The New York Mets are no stranger to apologizing for a gaff, and this time it was general manager Brodie Van Wagenen who needed to issue a statement which clarified comments he made about commissioner Rob Manfred.
Expressing private thoughts in-front of an unexpectedly hot mic is a seemingly more common occurrence thanks to increased remote meetings. On Thursday, Van Wagenen went on a rant about Major League Baseball’s commissioner, while unknowingly being broadcast by the Mets’ app.
“He just doesn’t get it,” Van Wagenen told two people in a room at Citi Field, along with the entire world via the Mets app and website.
Multiple MLB games were postponed Thursday night, including the Mets contest against the Marlins, as players chose to protest police brutality and racial injustice. Instead of skipping the game entirely, Van Wagenen believed Manfred wanted the Mets and Marlins to leave the field at their scheduled start time of 7:10, only to return an hour later for first pitch.
“Baseball’s trying to come up with a solution that would be super powerful. Three of us here, can’t leave this room,” Van Wagenen said. “They’re saying, ‘It would be really great if you could have them all take the field, and then they leave the field, and then they come back and play at 8:10.’
“And I was like, what? … They’re not playing, that’s not happening. But that’s Rob’s instinct. It’s exactly what we were talking about. At a leadership level, he doesn’t get it. He just doesn’t get it.”
But after Van Wagenen found out his comments were broadcast on the web, he issued an apology, claiming his rant against Manfred was “wrong and unfounded.”
“Jeff Wilpon called Commissioner Manfred this afternoon to notify him that our players voted not to play,” Van Wagenen’s statement read. “They discussed the challenges of rescheduling the game. Jeff proposed an idea of playing the game an hour later. I misunderstood that this was the Commissioner’s idea. In actuality, this was Jeff’s suggestion. The players had already made their decision so I felt the suggestion was not helpful. My frustration with the Commissioner was wrong and unfounded. I apologize to the Commissioner for my disrespectful comments and poor judgment in inaccurately describing the contents of his private conversation with Jeff Wilpon.”
Adding to the Mets blunder, team owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon released a statement of their own to explain the situation. Both statements misspelled their general manager’s name as “Brody” instead of the correct spelling of Brodie.
