Written by August was a bad month for the New York Mets. They started the month on a high note. They were the first-place team in the NL East and had made a blockbuster deal with the Cubs to acquire star shortstop Javier Baez. Injured pitchers Jacob DeGrom and Noah Syndergaard were nearing their returns. Oddsmakers made them contenders to make the World Series.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as well as they had hoped. By the end of the month, the Mets had fallen into third place in their division. They are six games behind for a Wild Card spot. DeGrom had a setback, and Syndergaard tested positive for COVID-19.
And, to make matters worse, they are having relationship issues. The fans are angry with the team’s performance and have been booing and demanding they fire the manager. The owner is calling out the players.
Several of the players, many of them new to playing in New York, started celebrating good plays by showing two thumbs pointed down when they made a good play. “To let them know,” Baez said, “that when we don’t get success, we’re gonna get booed, so they’re gonna get booed when we get success.”
Now, I don’t condone the behavior of Baez and his teammates, but I do find it interesting. What they are proposing is a change in the dynamic of the relationship between players and fans. And it may be a good one. To have a functional relationship, you must treat accountability as a two-way street. That’s how you build trust.
We typically view the relationship between fans and players in one direction. Fans buy tickets and drink expensive beers at the game. When they can’t go to the game, they watch on TV and support the advertisers of the broadcast. All of this creates revenue that pays the large salaries of the players. The larger the revenue stream, the higher the wages, and the higher the team’s expectations of winning.
What the Met’s players appeared to be doing was calling out the fans to tell them they have a part in this, other than with their pocketbooks. They need their support and want to know the fans have their backs. It’s a two-way street, and trust is king. That’s a pretty bold move in New York, where the expectations are extreme.
But the stunt failed. It became clear immediately that nobody had the players’ backs, as social media erupted and the story went viral in the media. Mets president Sandy Alderson publicly sided with the fans. The manager claimed he had no idea what was going on.
It reminded me of what happened to Bill Dobson in The Chair, a Netflix series that chronicles free speech issues and cancel culture on a college campus. A once-popular professor in the middle of a personal crisis, Dobson makes a poor attempt at humor during a lecture. It became a meme and went viral throughout campus. The incident highlighted toxic flaws in the university’s culture that had existed for years without being addressed.
The core relationship in a team in today’s sports world is between the players and their fans. Organizations where that relationship has been built and carefully nurtured survive the storms. Those without a strong bond do not. Across town, the Yankees have created a culture suited to its fans based on tradition and mutual respect. Lacking the benefit of the Yankee’s winning track record and any unique vision of its own, the Mets are in an endless cycle of competing on the same playing field rather than carving out its niche. Spend and spend more. Maybe they will like us if we win.
Organizations with successful cultures recognize the relationship between players and fans. They honor it and stay out of the way as best as they can. They survive the ups and downs together. Here in Houston, the players of our three teams engage directly with the fans. They had the community’s back during hurricane Harvey in 2017, and the community has theirs.
The Astros and Rockets have done a great job of recognizing and nurturing this dynamic. The Texans have not. Like Professor Dobson, all three have been the cause of their misery. The Astros fans have stood by the team while they have become pariahs throughout the league. When the Rockets imploded, we gave them space, endured an awful season, and are now embracing an optimistic rebuilding effort.
The Texans appear to be at war with their star players who develop strong bonds with the fans. They seem to be jealous of them. By dismissing fan favorites Andre Johnson, DeAndre Hopkins, and J.J. Watt, they showed how tone-deaf they were to the fan’s connection to its heroes. To nurture a culture where the fans and players have each other’s backs, an organization must show how. The team needs to support its fans and its players if they expect their support. It’s a two-way street.
Deshaun Watson, a fan favorite who we waited fifteen years to arrive, had built a strong relationship with the fans. He donated his first paycheck to stadium personnel. He was active in our community. Yet, he didn’t feel respected by his team. When his terrible mistakes in behavior became public, he has had no support from the Texans. Their interest is only in how many first-round picks they can get in return for him, not in Watson’s well-being. They expect the fans to pretend Watson never existed. This saga would have played out much differently had the Texans been more like the Astros, Rockets, and Yankees and less like the Mets or the fictitious Pembroke.
There may be hope for the Mets after all, and Baez may have taken steps to build a better connection between their players and fans. On the last day of August, Baez and his teammates publicly apologized for their mistake. A few hours later, Baez hustled around the bases scored the winning run in a thrilling comeback victory.
A fan in the stands flashed two thumbs up in response. Maybe the stunt worked.