I know most of you are sick and tired of reading about Tony Bernazard, and by my count, at least 4 released minor leaguers from the Mets system have been quoted by the NY Daily News as saying, in so many words, “Tony is a d-----bag”. I just need one last parting shot…
Although Tony never called me a p---y (At least to my face he didn’t) or challenged me to a brawl behind the monkeybars after gym class, he did do one thing that still bothers me to this day – he took the fun out of what should have been the best three years of my life.
Aside from those singular moments of glory – the walk-off homeruns, the circus catches, the come from behind victories – the thing I look back on most fondly of my playing days is the camaraderie formed with my closest teammates. Going into battle with fellow world class athletes, knowing that each and every one of them would give every ounce of strength he had to help the team come out on top. Being part of something that is bigger than yourself, that is what makes baseball and all organized sports great. The problem is, I have these memories from college and teams in years prior, never for the Mets.
Tony made me resent the people I was playing with and forced me to think about myself above all else. Giving praise for individual performance above team play is not the best way to groom players for the big leagues, let alone win at the minor league level. I’m not even sure if I can describe or put into words how the minor league culture was formed, but it creates robots who only know how to follow orders. There is no “thinking on the fly” in the Mets system. It is a system bereft of entrepreneurial thought and ingenuity. A system full of players who don’t know how to hit and run or move the runner over unless expressly instructed to do so by the management.
Even worse, I feel like players were pitted against one another outside of the ballpark as well, starting with the clear line of demarcation between American and Latin/Foreign born players. He even imposed ridiculous curfews (10:00 pm for a 23 year old?) and rolled them back additional hours when players broke it – the problem was, nobody was out past 10:00 and the shortening was done simply to assert authority and remind us that we were his subordinates. While in Brooklyn, we were given one hour to get back to our rooms after the game was over. It didn’t matter than our hotel was 30 minutes away or that our postgame spread was never enough to satiate our appetites, if we weren’t in our room, heads were gonna roll! Maybe Tony isn't the one solely to blame for my unhappiness during my years with the Mets, but I can't help but think that had I played during a time when he was not associated with the club, I would look back much more fondly on my years in professional baseball.
Although Tony never called me a p---y (At least to my face he didn’t) or challenged me to a brawl behind the monkeybars after gym class, he did do one thing that still bothers me to this day – he took the fun out of what should have been the best three years of my life.
Aside from those singular moments of glory – the walk-off homeruns, the circus catches, the come from behind victories – the thing I look back on most fondly of my playing days is the camaraderie formed with my closest teammates. Going into battle with fellow world class athletes, knowing that each and every one of them would give every ounce of strength he had to help the team come out on top. Being part of something that is bigger than yourself, that is what makes baseball and all organized sports great. The problem is, I have these memories from college and teams in years prior, never for the Mets.
Tony made me resent the people I was playing with and forced me to think about myself above all else. Giving praise for individual performance above team play is not the best way to groom players for the big leagues, let alone win at the minor league level. I’m not even sure if I can describe or put into words how the minor league culture was formed, but it creates robots who only know how to follow orders. There is no “thinking on the fly” in the Mets system. It is a system bereft of entrepreneurial thought and ingenuity. A system full of players who don’t know how to hit and run or move the runner over unless expressly instructed to do so by the management.
Even worse, I feel like players were pitted against one another outside of the ballpark as well, starting with the clear line of demarcation between American and Latin/Foreign born players. He even imposed ridiculous curfews (10:00 pm for a 23 year old?) and rolled them back additional hours when players broke it – the problem was, nobody was out past 10:00 and the shortening was done simply to assert authority and remind us that we were his subordinates. While in Brooklyn, we were given one hour to get back to our rooms after the game was over. It didn’t matter than our hotel was 30 minutes away or that our postgame spread was never enough to satiate our appetites, if we weren’t in our room, heads were gonna roll! Maybe Tony isn't the one solely to blame for my unhappiness during my years with the Mets, but I can't help but think that had I played during a time when he was not associated with the club, I would look back much more fondly on my years in professional baseball.
To quote Tom Selleck (in what I believe to be his finest role as Jack Elliot) in Mr. Baseball, “baseball is a game, and games are supposed to be fun”. I guess Tony never figured out how to work the Spanish Subtitles button on his dvd player, because playing for him was anything but fun.
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A quick shout out to my old friends in the Brooklyn Cyclones front office who have been reading Mack’s Mets. Best regards to Dave Campanaro and Ricky Viola, two large parts of the well-oiled machine that is the Cyclones’ Front Office.
Although sometimes more spectacle than sport (I’m still pissed that you guys made the entire team hold our bats in the air for an hour just so some couple could get married at Keyspan Park), the Cyclones manage to put together a great show for its thousands and thousands of fans every night. I’ll never forget Cliff Floyd’s words during a rehab stint with Brooklyn in 2006. Cliff said “you guys have no idea how close to the real thing this place is”. Anybody who has experienced a Brooklyn Cyclones game on the field or in the stands knows what he means, and well deserved thanks go out to the Cyclones’ staff for making that happen. You guys are world class
Fact of the day: Ricky Viola is the only person on planet Earth who considers “Teddy Dziuba” as his all-time favorite player:
http://www.brooklyncyclones.com/office/index.html?staff_id=22
Although sometimes more spectacle than sport (I’m still pissed that you guys made the entire team hold our bats in the air for an hour just so some couple could get married at Keyspan Park), the Cyclones manage to put together a great show for its thousands and thousands of fans every night. I’ll never forget Cliff Floyd’s words during a rehab stint with Brooklyn in 2006. Cliff said “you guys have no idea how close to the real thing this place is”. Anybody who has experienced a Brooklyn Cyclones game on the field or in the stands knows what he means, and well deserved thanks go out to the Cyclones’ staff for making that happen. You guys are world class
Fact of the day: Ricky Viola is the only person on planet Earth who considers “Teddy Dziuba” as his all-time favorite player:
http://www.brooklyncyclones.com/office/index.html?staff_id=22
4 comments:
You hit the nail on the head mate. Remember in extended not sure if you were there when someone missed curfew and the next sat night curfew was 9:00 or 9:30 haha.
