The newspaper industry is dying quickly; we all know and acknowledge that. But can’t it at least die with dignity? Of course, to die with dignity you have to have lived with dignity, and not all newspapers and reporters have done that. Many certainly have acted with an absence of professionalism.

Believe it or not, these thoughts in my head stem from baseball. As bad as things have gone for the Mets this season, with more injuries than a rehab center and fewer hits than Tiny Tim, they got worse on Monday.

The Mets fired Tony Bernazard as their executive in charge of player development and bungled their way through a related episode. General manager Omar Minaya raised a serious, relevant issue involving a reporter for the New York Daily News at the Bernazard news conference, then reconvened reporters in the rear of the CitiField press box and apologized for bringing up the issue in the context in which he did. He was right in the first instance, wrong in the second.

But in the second instance, Minaya was accompanied by Jeff Wilpon, the owner’s son and chief operating officer, which helped explain his turnabout.

The Mets obviously concluded that Bernazard’s bad acts, among them challenging minor league players to a fight and screaming at the Mets’ superstar closer on the team bus, compelled them to jettison the former second baseman. Minaya, following an in-house investigation, made the decision and passed on his recommendation to the Wilpons, who agreed.

What Minaya didn’t mention to the Wilpons, though – and this was his mistake – was that he planned to bring up a related issue at the news conference. Adam Rubin, the Daily News reporter, who wrote the Bernazard story last week, did not have completely clean hands in his report.

At the news conference Minaya disclosed that in past years Rubin had lobbied him, Bernazard and others in the Mets’ organization for a job in the player development department.

“When the report came it was by Adam Rubin,” Minaya said. “I had to tell myself wow.”

“Are you saying,” Minaya was asked, “when he wrote the stories you were suspicious about what he was trying to do?”

“No,” Minaya replied, “I’m saying I had to scuffle a lot when I made the decision because I knew the person writing this has been lobbying myself and others in the organization for a position in player development.”

“Coming from Adam Rubin,” Minaya added a minute later, “you have to understand that Adam for the last couple of years has lobbied for a player development position. He has lobbied myself, he has lobbied Tony. So when these things came up I had to think about it. I said we have to find out about this.”

Minaya reached that conclusion even though he was aware of Rubin’s stated interest in player development.

“When the stories came out,” Minaya said, “I had to look at the stories and say look, I know who’s writing the stories, but I owe it to the organization to make an even more thorough investigation and expedite the investigation.” The Mets’ human resources department, the general manager said, had begun looking into Bernazard’s behavior even before the Daily News reports.

In response to a question, Minaya said he had never come across this sort of scenario in any other organization he worked for.

At one point, Rubin, who was at the news conference, asked, “Are you alleging that I tried to tear Tony down so I could take his job?”

“No, I’m not saying that,” Minaya said. “All I’m saying is that in the past you have lobbied for a job. You have told people in the front office that you want to work in the front office.”

“Over the years,” Minaya added, “he said he would like to work in the front office, in my front office, not only me but he has asked others.”

Again Rubin asked if Minaya was saying that he had a “personal stake” in what he wrote about Bernazard, and Minaya said, “I am not suggesting that.”

When the news conference ended, reporters surrounded Rubin, who suggested that perhaps Bernazard had given Minaya the idea to say what he had.

Is Omar lying, I asked Rubin. Anybody who says he was asking for a job is lying, Rubin said. “The most forward I think I have ever been,” Rubin began, then stopped and began again, “There may be some e-mail somewhere that they dig up, but my intention was always how do you go about doing this? That was always my intention and nothing more than that.”

Explaining his desire to find out about working in baseball, Rubin said, “The way newspapers are going we all need to look out for ourselves. I’m 35 years old. I’m thinking about the next 30 years of my life. I’ve asked in the past how do you get into that.”

Rubin said he had asked people from all 30 teams how one gets into the baseball business, but someone who has covered baseball for more than five years, as Rubin has, should not have to ask how. It has all been there in front of him.

