In his press conference addressing the Tony Bernazard firing, Omar Minaya made a very explicit insinuation that Adam Rubin of the Daily News, who first broke the story of Bernazard's tantrums against Mets' minor leaguers, had an ulterior motive. Minaya stated that Rubin had lobbied for a job in the Mets organization. As user dcrockett17 pointed out, Rubin seemed to be the source of all the anti-Bernazard material, but regardless, this call-out looks like a seriously bad move by Minaya. Whether or not Rubin had another motive, Minaya is creating unnecessary controversy and definitely risking his job.
Rubin allegedly called Minaya "despicable" during the press conference and said he only inquired with Fred Wilpon about how to break into the industry. He went on to say, "I don’t know how I’m going to cover the team now… To make this type of accusation is obscene." He'll be on SNY at 5:30 EST according to Metsblog.com. (I won't get to see it, so update in the comments if you can).
Eric's got the partial transcript of the press conference on the way.
Transcription-y Update: Here is a transcript of part of the video post at SNY.tv. This is verbatim, so assume that all linguistic anomalies are Minaya-ese.
Omar Minaya: Once the reports came out, you know, of course we had to expedite more the investigation. Early in the process, early in the process, when the reports came out, I had to kind of tell myself, "Wow, these things are coming out." And I say this because coming from Adam Rubin, okay, and Adam, you gotta understand this, Adam, for the past couple of years, has lobby for a player development position. He has lobby myself, he has lobby Tony. So when these things came out I was kind of a little bit, I had to think about it. And I was a little bit, you know, somewhat, kind of, we gotta find out about this. We really have to do a thorough investigation of this.
<snip>
Adam Rubin: Is what you're alleging that I tried to tear Tony down so I could take his job? Is that what you're saying?
Omar Minaya: No, no, I'm not saying that. All I'm saying was, that I know that when you wrote the reports, but I am saying, that in the past, you have, have lobby for a player, for a for a job...
Adam Rubin: If I were interested in working in player development somewhere in the major leagues at some point in my life, how did that impact this situation at all?
Omar Minaya: I said, because, when the reports came out a lot of these things were cross... I said "Who's writing these reports?" and I said well okay who's writing the reports and in the back of my mind, Adam, you have told me you have told other people in the front office that you want to work for player development in the front office.
Adam Rubin: So what you're alleging is that.. the only conclusion I can draw from that is that you're trying to allege that I tried to tear everyone down so that I could take their position. Is that what you're saying?
Omar Minaya: Adam...
Adam Rubin: It seems pretty despicable to say that.
<snip>
Omar Minaya: Look, was Tony the most-liked person in the world? No, he was not. We know that. And Marty, and you've been around baseball a long time, and there's a lot of people that are not sometimes we don't like, ahh, and, you know, and they're, they've been good baseball people. But, you know, I could tell you that he may, was he the most more-liked person in the world? No. Was he a good baseball person? Yes.