Podcast: Stephanie Apstein
Sports Illustrated reporter Stephanie Apstein joins the @MetsRewind Podcast. We talk about her 4,000 word feature about the Mets published last fall and Buck Showalter's influence.
MetsRewind sat down with Sports Illustrated senior writer Stephanie Apstein this week to talk Mets baseball. Apstein authored the 4,000 word feature on the 2022 Mets back in October. What she experienced is worth some additional discussion. You can listen to the show in its entirety or read select outakes below.
MR: As a reader, I came away thinking how underappreciated Buck Showalter’s presence was to the team. To see it condensed into a single story -- his experience and wisdom -- started to shine through in your article. You had a front row seat to that evolution of the team, the culture, what they're trying to do long term. Were there any unexpected takeaways from your reporting?
Stephanie Apstein: I felt like Showalter introduced accountability. That is sort of his reputation. Sometimes perhaps even to a fault that he can be overly meticulous.
But as I was around them, the, the story that most stood out to me is actually the end. Is at the end of the story. I have been there for years and I have watched as the Mets get sort of annoyed with their broadcasters because part of what makes the broadcast crew -- the best in the sport -- is that they are willing to tell you what they see. Gary, Keith, and Ron will really tell you, ‘that guy was out of position on the wheel play.’ Sometimes the Mets players don't appreciate that.
Last year there was none of that. I asked why that was and I eventually I learned that it was because Buck Showalter muted the televisions in the clubhouse during the game. The broadcast is not for them. So, he turned it off, and it was really that simple.
MR: This really sounds elementary, but you wrote this sentence: The Mets (have become) a normal baseball team. When I read that sentence, that's what I think all fans were kind of going for here. Let's get rid of some of the, the nonsense. If you don't know Mets history, you won’t understand the weight of those words. Brodie Van Wagenen, Jared Porter, Luis Rojas, Mickey Callaway, the thumbs down controversy, the whole Donnie Stevenson thing. So it just created a lot of chaos, and as a fan, I thought it was a bit embarrassing and unprofessional. You were really able to synthesize that and that’s the essence of the story. The Mets have become a normal baseball team – and a winning baseball team.
Apstein: The most surprising thing is that they just didn't have many of these ridiculously chaotic long-term stories that sometimes define the Mets.
Another one from last year was the rat and raccoon. Jeff McNeil and Francisco Lindor pretended they were fighting about a rodent in the dugout when in fact they were arguing about defensive positioning. The story just continued forever because obviously they weren't arguing about whether it was a rat or a raccoon.
I asked Taijuan Walker about that incident, if anything like that would've happened in 2022, and he said no, because Buck would've sniffed it out immediately and it never would've gotten to the media. No one outside the clubhouse would ever have heard about it. Obviously there are gonna be disagreements, but there's no reason that those things have to become season long defining stories.
MR: You wrote one paragraph in the story that really confounded me and I wonder if you could give any more substance to this: The Mets relationship with the media remains uncomfortable at best. The team initially agreed to make several front office staffers available for interviews for this story before rescinding that access. What was happening there?
Apstein: I think that they still get nervous. A team that is confident in all of its behaviors feels like, sure, we can talk about what's going on here because we feel like we know what people are going to say and we feel like we're going to be comfortable with what they say.
I also think that there's some discomfort when a story is about how things have changed for the better. That sort of necessarily means that things were worse before, and If you can't be sure, what people are talking about and what it used to be like under the Wilpons, the stories they are telling might not be favorable.
MR: When you were writing about Buck Showalter there was nothing mind blowing about what he was doing. But he picks his spots: like, the pool table in the clubhouse, moving the bathrooms away from the door to his office. He said, “That wasn't a good look.” He's very aware of what's going on around him, but not too overbearing.
Apstein: There was a good story in The Athletic last year as well that mentioned some of Buck’s little issues … He was joking, ‘Is this one of those anal things that I get made fun of for?’ One of the issues they were discussing was that the sight lines from the dugout in Citi Field are very bad. The manager couldn't see right field. So he had them build this little platform in the dugout so that he could stand on it so he could see right field.
That dugout has been there for years, and they never got it fixed. The glare off the offices in Citi Field right during afternoon games -- hitters can't see. So, what have we been doing for nearly a dozen years? It takes Buck Showalter showing up to say something!? But sometimes that's what it takes. There’s a level of professionalism that I think the Mets are starting to see.