ANAHEIM, Calif. – The lip readers were out in force, an army of amateur interpreters who plainly saw the message that Jerry Manuel was delivering to Jose Reyes on Tuesday night, no more than two or three minutes after Manuel’s tenure as Met manager officially had begun.
Depending on the source, he said one of two things:
“You’re embarrassing me.”
Or:
“Don’t you embarrass me.”
Over the next few minutes, of course, that is precisely what Jose Reyes did to his new manager, capped by a helmet-throwing, shirt-tail-flying pout that would have done any terrible 2-year-old proud. He stormed into the clubhouse. Manuel followed him a few minutes later.
And later still, Reyes re-emerged, sheepishly, sidling up to Manuel as if to ask permission for being there, which was granted. He apologized, in as public a place possible, to the manager for showing him up. He apologized to his teammates for throwing a fit in the face of Manuel merely wanting to make sure that his tweaked hamstring would cost him eight innings rather than eight weeks.
“I live for the game, it’s all I care about,” Reyes explained yesterday, “All I want to do is play.”
Manuel understood that. And also wanted to make sure Reyes, and everyone else, understood something else:
“That kind of behavior,” he said, “will not be tolerated.”
Manuel would have been well within his rights to fine Reyes, to bench him, to suspend him. On a team where we are told there has been a desperate need for a new sheriff in town for quite a while, it might even be a timely way to get that message across loudly and resoundingly.
Manuel went another way. He started Reyes last night, in the finale of the Mets’ three-game series with the Angels, proof that if he will not stand for his authority being challenged, neither will he do irreparable damage to his season to prove a point.
And it turned out he was right to do it. The Mets earned their most improbable, dramatic win, 5-4 in 10 innings, over the Angels last night. Damion Easley’s homer might have won it, but it was Reyes who made it all possible, getting three hits, scoring three runs, igniting the ninth-inning rally that tied the game and creating more baseball mischief by himself than the rest of this slumbering lineup combined.
“Next time, I’m gonna take my blade out,” Manuel said, jokingly, before the game. “I’ll cut him right on the field. But there isn’t going to be a next time.”
He better be right.
Because nothing will determine what kind of success Manuel achieves with this second managerial chance than how he develops his relationship with Reyes, the Mets’ emotional engine, its spiritual center. You can trace Willie Randolph’s downward arc pretty simply, to the night in Houston just before the All-Star break last July when he benched Reyes for not running hard on a ground ball.
That time, Reyes sulked for weeks. This time, he played at such a high-octane level, one of the few times the Angels got him out, he was two steps from second base on a pop fly to the infield.
The Mets badly need the high-octane player back in the fold, and it is Manuel’s chief assignment to locate him. Should he have been tougher on Reyes after his on-field hissy fit Tuesday? The Inner Lombardi in all of us says, immediately: damn right he should have been. Sit him down. Make him pay a penance.
But the Interim Manuel knows that the only way to remove that anvil-like title from the left side of his name is to somehow coax the Mets into the playoffs. The only way that is going to happen is to coax Reyes back to a place where he is among the most dangerous players in the National League. Manuel made it plain there will be no third chance on his watch for Reyes.
The circus surrounding the Mets isn’t going away – even the Wilpons’ chief media mascot couldn’t bring himself to defend them on this one – until Manuel’s presence, and the Mets attendant success, makes how they did what they did less relevant than what they did.
That hinges mainly on one player, and one relationship. Manuel got a head start on it Tuesday night. He had better have chosen the proper path.