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Jeff PassanESPN
During a 45-minute talk with a local Rotary club in early February, Seattle Mariners CEO Kevin Mather despised a Japanese player for not learning English, belittling a star prospect from the Dominican Republic for his language skills and mocked another of the highest perspective. admitting to having manipulated his service time. He called his team’s best pitcher “very boring” and embellished the pitcher’s actions in an incident at the clubhouse, told another lie about a respected veteran and complained that the best player in the franchise during the ‘last decade was’ overpaid’.
Any of these mistakes are incalculably foolish. Together, they expose pathological levels of arrogance, hubris, and myopia. This is one of 30 people in charge of running a Major League Baseball franchise.
It wasn’t just Mather who said what he did. It’s that he thinks of it in the first place. And that he believed that a group of Rotarians represented the right audience to tell their distorted version of the truth. And that, in an apology, he considered the episode to be a “lapse of judgment,” as if bigotry was something unique that he tries on a call with strangers or tells false stories about the people who are at the heart of the business. it is supposed to be running constitutes good management.
However, the organization is proceeding with Mather, the mistrust sown by his comments had a profound effect on the ranks of players on Sunday, sources told ESPN. The range of feelings ranges from “angry” to “sad” to “what [expletive] I thought? “
Apparently, Mather emptied the franchise repository during the questions and answers, because his statement alternated between insignificant (trying to appropriate his comments on baseball operations decisions when they clearly reflect the priorities of all the organization) and empty.
Mather’s statement that he is “committed to repairing” and “doing whatever it takes to repair the damage I caused to the Seattle Mariners organization” sounded quite familiar. Maybe it’s because in 2018, after a Seattle Times report exposed two complaints from women employees against Mather, she said, “I’m committed to ensuring that all Mariners employees feel comfortable and respected.”
I wonder if Julio Rodriguez feels comfortable and respected. He is 20 years old and is one of the best prospects in baseball, a right-footed player in the Dominican Republic. When asked about him, Mather said, “He’s strong, his English isn’t tremendous.” Two years ago, sailors thought enough of Rodriguez’s English to post a video about him talking to him on his YouTube channel. His English sounds pretty good, and I don’t imagine it has gotten worse since.
I wonder if Jarred Kelenic feels comfortable and respected. He is 21 years old and the other beautiful perspective outside the field of sailors. The organization thinks so much about Kelenic, Mather told Rotarians, that he offered her a six-year contract with three club options. Because Kelenic rejected it, he said, it will start in the minor leagues in 2021, although the sailors plan to raise it in mid-April, when they will have ensured that it remains under the control of the team a another year. Everyone knows that a key element of comfort and respect is the manipulation of service time.
I wonder if Marco Gonzales feels comfortable and respected. Is he the ace of the Mariners, a 29-year-old whom Mather considers “very boring” because … he doesn’t throw very hard? Anyway, Mather was delighted to tell a story about Gonzales ’drive [former teammate Mike Leake] at the box office “after Leake resisted the team’s rules. The problem, a source familiar with the situation told ESPN, is that the story is false. Although Gonzales faced Leake, no he put his hands on her.
I wonder if Mitch Haniger feels comfortable and respected. As was the case with most of Mather’s comments, they included praise and initially spoke well of the 30-year-old who has lost the last 1½ years due to injury. After suggesting Haniger would be an All-Star this season, Mather said, “He has a bit of a chip on his shoulder as we talk about our prospects and these little kids. He’s mentioned more than once: and me ? ” According to a source close to Haniger, he has not discussed his position regarding future prospects.
I wonder if Kyle Seager feels comfortable and respected. Since debuting in 2011, Seager has racked up 32.2 wins over the spare. That’s more than Evan Longoria, Anthony Rizzo, Nelson Cruz, Justin Upton, Justin Turner, Michael Brantley and many others who played in the previous ten seasons. Prior to the 2015 season, Seager signed a contract extension for seven years and $ 100 million. Over the past six years, according to FanGraphs, it has produced $ 147.7 million. But Mather means he has paid too much.
I wonder, above all, if Hisashi Iwakuma feels comfortable and respected. In January, the Mariners recovered Iwakuma, who pitched very well for the team for six seasons after coming from Japan, as a special task coach. After explaining the recruitment, Mather’s first words to the Rotarians were, “A wonderful human being. His English was terrible.” Mather felt comfortable enough to issue a grievance: “I’m tired of paying your interpreter.” He smiled and laughed as he said it.
Iwakuma is 39 years old. He earned nearly $ 50 million with the sailors. You don’t need that job. You don’t need this organization. You don’t need someone contemplating your desire to be understood as a weakness. And it’s damn true that he shouldn’t be tried by someone who was promoted even after he was the subject of sexual harassment allegations for allegedly rubbing the back of a woman without permission and making inappropriate jokes about women in the dispatch to another employee.
This is how bad culture takes root. More than a decade ago, two women reported Mather to human resources, a department she oversaw at the time. They left with settlements, according to the Seattle Times, totaling more than $ 500,000. He will remain busy. Mather then went on to rise, to president and finally CEO. It took a newspaper to expose his past misdeeds.
He did it himself this time. And whether he was inflating himself to look like someone who matters (he spoke with confidence that an e-strike zone would be implemented within two years) or whether he is actually a person of consequence no longer matters. He’s the CEO of an organization, and the kind of man who tells stories in which people from foreign countries where they may not have had a chance to learn English are the focus.
In fact, Mather did the same in the Rotary convocation. Speaking about the improvements Seattle had made to its Dominican academy and its player education programs, he reported that the team would give Latin American teens a $ 30-a-day expense.
“Surprise, surprise!” Mather said. “They would get in trouble because they wouldn’t know how to speak the language, make changes or even buy dinner.”
Surprise, surprise. Just like that. Never mind what so many baseball teens have to do: go to a foreign country, with as many potential dangers as the United States, and pack up in a small apartment, five or six flying mattresses on the floor so the sport doesn’t it works. Don’t pay enough for your underage fans to get a place with your own bedroom and try to learn how to navigate all of this while spending the rest of the day figuring out how to hit the 98 painted in the corner.
It is the easiest thing in the world to sit in a tower of privileges and look down on others, to denigrate, to act with impunity because history has shown that it could without consequences. This is the lesson here. This is the takeaway. But I couldn’t help but think of something else, after listening to Kevin Mather for 45 minutes.
He is the last person who should be speaking that others speak poorly in English.