Much of what Rubin said sounded like good old spin. The saddest thing he said was “There is no conflict of interest.”

But of course there’s a conflict of interest. I’m not suggesting that Rubin wrote the stories to undermine Bernazard, but whatever his intention was in speaking to Mets’ officials about working in baseball Rubin created a situation that raised questions about his motives. That’s certainly how Minaya saw it, and he was justified in thinking that way. Rubin was wrong for not understanding it.

I sent an e-mail to Leon Carter, the Daily News sports editor, asking if he thought Rubin was guilty of a conflict of interest. He did not reply. Instead I received the newspaper’s statement from the editor-in-chief, Martin Dunn.

“This was a well-reported, well-researched, exclusive story, and it’s a shame that the Mets deemed fit to cast aspersions on our reporter instead of dealing with the issues at hand. We stand by Adam 1,000%.”

The Mets, of course, did deal with the issues at hand. They fired Bernazard. But the Daily News editor-in-chief did not deal with the conflict of interest so I sent another e-mail on the conflict question but got no further reply.

In the meantime, Minaya and Jeff Wilpon came to the press box for news conference Part II. Minaya apologized not for what he said but for when he said it. ”That was not a proper forum for me to raise those issues,” he said.

I disagree. That was the absolutely right forum. When else? When no one was paying attention any longer?  

A few years ago I defended and supported Rubin when a few of his colleagues on the Mets’ beat attacked him for what they considered a soft interview with Art Howe, the team’s manager whom the other writers didn’t like. They were wrong because it was a legitimate interview. In this instance, all of the other writers and columnists are virtually certain to side with Rubin against the Mets because the way most reporters think the writer is always right and the team wrong. In my view, though, Rubin was wrong because yes, Adam, it was a conflict of interest.

 

Here they come again. Like clockwork. Wind them up, and they will be there in September fighting for a playoff spot. Despite slow starts to their seasons, the Houston Astros recovered in four of the past five years and were serious contenders by the final weeks. They’re doing it again this season, though this time a little earlier than their usual pattern.

Phil Garner, who as the manager directed some of those comebacks, recounted a conversation he had with his successor, Cecil Cooper, earlier this season.

“He had tough times the first two months,” Garner related, “and he said, ‘I didn’t know it would be that tough.’ I said ‘you’ll be okay.’”

That’s the sort of thing Garner said he told his players in his years as their manager. “When I was there, I used it,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Okay, boys, we’re struggling, but good times are coming.’”

After 65 games this season the Astros had a 30-35 record and were in last place in the six-team National League Central. After they swept a three-game series from first-place St. Louis last week, they had won 19 of their last 30 games and were tied for second, only a game behind the Cardinals.

“We haven’t run off 9 or 10 wins in a row so it never really registered on the radar screen,” general manager Ed Wade said, “but about 8 or 9 series ago we started winning series. People said they’re doing it but against teams that were struggling. Now we’ve stepped up and done it against better teams.”

The pattern has become familiar:

¶ 2008 – On July 24 the Astros had a 46-55 record and were in neither the division nor the wild-card race. But they won 34 of their next 46 games and leaped to three games back in the wild-card standings. Then Hurricane Ike struck Houston.

“Last year,” Wade said, “we had a good race until it was interrupted by a hurricane.”

Ike washed out two home games against the Cubs Sept. 12 and 13 and forced the teams to play the games in Milwaukee, far from a neutral site considering the city’s proximity to Chicago. The Astros lost both games, then three more in Florida and found themselves 5 games back with 10 to play. They never recovered.

¶ 2006 – With only 12 games to play, the Astros were five games under .500 and eight and a half games from first in their division. But they won nine straight while the Cardinals lost seven straight, and suddenly Houston was only half a game from first. The race ended there, though. The Cardinals won two of three from Milwaukee, and the Astros lost two of three in Atlanta.