My point exactly...you force 75 guys the practice (without pay) for 11 hours a day for 6 days a week, and the one night of the week when they don't have to wake up @ 5:00 AM and practice the next morning, you force them into there rooms at 9:00PM. No booze and no women in the hotel. And with 40 rooms sharing one wireless network, there is barely enough bandwidth to download internet porn. Not exactly what all of us dream about as little leaguers when we think of professional baseball...Ahhhhhh, good old extended camp...
I hate to play devil's advocate here, but the impression I get is that most organization's prioritize individual performance above team performance.
I see what you mean about Bernazard fostering an atmosphere that was perhaps too competitive, pitting players against each other. But wouldn't you admit there were players like yourself, who, talented as you are, weren't considered first tier prospects, probably did secretly hope some players failed? Maybe not a team wide failure, but a guy whom you were competing with for playing time?
IMO, there's a fine line between team performance and individual performance at the minor league level. Numerous prospects sacrifice short-term (season-long) pain for long term gain. For instance, an A-Ball pitcher might be better off performance wise if he blows away guy's with his fastball, but he knows that if he wants to make it past AA, let alone succeed in the big leagues, he'll have to work on say, his secondary stuff.
I'm not condoning what Bernazard did, but his job is to develop guys capable of playing in the big leagues. I could see where a guy in the situation above could get caught up in his team's playoff race instead of worrying about his development.
Last but not least, not looking to start anything personal, but isn't the American/Spanish divide often voluntary? Would you be able to elaborate on that point?
Not doubting anything you say, just thought I'd raise a few questions. Maybe I got a negative view of the minor leagues after reading Matt McCarthy's odd man out.
Keep up the good work.
Hey Matt, always enjoyed your posts
I don't think I was able to verbalize what I was trying to say in describing the culture of the Mets minor leagues. Let me preface the following comments by saying this: I never harbored the delusion that I was on the fast track to the big leagues and during my playing career, I was well aware that the Mets were using me as cannon fodder...not that that was easy to swallow, but I was always self-aware and new that the road was going to end at some point
That being said, my biggest gripe with how things played out was that their was really no incentive for playing "smart" baseball in the Mets system...it was a system that encouraged coaches to toss blame at the players, and truly, it was more beneficial to "not screw up" than it was to do your job properly. Praise was thrown at certain prospects for not making certain mistakes instead of actually performing well.
It's really hard to put into words, but it was a system of evaluation that was predicated on negativity. 2 examples:
Camp in 2007, I spoke to the speedy ss batting in front of me who lead off the inning. I told him, "if you get on, I'll get in the catchers way on the first pitch so you can steal 2b" He walked, I fake bunted (on my own), catcher dropped the ball and the runner got a free stolen base. Next pitch, i rolled over a ground ball, got the runner to third with one out, and thought I had done my job. Instead of a pat on the ass for working with my teammate and getting the runner over, I was chastised for wasting the at bat and for not getting my pitch. Am I nitpicking? maybe, but this is the kind of stuff that pervaded the system
3 Days before my release in 2008, I went 4-4 with a home run, 2 doubles, 4 rbi and missed the cycle because I slipped rounding first base on the first double. After the game, the only thing my coach said to me was "you gotta work on your turns rounding first" He was serious...no "good game Ted", no "way to hit em", just another negative comment in a long line of negative comments that sapped players of their confidence and desire to continue working as hard.
I like to think of myself as a likeable guy Matt, and in the realm of minor league ballplayers, an ameable kid with no ego is hard to come by, so its not like I was treated any differently for any reason, it was just a system wide dynamic that forced players to think that its better to just not screw up than try and do that little extra at the expense of potentially being called out for it
Maybe I'm biased because I went to a college specializing in entrepreneurship, but baseball was always like jazz to me, players (especially catchers) constantly need to adapt and think on the fly to perform to their fullest. I just got the sense that such behavior was frowned upon. If a coach hadn't expressly taught a certain aspect of the game, don't even think of doing anything otherwise.
Maybe i'm placing too much blame on Tony himself, but he was the king of pointing out the flaws in players he didn't like, and accentuating the small positives of the guys he did like. Without naming names, there are 5-10 players in the system who are on their 4th, 5th and 6th chances with the Mets...why then are so many not even given that first chance? And I know your response is that some guys just aren't meant to be big leaguers, but for every failed Mets prospect during this most recent tenure that was given every opportunity to succeed and failed, I feel like there are just as many kids who could have developed into the Joe McEwing's or David Eckstein's of the world but just weren't given their 100 at bats to prove it
Forgive me if any of my writing is whiny and sounds like its coming from a bitter ex minor leaguer...i assure you, that is not my intention. I just think there are some fundamental flaws in the player development approach that Tony employed, or at least helped oversee
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