It wasn’t that long ago, yet it was long enough ago that it was a face-to-face conversation (remember those?). The topic was Met managers of very recent past and very near future. Mickey Callaway was ex-manager of the Mets by then. The person I was talking to was somebody whose observations I appreciated as earned and accurate. When the topic turned to Callaway, I prefaced my own impression — that he wasn’t particularly well-suited to the job from which he’d been removed — with the caveat “I’m sure he was a nice guy,” because, frankly, Callaway seemed nice enough on radio and TV when not trying to explain away losses, and, also frankly, I didn’t want to come off as somebody simply piling on a guy who nobody seemed all that sad to see go. Mostly, it’s one of those things you say before saying something worse about somebody.
This person, who would have known a lot more than I did about what kind of guy Mickey Callaway was, looked at me as if I were the DiamondVision version of Mercury Mets leadoff hitter Rickey Henderson [1], which is to say like I had a third eye embedded in my forehead. C+C Music Factory had a song for situations of this nature [2], the one about things that make you go “hmmmm…”
There wasn’t much elaborating to go with the look and I didn’t ask for any. As noted, Callaway was no longer the manager, and, besides, I wasn’t exactly digging for dirt, just taking part in a friendly chat, so I didn’t pursue what this person really thought or what might have been at the root of the reaction. But I left the conversation thinking Mickey Callaway might not have been such a nice guy.
On Monday night, the Athletic reported Callaway “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.” It’s pretty damning stuff, extending back to Callaway’s years with Cleveland, threading through his tenure managing the Mets, and continuing in Anaheim. You can read the story by Brittany Ghiroli and Katie Strang here [3]. The Angels, who currently employ Callaway as their pitching coach, said they “will conduct a full investigation with MLB,” which seems like a reasonable immediate next step to announce when a story like this breaks.
It also seems reasonable to admit I have no idea who is or isn’t a nice guy at first or maybe thousandth distant glance, certainly not if I have no first-hand experience with the person in question — even if it’s a person I want to think of as a nice guy mainly because he’s a Mets guy.
When the Mets hire for a high-profile position somebody with whom I have little if any familiarity, I tend to lean to the benefit of the doubt. I read the initial profiles, watch the introductory press availability, pick out the encouraging aspects and write something upbeat [4]. I prefer to think whatever the Mets are doing isn’t a bad idea. Hiring Mickey Callaway seemed like not a bad idea. Hiring Jared Porter seemed like not a bad idea. People presumably in the know spoke highly of both of them. Callaway was said to be a ready-made manager, Porter an ideal GM. Porter is out of baseball — and I would guess Callaway will be soon — because of the things nobody felt secure speaking of publicly.
Porter was the Mets’ problem until they disassociated themselves from him quickly. Callaway is not directly the Mets’ problem in 2021, but it didn’t take Woodward and Bernstein to ascertain that, like Porter, he was hired by Sandy Alderson [5]. We learned in the aftermath of the Porter revelation that “did you ever engage in harassing behavior toward a female reporter?” was not a question that was asked in the hiring process. If it wasn’t asked of Porter in 2020, it likely wasn’t asked of Callaway in 2018. That the subject apparently needs to be broached in baseball — or any field — is incredibly sad. That people trying to do their job have to put up with the kinds of come-ons that Porter and allegedly Callaway considered fair game…well, yeech.
Not nice is an understatement. Consider the benefit of the doubt suspended for the foreseeable future.