And The Song Remains the Same - by Mack Ade

And The Song Remains the Same

By: Mack Ade  11-26-11

“meet the new boss, same as the old boss…”   Peter Townshend, The Who, 1971

Charlie T. dared me to continue my tale of woe regarding the Mets.

 Toby Hyde of Met Minor League Blog fame, said on twitter once about me: “what does he know, he’s just a guy from Savannah.” He’s right, you know. Well, that’s not true… I never lived a day in Savannah. And, I’m from New York, just like Toby is. But still, how does a guy like me have all this interesting dirt about the Mets when no one else writes about it?

Well, first of all, I don’t know shit; however, I hope to God the people I talk to do. Secondly, I’m beholden to no one other than the minor league players in the Mets system. I invented this site for them and it’s their back that I will eternally have.

The saga of what’s going on in Flushing isn’t hard to figure out if you have a business operating background. I ran things, managed things, owned things, sold things, broke up things, and disregarded things for 30 years. No one had to tell me anything about what’s going on in Willet’s Point. I can smell it from here.

Yeah, but don’t I, as a Mets writer owe it to be loyal to the Mets?

I am, but that doesn’t mean I have to be loyal to the current guys that own the team.  Look, I love my Toyota, whether it was built here in the USA or in Japan.

I’m no longer a Mets beat reporter, and, according to a few that despised my presence in the clubhouse, writing about the Savannah Sand Gnats never made me one. I’m no longer welcomed at spring training, so who am I going to piss off standing outside the fence by the player’s parking lot?

The truth is people in the know probably write about 10% of what they know. The rest is shared between colleagues while watching a game, having a beer, or tweeting a private message (thank God the word “tweeting” still gets underlined by spell check).  

You didn’t write about George Steinbrenner’s illness while he was alive or you never would get an interview again. The same goes for Fred Wilpon and the rest of the powerful people in the world.  You don’t screw with powerful people.

I started in the radio business in 1970 and there were three young wise-ass sales managers in NYC around 1978. Steve Dinetz was at WXLO-FM, I was at WKTU-FM and a guy named Mel Karmazin was the SM of WNEW-FM.  Mel and I had an embarrassing moment around Christmas that year and I sort of embarrassed him in front of his boss. Mel went on to run Infinity Broadcasting, then CBS, and now Sirius, and that little gem cost me one-third of the legitimate jobs in the radio industry for the next 25 years.

The Adam Rubin’s of the world know a hell of a lot more than they are going to share with you and they have to balance that knowledge knowing their paycheck is on the line. Their editor wants the juice, but printing all of it will dry up your sources.