Mea Culpa, Delgado

I got a painful lesson this afternoon. The big story of the day was Omar Minaya’s contentious press conference, in which he revealed that he felt that Adam Rubin of the Daily News had an agenda in reporting his on the recently fired Tony Bernazard. I’m still struggling to come to grips with the fact that Minaya acted so unprofessionally. That doesn’t excuse the fact that I acted unprofessionally, too.

In referring to a comment made by Carlos Delgado, I interpreted it as evidence that Delgado actively contributed to last season’s firing of Willie Randolph by willfully performing poorly on the field. My first faux pas was trying to link Delgado to Bernazard, implying that Delgado was actively supporting Bernazard’s agenda. Many thanks to the tweeps that corrected me (@samtpage, @metsgrrl, and of course, @firejerrymanuel). There is a preponderance of printed evidence (some from Rubin himself) that indicates that Delgado actively dislikes Bernazard and it totally blows my half-assed theory out of the water. I wish I could take it back, however, any Google search of @Section518 will forever link me to it. I’ll just have to live with that.

More egregious was my implication that Delgado dogged it. It’s well documented that Delgado is a professional athlete who takes pride in his performance. No professional needs to hear that he’s willfully underperforming to get another professional fired. It would be one thing if I could prove it, but I can’t. I ran my mouth inappropriately.

Twitter is a great forum. It allows us to communicate on any number of things. It shouldn’t be used to denigrate others with half-assed theories and unresearched accusations. There’s no way I should have used it to run Delgado down like that, and that’s my true regret.

I’ve mentioned that I don’t get paid for this blog (and after today, why should I?). That being said, I like to think that I can hold the same standards as real journalists. There was no call for what I tweeted. I deeply regret attacking Delgado and I’m sorry for it. All I can offer is that it won’t happen again.

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