Mets GM Zack Scott was arrested for allegedly driving drunk, he was at the Connecticut home of team owner Steve Cohen, sources tell ESPN. A fundraiser for the team's Amazin' Mets Foundation was being held at the house, and Scott and players were there.

3:40 PM · Sep 1, 2021·TweetDeck
This tweet is a bit disingenuous. The fundraiser at Cohen’s house ended 7+ hours before Scott was arrested.