“We had a good run,” Garner said. “We just ran out of time. The season has plenty of time. We started playing our best baseball late. If we had maybe four more games, we might have caught them. That’s how good we were playing.”

¶ 2005 – The Astros struggled to a 20-34 record the first two months of the season, then heard the alarm clock go off and compiled a 69-39 record the rest of the way. They edged the Phillies by a game for the wild card.

“We swept the Nationals in Washington and waited for the Astros-Cubs game to end and ended up out of the playoffs,” recalled Wade, who was the Phillies’ general manager that year.

¶ 2004 – The Astros didn’t get off to a poor start; they were in first place in the N.L. Central on May 21 with a 24-17 record. But they staggered through the middle of the season with a  32-43 record, recovering in time to win 36 of their last 46 games and the wild card by a game over San Francisco.

“I thought it was great managing and it probably still is; Cecil’s doing a great job,” said Garner, the manager of the two wild-card teams plus the near miss in 2006. “Can you explain why a team plays so much better at different times of the year? I can’t explain it.”

Garner, however, offered a theory. “Ever since the Bagwell and Biggio era,” he said, “they start slowly, then play like gangbusters the rest of the year. The players know how to grind it out as the season gets tougher. Now I think they have the same kind of mix with Tejada and Pudge, and I think Berkman is taking more of a leadership role. I think they have the grit and determination to do it if the pitching holds up.”

Wade credited the Houston players for playing relentlessly in the second half of the season, citing their approach last season.

“These guys showed up to play every night,” the general manager said. “They never got to the point where they mailed it in. Last year we were so far behind at different points in time; we were playing so poorly it would have been easy for them to give up. I have to give credit to the players for the way they approached the game in a very professional manner.

“I don’t think our guys focus on standings early in the season. They come to the park every day with the same attitude and aren’t fazed by whatever short-term success or failure we have. I’ve seen the same this year. The early struggles weren’t as significant as last year, but we put ourselves under .500.”

The Astros have a collection of hitters who have fueled this year’s drive. Lance Berkman, who went on the disabled list the other day, went into Saturday’s game as the team leader in home runs with 18 and in slugging (.525) and on-base (.407) percentages. He had driven in 55 runs, putting him between Carlos Lee (59) and Miguel Tejada (54).

Tejada’s .329 batting average led the team, and Lee was hitting .306 with 15 homers.

“Berkman’s on the shelf right now, but he’s going to be okay,” said Garner, who still lives in Houston and remains a fan of the team despite having been fired with a month left in the 2007 season. “I anticipate him having a big run. Tejada continues to hit the ball well. Lee is a big run producer. He can drive in a run in an important part of the game against a good pitcher.”

Michael Bourn has also contributed significantly as the leadoff hitter, hitting .287 and stealing 37 bases in 45 attempts (82 percent).

“We haven’t relied on one particular player at any time,” Wade said.

DON’T LOOK FOR TRADES HERE

With four teams seemingly in position to scrap the rest of the season for the National League Central title, Ed Wade, the Astros’ general manager, was asked last Thursday if he thought the teams would try to bolster their chances through trades before the July 31 non-waiver trading deadline.

“I would think there will probably be some activity in our division,” Wade said.

That day the Cardinals added infielder Julio Lugo to their roster and less than 24 hours later, they acquired left fielder Matt Holliday from Oakland. In their first two games as St. Louis teammates, Holliday and Lugo combined for 12 hits – 5 singles, 4 doubles, 2 triples, 1 home run.

Wade didn’t expect to do any significant trading himself.

“We extended our payroll to sign Pudge in spring training so we’re not in position to add anybody of substance,” Wade said, referring to catcher Ivan Rodriguez. “We’re also rebuilding our farm system so we aren’t going to give up multiple prospects in a deal.”

Wade said he alerted the Houston players before the All-Star break to the likelihood that he wouldn’t be doing anything significant.

“I expressed faith in the guys we have and explained our situation,” he said. “Randy Wolf is not going to walk through the door at the trading deadline liked last year.”

