This is a baseball problem, first and foremost, a product of decades-old perverted-boy-network behavior ignored, and then tolerated, and then excused. That day is over, and the bills are forthcoming. There is no other boy, there will be boys and the game will ultimately be better for it.
But first one has to answer for it. The first would be to identify how it was that people like Jared Porter and Mickey Callaway were able to get away with the kind of clearly imagined behavior, and continue to move up the food chain of the game.
Porter, the former general manager of the Mets, admitted to harassing a female reporter with a tireless string of text messages capped by a photo of female genitals. His career, rightly, lies in ruins. It is now Lanchai’s turn to make the most public outrage through insults and embarrassment, with five women journalists accusing her of equally unwanted progress.
Callaway, so far, denies any wrongdoing, although the women, through athletic, have provided some horrific compelling evidence. With Porter, read through some saved text message, provides a chilling tour through a legacy of perpetual authority that has always skewed a certain way as men were prominent in professional sports and women were only players, sports. Welt within and on both sides of it.
That dynamic is changing. There is now a female GM in Miami, in Kim Ng. There are more and more women covering the game, and asking for nothing more than to have an equal footing with their male peers: equal access (which they had to earn through the courts); Equal honors (which he has earned with years of quality work); And, last stands equal. “No” is ultimately not meant to be. Actually. for keeps.
The Mets are, of course, one of the teams that would not have to answer so much for Callaway’s alleged misconduct – if this is true, this stain falls entirely on him – as it does that character. Had ever been hired before; The place to actually manage a baseball team. Indians and Angels have to answer similar questions about Callaway – as the Cubs and Diamondbacks share responsibility for the uncontrolled rise of Porter.
But it also shines an already indiscriminate spotlight on the way the Mets hope. It is clear that the Porter incident had already shaken the team to its core, and addressing it Sandy Alderson indicated that a more rigorous process should be implemented to avoid future embarrassment – at one point Using the term “FBI-level”. But Alderson hired Callaway in his first term as baseball boss for the Mets.
And what bothers Alderson – a decidedly straight-arrow, to whom such behavior must be horrifically deranged, and which really hurts both when the Porter fiasco came to light and was embarrassed when he Compelled to admit she had not spoken to him or even sought a female professional reference for Porter – that is, quite or not, Callaway is a second strike against her good name.
Alderson has known long enough in professional sports that every hire you make will not be good – and it was clearly clear from the start that Callaway was not qualified for the manager’s job nor enough blessing to learn enough Gig blessed with. Good officers are also treated poorly; George Young once thought Ray Handley would be a good idea.
But it is now two prime locations Alderson has filled, hiring two men who apparently should not be entrusted with any job that even comes from a minor of electricity. Alderson, who appealed to Steve Cohen, had undoubtedly built a sterling reputation that ended unconditionally in his first 40 years in the sport.
And, in the last few weeks, it took a bloody beating – and rightly so. There is a lot of explanation and self-analysis to do with baseball as a whole. And so since 1981, Sandy Alderson, a baseball lifeboat, was suddenly saddened by a two-strike count.
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