Just think about this for a minute. The Mets VP of Player Development, Tony Bernazard, was fired this week because he launched into vicious tirades in the Citi Field stands during Mets games and then challenged the whole AA Binghamton Mets team to a shirtless brawl. And that wasn’t even the story of the week.

Not to be outdone by his disgraced VP, Omar Minaya elected to bolster his own incompetence credentials – and to add ethical turpitude to his resume as well – by hurling serious accusations at one of his chief media critics, Adam Rubin of the Daily News, in broad daylight in front of the entire New York press.  As Matt Cerrone at Metsblog put it, Minaya went in to a press conference to put out the Tony Bernazard fire, and wound up lighting a whole new blaze. The truth is that Minaya’s new inferno makes Bernazard’s old arson look like a smoldering campfire.

How did Minaya manage to outdo Bernazard’s WWE moment? Omar baldly asserted in front of the entire New York press that Rubin has been lobbying for a job in the Mets player development department. Coming on the heels of Rubin’s story about Bernazard (and his recent criticism of Minaya), Omar’s accusation implies that Rubin’s journalism stems from a desire to fulfill his own ambitions of running the team.

It doesn’t matter whether Minaya’s statement is true or not. Those who focus on that detail are missing the big picture. If it is true, then Minaya has sacrificed what rapport he had left with the New York media in order to lash out at one reporter for doing his job. If it’s not true, then, well, draw your own conclusion.

Readers of this blog already know my thoughts on Omar and the team he has constructed. If incompetence in player personnel management can’t get Omar fired, and if three straight years of unprecedented disappointment can’t get Omar fired, then perhaps this final act of self-destruction will finally do him in.

I think it’s especially worth noting that when I look back one day on the Omar Minaya era, I won’t at first recall that third strike on Beltran in the 2006 NLCS, or seven up with 17 to play in 2007, or even the devastating encore in 2008. I will instead remember the Midnight Massacre, the Tony B. Challenge, and the Minaya Meltdown. Those are the moments when I have felt embarrassed to be a Mets fan.

I don’t walk around with my head hung low when my team loses. Every team has its share of disappointments. That’s baseball. But when I watch my general manager sell himself and the team out in order to settle a personal score with a member of the media, it adds just enough insult to render the injuries irredeemable.

Minaya’s Meltdown is a post from: Free Pedro