The Astros acquired Wolf from San Diego nine days before the deadline last year, and he compiled a 6-2 record in 12 starts for them.

NEW NAMES FOR ENCYCLOPEDIAS

Until May 18 of last season the major leagues had never had a player named Hoffpauir. Then for three weeks this month there were two Hoffpauirs, first baseman-outfielder Micah of the Cubs and second baseman Jarrett of the Cardinals. As far as they know, despite their unusual name, they are not related.

“I feel that somewhere along the lines we may be, but neither of us know,” Micah said. “Last year when he was in Memphis and I was in Iowa, we visited a little before a game. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him during the Cubs-Cards series this season.”

The Cubs-Cardinals series July 10-12 was the last Jarrett played before returning to the minors. “I’m not sure how we would be related,” Micah said. “He was telling me his family comes from the Mississippi-Louisiana area. That’s where my father’s family grew up, western Louisiana and southeast Texas. That’s where my dad was raised. That’s the only thing that makes me think we could be related.”

Micah, 29, was born in Texas, Jarrett, 26, in Mississippi. Hoffpauir, pronounced Hoff-power, is a German name, Micah said.

THE DODGERS’ $47 MILLION MAN EMERGES

If you blinked, you might have missed it, but Jason Schmidt pitched last week.

Schmidt, a veteran right-hander, signed a three-year, $47 million contract with the Dodgers in December 2006 after several strong seasons in San Francisco. Ned Colletti, the Dodgers’ general manager, was the Giants’ assistant general manager, when Schmidt played there.

But Schmidt started only three games in 2007 before landing on the disabled list with a shoulder ailment and made only six starts the entire season. A shoulder operation on June 20 ended his season.

Three times in 2008 Schmidt attempted rehabilitation assignment but never made it back to the Dodgers. He had another shoulder operation Sept. 10. But on July 20 this season he pitched five innings against Cincinnati, allowing three runs in a 7-5 decision and matching his victory total of his first two seasons with the Dodgers.

PARK’S REINVENTED CAREER

Chan Ho Park, the first Korean to pitch in a major league, has seemingly been around forever, and the way he has revived his career he may last forever. Park, who first pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1994, has also started games for the Rangers, the Padres, the Mets (one game in 2007), the Dodgers again last year and the Phillies.

But after seven starts for the Phillies this season, as he was about to turn 36 and with a 7.29 earned run average, Park moved into the bullpen. In 21 relief appearances since his last start May 17 Park has registered a 2.78 e.r.a. Subtract one game, in which he allowed four earned runs in one inning, and his e.r.a. would be 1.72.

Park first demonstrated his ability in relief pitching for the Korean team in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006.

CHECKING THE PIRATES’ CHECKLIST

Why do I have this image of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ hierarchy at work? They sit in their office with a big board on the wall in front of them, their players’ names listed on it.

“Jason Bay…check.

“Nate McLouth…check.

“Nyjer Morgan…check.

“Adam LaRoche…check.

“Eric Hinske…check.”

“Okay, boss,” the general manager says with pride and satisfaction. “Only Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez to go.”

SILENT BY DESIGN

The Mets’ problems on and off the field have produced the typical overreaction from the news media. Case in point: an article in The New York Times last Friday.

Labeled analysis, the piece emphasized the public absence of the Wilpons, owner Fred and son Jeff, as they have withheld comment on the team’s negative developments. What the reporter, new to the New York baseball scene, apparently doesn’t know is that the Wilpons are following the structure that Fred Wilpon established when he named Omar Minaya executive vice president of baseball operations and general manager in 2004.

Deciding that he wanted Minaya to be the spokesman for the organization, Wilpon withdrew into the background and has remained there since. When Jeff Wilpon early on made some public comments, his father silenced him. The practice has not changed and won’t unless and until Fred Wilpon decides his way isn’t working. He isn’t very likely going to decide that in the near future.

