It’s not every day that you find out that one of your colleagues has been hired to fill a prominent role in the New York Mets organization.
You can imagine my surprise when, on Monday afternoon, I learned that Ed Blankmeyer had been tapped to manage the Brooklyn Cyclones for the 2020 season.
Blankmeyer is an institution in New York City baseball, one who I believe will do great things with a short-season ball club filled with new professionals. Of course, the casual baseball fan would be forgiven if you weren’t as familiar with him as I happen to be.
Blankmeyer has been managing the St. John’s University baseball team since 1996, when a lanky long-haired college student was still strolling the Queens campus in lime green Converse and writing frightening verse in the sports section of the student newspaper.
In the 24 years to follow, that kid cut his hair (which then promptly turned gray!), ditched the Cons for two-tone wingtips and went from being a St. John’s student to a St. John’s employee. (What, you didn’t realize that most of the contributors to Mack’s Mets have day jobs!?)
Through it all, Blankmeyer has been here. Under his guidance, St. John’s has become a force in the Big East Conference, and is now recognized in college baseball circles as one of the better Northeast programs in the country. His departure from St. John’s is a shocking one, especially to those of us who thought he’d retire as a Johnnie.
I am not going to recite his impressive list of accomplishments here; others can flesh out the bullet points from the media guide. I’d rather speak briefly about the person who has been tasked with leading young men at St. John’s for over a quarter-century.
An Ed Blankmeyer-managed team will demonstrate solid fundamentals on the field. Those who do not will find themselves sitting on the bench watching his teammates doing things the right way. Too many players in recent years have graduated from the Mets’ farm system with a poor grasp of fundamentals, a trend especially torturous to older fans who expect players to know how to bunt, steal and hit to the opposite field. A year with Ed Blankmeyer is going to change that.
The players on an Ed Blankmeyer-managed team will conduct themselves professionally off the field as well. In the 17-plus years that we have both worked at St. John’s, I’ve had very few professional interactions with Blankmeyer. That is a testament to the high expectations he sets for his players, both on the field and off of it. He has little tolerance for off-the-field shenanigans, and his players are going to very quickly learn the concept of acting like a professional even when they are away from the park.
Ed Blankmeyer is going to be missed on the corner of Union Turnpike and Utopia Parkway. This summer, they’re going to love him on Surf Avenue.
4 comments:
Nice to have first hand feedback on Blankmeyer. Sounds like a perfect person for the job. Wishing him tons of success.
I really think he's going to be great. I was stunned to see how many Johnnies have made it to some level of pro ball in the last five years, and Blankmeyer deserves at least some of the credit for that.
Brooklyn is going to have a lot of first-time professionals on its roster, and I really believe that Blankmeyer's high expectations in the areas of professionalism and playing fundamentally sound baseball is going to help our farm system. It also helps that he's probably not angling for an MLB job down the road, the way a lot of rookie managers at the low levels are. I suspect he took this job in part because he wanted to do this type of work with players at this level, and not because he saw it as the first step on a path toward an MLB job.
Nice observations Jack.
Also nice to see you reporting from my old school.
Jack, we need those types of guys for sure - great level for him
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