Before We Give the Mets Too Much Credit...
As reported by Bob Nightengale of USA Today, the New York Mets have acted swiftly and severely in their punishment of now former general manager, Jared Porter, firing the recently hired former Red Sox, Cubs, and Diamondbacks executive after a story broke on Monday evening of his alleged harassment of a female reporter during the 2016 MLB season. Porter held the title of general manager for less than two months before word leaked out of his 2016 misconduct while he was a member of the Chicago Cubs organization in which he sent over sixty unsolicited text messages to a female reporter, with the content and intent of these message escalating before he "Brett Favre-d" it and sent her several explicit NSFW images of himself. Porter, attempting to justify his actions, conceded that while he did send numerous text messages to the reporter, the lewd images clipped on at the end were not of him and were of a "joking" nature and intent. His explanation for the events is almost as pathetic as the actions themselves, so it should come as no surprise that Mets owner, Steve Cohen, has immediately distanced the organization from Porter, saying, "In my initial press conference I spoke about the importance of integrity and I meant it...There should be zero tolerance for this type of behavior." The Mets have maintained that they were unaware of Porter's past misconduct until it was brought to light on Monday evening and that they hold all organizational members to a high standard of personal conduct and integrity. Nice enough words from an organization that was on a meteoric rise in relevance, but the sentiment simply feels hollow to me. The Jared Porter incident and the ensuing fallout is but a microcosm of the widespread toxic masculinity that is pervasive in professional sports; we live in a day and age where people are able to be shielded from the consequences for their actions, however improper or immoral, if they excel at their job, if they are in positions of authority, or if the offended parties lack the platform to speak out against their persecutor on a national stage.
As more and more details have poured out of New York concerning the interactions between Porter and the unnamed female reporter (she has requested anonymity in lieu of the very real possibility that going public will only further damage her professional reputation in her home country), what stands out most to me is the fact that the New York Mets hired Jared Porter in the first place. Raise your hand if you've ever gone in for an interview for a job opportunity. More likely than not, you had to fill out a list of references, you most likely completed a criminal background check, got fingerprinted, and engaged in a rigorous discussion of your work beliefs, your drives, your principles, and your character. I have to imagine that these discussions are magnified ten-fold when the job at hand is to be in charge of running the personnel for a professional sports organization. I have to imagine that not only were the job references followed up on by people in the Mets organization, but also that a rigorous investigation was performed on Porter's conduct outside of his offices at 401 E. Jefferson St. in Phoenix, Arizona where Porter spent the past four years employed by the Diamondbacks. Surely, the story about Porter's interactions with this particular reporter were somewhere in the newsphere (three people at ESPN confirmed that they were aware of this story at the time of its occurrence). I find it very difficult, nay nearly impossible, to believe that the Mets, at the very least, weren't simply aware of this situation having transpired in 2016.
So, what gives? How did Porter end up as the GM of the Mets? Well, here's the rub: Porter is damn good at his job. In the past month, the Mets have embarked on a remarkable heel-turn, transforming themselves from a non-factor into a legitimate World Series contender for 2021 and beyond. Even on Monday morning, just hours before this story would break, Porter helped engineer a trade to bolster the back-end of the Met's rotation, acquiring Joey Lucchesi in a three-team trade with the Padres and Pirates. The Francisco Lindor/Carlos Carrasco deal, the signing of James McCann, the relatively low-key signing of former Cardinals slugger Jose Martinez: these are all excellent deals and they're a testament to who Porter is as a general manager. He's clearly a savvy investor and has a sharp business acumen for the politics of the game; multi-team trades, such as the one that brought Joey Lucchesi to Queens, require the GM to give-and-take, to negotiate and to come to an agreement that suits all sides involved. But let's be clear: Jared Porter's success as a front-office executive does absolutely nothing, NOTHING, to excuse him for his personal actions and decisions. This is a major problem that I see in professional sports; we allow the on-the-field persona, the business acumen in the front office, to override our moral judgement and to excuse individuals for their choices.
The only times that these people finally proverbially pay the pied piper is when irrefutable evidence emerges of their actions and becomes common knowledge. Donald Sterling didn't get run out of his ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers until 2014 when racist comments he made to his then-girlfriend got leaked to the press. It wasn't as if he became a racist overnight; there was a long, ugly history of discriminatory behavior conducted by Sterling over the course of his ownership of the Clippers. Brandon Taubman, formerly of the Houston Astros front office, openly mocked and taunted female reporters who opposed the team's acquisition and employment of Roberto Osuna, then under the specter of a domestic abuse investigation (since confirmed and responded to by the MLB). You're going to try to tell me that Taubman probably wasn't a misogynistic scumbag outside of the organization? The only reason Taubman and Sterling were ever held accountable for their actions and behaviors is they were called out on it publicly. Otherwise, they'd most likely still be with their respective franchises because here's the thing: they were both successful in building or rebuilding their franchises. Sterling's Clippers had emerged as one of the premier teams in the West during his final years as their owner while Taubman had helped lead the successful rebuild of a Houston Astros organization from being a 111-loss team in 2013 to being World Series champions four years later. Positive results earn you the grace of your fanbases and the ability to skirt the limits of law and order. Ditto with players. I've always found it remarkable how the video of Ray Rice hitting his then-girlfriend, Janay Palmer, effectively ended his career while a similarly damning video of Joe Mixon did little to affect his career prospects (all told, Mixon dropped one round in the 2017 NFL Draft). Moral of the story, if you can produce on and off the field, if you can make a positive impact on your sports franchise, the laws that govern our society? Eh, those are for those less fortunate than you.
While the actions of Jared Porter are far from atypical in this day and age, we must continue to denounce such behaviors and abuses of power when and where they occur. At the same time, however, perhaps it's time that we start holding those in charge of placing these toxic individuals in positions of authority responsible for enabling this cycle of abuse. Perhaps we should be calling out Steve Cohen and Sandy Alderson, asking them how they could overlook Porter's past indiscretions. Steve Cohen, you can talk about how you place integrity and character above all else in your organization, but perhaps you need to take a look in the mirror and realize that you didn't do a good enough job vetting your personnel, that maybe you need to re-evaluate the processes you have in place to root out these types of behavior. How could the NBA put up with the racist opining of Donald Sterling for years before acting on it? You all band together to call him out once the story broke into the public's consciousness, but where was that concern in year's past? Perhaps it's time we start holding those in power responsible for their business decisions to place performance above character, profit over integrity. Jared Porter's story won't be the last instance of an executive or player abusing those around them, but let's not let it fade away; let's use this instance as a platform to speak from and to challenge those who think that the sheen of a franchise excuses their actions.
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