 

 

Seldom in recent years has a team flamed out as the Mets have in recent weeks. Two days into this month, they were one game behind Philadelphia. Less than three weeks later, they had plummeted 10 games south of the Phillies. If Mets’ fans want to look for positives, at least they won’t have to fear a 17-game September spiral this season.

I have to laugh at the idea I raised before the season. This year, I suggested, the Mets could avoid the collapse they suffered in 2007 and again in 2008 by having an 18-game lead with 17 games to play. They apparently found that goal too daunting and decided it would be easier to be 18 games behind the Phillies with 17 to play.

That’s where they are headed, and they have shown no signs of doing otherwise. The team’s performance has utterly frustrated their fans, who want everyone fired if not drawn and quartered. Frustration prompts the fans to become irrational as they search for the appropriate areas to place blame.

They refuse to accept the myriad Mets injuries as a reason for the team’s poor performance. And even if the Mets have incurred one major injury after another, they should have gone out and replaced those players with others of equal ability, as if those players are stocked somewhere waiting to be plucked off the shelf by teams in need.

Let’s be realistic. Teams that reach the playoffs usually are those that have avoided serious or multiple injuries. Good teams that don’t get there often are those that have been shortcircuited by injuries.

Based on the latest figures available from Major League Baseball, the Mets this season have lost 657 days to the disabled list, second most only to the San Diego Padres’ 793 days.

The Mets’ list includes a host of significant players. First baseman Carlos Delgado, shortstop Jose Reyes, center fielder Carlos Beltran, starting pitcher John Maine and setup reliever J.J. Putz are currently on the list.

At other times this season, catcher Brian Schneider and the then right fielder Ryan Church were on the list, as were two replacements for injured players, shortstop Alex Cora and center fielder Angel Pagan (twice), primary starter Oliver Perez, and a substitute starter, Tim Redding.

Fernando Nieve was in the rotation as a substitute starter, tore a thigh muscle running to first base and wound up disabled. Two other replacements, infielder Ramon Martinez and outfielder Fernando Martinez, were also injured and are on the disabled list. Gary Sheffield, whose signing was criticized because of his age but who has been an important part of the offense, injured his leg running in the outfield but was not out on the disabled list immediately.

It’s not just the number of players who have served disabled time. It’s how much time they have served.  Delgado has been out since May 11, Reyes since May 23, Putz since June 5, Maine since June 12, Beltran since June 22. When Perez was out, he was out for two months.

According to the Mets, they have had their planned pre-season lineup on the field only once this season. That was very early, in their 11^th game of the season, when Johan Santana beat Milwaukee, 1-0, on April 18.

The Mets say they have also figured that the Phillies have had their planned lineup start more than 60 percent of their games.

Are teams to blame for their own injuries? Some disgruntled Mets fans would argue that they are, that the players haven’t been properly conditioned. George Steinbrenner used to take that position in the face of injuries to Yankees players, but teams engage in so much conditioning these days that it’s hard to blame the trainers or the conditioning coaches.

If the Mets can be blamed for anything, it might be what appears to be their coddling of Perez, their 27-year-old left-hander, whom general manager Omar Minaya thought had such a promising future that he gave him a three-year, $36 million contract last winter, passing up the opportunity to sign a more stable starter like Derek Lowe or Randy Wolf.

Minaya didn’t like the idea of giving Lowe, a 35-year-old pitcher, the four-year contract he wanted (Atlanta gave him $60 million), and he didn’t think enough of Wolf, a 32-year-old left-hander, who would have been a far more economical signing. Los Angeles gave him a one-year contract for $5 million.

I will admit that when the Mets initially acquired Perez and he produced a 15-10 record in his first full season with them in 2007, I liked his future. He was only 26, he was left-handed (left-handers are thought to develop more slowly) and he had pitched a terrific season for a poor Pittsburgh team in 2004, compiling a 2.98 earned run average, fifth lowest in the league, and striking out 239, fourth most in the N.L., in 196 innings.

