Newsday: "Ethnicity appeal turned off Delgado"

Newsday (along with other NY papers) has a story today (Sunday) describing Carlos Delgado's complaints about how the Mets courted him:

The Hispanic link that general manager Omar Minaya said helped him sign Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran apparently had the opposite effect with Delgado, who did not appreciate the Mets' tactics. "At the beginning, that was their approach," Delgado told the Star. "It doesn't matter if you're Latin, American or Italian; if we're going to talk business, talk business. I'm not doing you any favors, you're not doing me any favors because we're speaking in Spanish. I'm a man first. I am nobody to tell anybody how to approach me. You do what you have to do, then I decide what I want to do."

Delgado was also unhappy that (at least in his eyes) he was an afterthought for the Mets when they visited Puerto Rico to talk to Carlos Beltran.

Now, two alternate stories you can tell about the wooing of Carlos Delgado:

1) Delgado is complaining for the sake of complaining. He's a rich and successful man who got what he wanted, so why is he bothering to whine? The corollary to this point of view - call it the "pampered star/sour grapes" position - says that you wouldn't want a malcontent like this on your team anyhow. (The mitigating factor here is that Delgado's agent seems to have pushed this story at least somewhat against his client's wishes.)

OR

2) The main alternative view is that this is yet another example of the "same old Mets" pursuing negotiations with a free-agent superstar and demonstrating, once again, club management's tin ear and lead feet. Call this the "The Ghost of A-Rod Rides Again" viewpoint. Of course, the people in charge of the Mets now are a different gang than the crew which let Alex Rodriguez slip away. But that doesn't mean they aren't culpable for not handling this tete-a-tete more carefully.

Carlos Delgado is obviously no Vince Coleman, so I'm not sure how much I believe the "sour grapes" story. For all his complaining now, I'd still much rather have him on our team than not.

At the same time, I think Minaya should have been a little more savvy and realized that his "Hispanic connection" sales pitch wasn't working in this particular case. He also should have handled things in such a way that Delgado didn't feel like an after-thought. I mean, yeah, these are superstars, and for better or for worse, you do have to give them special treatment if you want them to come work for you.

But the bottom line is, we don't really know (and can never know) how truthful Delgado is being. In other words, had Minaya laid out the red carpet for him and been more subtle on the Latino front, Delgado may still have signed with the Marlins anyway. Like I say, we'll never know.

So I chide Minaya & co. for not handling things better, but I also don't necessarily think things would have gone differently had they done a better job.

What do you think?