Omar Minaya is dressed to the nueves — dark suit, yellow power tie, spiffy black shoes — so well, in fact, that his short, gray hair looks like a perfectly matched accessory. Encircled by a group of decidedly less sartorially blessed reporters, he shifts seamlessly from English to Spanish, his English sentences typically ending with a streetwise "youknowwhatI'msayin'?"
All around Minaya, the New York Mets' new general manager, his players are talking about taking New York City away from the Yankees, and yanking the National League East away from the Atlanta Braves. Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran, the team's two big free agent signees this winter, may be the stars of this media event — the kickoff to the team's annual PR-based winter caravan around the city. But Minaya, without question, is the story.
"He's changing the way people look at this franchise," Beltran said.
A baseball team, it is often said, takes on the personality of its manager. But the 2005 New York Mets — or, as they are calling themselves these days, the "New Mets" — may be the first team in history that is molded to assume the personality of its general manager. The 45-year-old Minaya is dynamic, aggressive, cosmopolitan and Hispanic — the first and so far the only Hispanic GM in the game — and increasingly, so are the Mets.
In his first winter at the helm in Queens, not far from the streets of his youth, Minaya pulled off a stunning double play, netting — at prices some considered exorbitant — both the best pitcher and the best position player on the free agent market. Martinez, the legendary Dominican and former Boston Red Sox ace, will head up the Mets' rotation, while Beltran, the 27-year-old Puerto Rican center fielder, will anchor their lineup.
Three years of running the Major League Baseball-run orphanage known as the Montreal Expos on a bare-bones budget had conditioned Minaya to spend whatever money he had quickly, before someone changed his mind. That hasn't changed in New York; only the placement of the decimal point has.
Minaya arrived in New York in October and started handing out owner Fred Wilpon's money soon thereafter. In dishing out nearly $200 million in contracts this winter — including a seven-year, $119 million deal for Beltran; four years, $53 million for Martinez; and a three-year, $22.5 million extension for pitcher Kris Benson — Minaya and the Mets drew the ire of their fellow executives and, reportedly, the commissioner's office.
But the signings have succeeded in energizing the Mets franchise at a time when the stakes could not be higher. Behind the Mets are three straight losing seasons, each seemingly more hideous than the last. They finished fifth, fifth and fourth in the NL East in those seasons, and a distant second to the Yankees in the Big Apple.
And ahead of them, in 2006, is the scheduled debut of their regional sports network, which the Mets hope will challenge the Yankees' YES Network for viewership among the city's baseball fans and produce the commensurate revenues.
But first, the Mets had to get some decent programming to air on it.
For that duty, the Wilpons — Fred and son Jeff, the team's chief operating officer — enlisted Minaya, who had first earned a reputation as a talent evaluator in the Texas Rangers organization in the 1980s; his first signee to make the majors was Sammy Sosa. Minaya spent three years as an assistant GM with the Mets before accepting Commissioner Bud Selig's offer to run the Expos in 2002. By that time, Minaya had interviewed six times for GM jobs without getting an offer.
The Mets pried Minaya away from the Expos just as that franchise was set to be moved to Washington and rechristened the Nationals. For Minaya, the choice was easy: New York was home. Though born in the Dominican Republic, he grew up from the age of 8 in Queens, playing Little League baseball in the Corona neighborhood, a long home run from Shea Stadium.
"I'm a New Yorker, what can I say?" said Minaya, who lives in New Jersey now with his wife, Rachel, and their two children. "It would have been a great opportunity to be part of [the Expos-Nationals franchise] in Washington, to start with a clean slate. But this was home."
With Minaya at the helm — and holding the purse strings to a payroll budget that could push $120 million this year — the Mets set about on a wildly ambitious three-pronged mission to conquer lands both near and far.
Latin America
Although Minaya bristles at suggestions he has targeted Hispanic players, the fact remains his acquisitions this winter include not only Beltran (Puerto Rico) and Martinez (Dominican Republic), but also Miguel Cairo (Venezuela), Andres Galarraga (Venezuela) and Felix Heredia (Dominican Republic).
Minaya "is going to be creating some serious branding" in Latin America, said Fernando Cuza, Martinez's agent. "In the Dominican Republic, the country shuts down every fifth day," when Martinez pitches. "When Pedro was in Boston, everybody in the Dominican Republic was a Red Sox fan. Now, they will be Mets fans.
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"He's done the same thing in Puerto Rico, with Beltran. And let's not forget [first baseman] Andres Galarraga [whom Minaya signed to a minor league deal]. He's still the biggest star in Venezuela — the Michael Jordan of Venezuela. And those countries are all hotbeds of prospects, who will all be following the Mets."
New York City
The Yankees have dominated the Mets in all measurable criteria over the past decade or so — attendance totals, back-page headlines, championships, etc. But it wasn't always that way: The Mets outdrew the Yankees in attendance as recently as 1992 — and for eight years in a row prior to that — and they believe they can do it again.
"After this year, I don't know who's going to be second [in the city]. It remains to be seen," Martinez said. "Even though the Yankees are a very upscale team, and winners, I believe we can make a change."
Minaya's choice as manager, Willie Randolph, is also a New Yorker, having grown up in Brooklyn as a Mets fan, then becoming a six-time all-star for the Yankees.
Minaya has another theory about why the Mets can dominate the city again: "This is a National League town, man," he said.
When a reporter looked at him quizzically, he continued:
"Think about it," he said. "Up until the 1950s there were two National League teams in the city [the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants]. The people who are baseball fans today, their fathers and grandfathers grew up in that era. And how is baseball passed down? From fathers to sons. I'm telling you: This is a National League town."
The NL East
In 2004, the Mets came within four games of a third straight last-place finish — Minaya's Expos, with their shoestring budget, beat them by 7 1/2 games in 2002 and 16 1/2 games in 2003, an embarrassing reality for a franchise with the resources of the Mets.
Although the Mets believe they can end Atlanta's reign of 13 straight division titles this season, their master plan is more targeted toward 2006 when they get out from under the contracts of Mike Piazza and Tom Glavine, and when their cable network is set to debut, with all its revenue-generating potential.
The defining trait of the Mets franchise in the last half-decade was its queasiness for risk-taking. The Mets danced around the edges of the bidding for stars such as Alex Rodriguez and Vladimir Guerrero, but always found a reason not to go the necessary step to get something done.
Under Minaya, that era is over — which is not surprising. His reputation for the stunning move was built in Montreal, where, with the Expos on the fringes of contention in the summer of 2002, he somehow managed to acquire ace Bartolo Colon and slugger Cliff Floyd — and their hefty contracts — without adding anything to his MLB-mandated payroll.
This winter, to get Martinez, he did what even the Red Sox would not -- guaranteeing a fourth year. For Beltran, he engineered the first nine-figure contract in baseball in nearly four years. How long would it have taken him to spend $200 million in Montreal? Fifty years? Minaya laughs.
"We're just doing the same things we did in Montreal, but on a bigger scale," he says. "A much bigger scale."