Perez, though, has demonstrated no aptitude for improvement. His 2008 season was worse than 2007, and that’s when the Mets should have seriously considered letting him go as a free agent. This year has been only worse as he has regressed into some previous stage of development.

After five starts this season he was sent to the minors, where it was discovered he had a knee problem. Two months later he returned to the Mets with a healthy knee but a still questionable arm. In three starts he walked 17 batters in 17 innings, giving him 41 hits and 38 walks in 38 2/3 innings for the season and a ratio of 19 baserunners per nine innings.

After his third start back the other day, after he walked six and hit a batter in six innings in a 4-0 loss to Washington, the N.L.’s weakest team, manager Jerry Manuel found something positive to say about Perez.

“His pitches had life on them,” he said. “Some of them were okay. He gets away from his sequence and can’t get back to it. I think he’s fine. Obviously 17 walks in 17 innings you have to play good defense. You can’t flinch on defense. You have to play good.”

Defense? How is the defense supposed to stop Perez from walking 17 in 17 innings? A pitcher who walks one batter per inning taxes the defense. He’s throwing a lot of balls, taking a lot of time to get through an inning and has the infielders playing back on their heels instead of being on their toes and ready to field anything hit to or near them.

But even Minaya spoke positively about Perez “He kept the game close,” Minaya said. “He’s improving. He’ll get better.”

I am skeptical about Perez’s chances of getting better. Instead of coddling him, the Mets might want to take a tough-love approach. Bear down, buddy, and throw strikes, or else. Unfortunately there’s not much “or else.” They can’t take his money away, and based on what we have seen of Perez, would he really care if they took his job away from him?

Perez has been part of a pitching letdown in the face of team adversity. Mike Pelfrey has become inconsistent to the extent that the Mets can’t be certain what to expect from him in any given start. Livan Hernandez has struggled some but has done a decent job. Santana is Santana, which is about the only relief the Mets get.

Offensively, the absence of Beltran, Reyes and Delgado has been devastating. Without them, David Wright has not been the same productive hitter, most likely trying to make up for their absence when such a thing is impossible.

Heading into their weekend series in Houston, the Mets had been shut out five times in their previous 14 games. In 10 of the previous 16 games, they had scored no more than two runs in a game. They lost 11 of those games.

The Mets have one of the two puniest offenses in the league, sharing that dubious distinction with the Padres.  Each had 244 extra-base hits entering the weekend. No general manager goes out at mid-season and finds players to beef up an injury-devastated lineup, but that’s what Mets fans expect Minaya to do.

“The NY baseball world thinks he’s a complete putz,” one fed-up fan wrote in an e-mail, and he wasn’t referring to J.J.

On top of their on-field problems the Mets have had to deal with two other stories that add insult to their injuries, one questionable, one totally untrue.

The New York Daily News reported that a Mets’ vice president, Tony Bernazard, ripped off his shirt at a meeting with the Class AA Binghamton team and challenged the underachieving players to fight. The story traveled quickly and widely and had columnists calling for Minaya to fire Bernazard.

However, a report in the Binghamton, N.Y., newspaper quoted the team manager and players as saying the Daily News story was overblown. Among other things, the story said Bernazard (at right) singled out shortstop Jose Coronado and called him a vulgar name.

“No, he didn’t call me a name or ask me to fight,” the Binghamton paper quoted Coronado as saying.

The youngster, however, could understandably not want to say anything that could get him in trouble with the organization. It remains to be seen, following a club investigation, what really happened. 

From another report, this one by SI.com, came the so-called news that the Mets had rejected a Toronto offer to trade pitcher Roy Halladay to them for four young players whom the report named.

Minaya was perplexed about the source of that report. “I haven’t even talked to them about Halladay,” the general manager said. “They called me and we didn’t exchange names.”

The Halladay and Bernazard reports were difficult enough for the Mets to have to deal with, but the injuries and the losses were far worse.