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Have you seen the viral clip of the Israeli mom, mocking the concern over her suddenly remote-learning kids?
“How’s the child feeling?!” she asks, exasperated. “He’s spending the entire day on his cell phone — he’s fine!”
The Mets could have told you that even before the coronavirus pandemic turned our world upside down.
On March 12, when Major League Baseball shut down spring training and suspended the start of its season, R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy was at Clover Park, conducting classes with Mets staff members on how to best communicate with the group of (primarily) millennials that comprises the franchise’s most important asset: Its playing talent.
“We know that younger generations are consuming a lot more information,” Lewis-McCoy, an associate professor of sociology of education at NYU, said recently in a telephone interview. “But they consume it in different patterns and look at time differently.”
Or, as Mets assistant general manager for scouting and player development Allard Baird said, holding up his cell phone, “The idea is, those guys, they have this in hand as babies. There was a time period where if you were doing this and talking to someone, it was disrespectful. … We talked about giving a test so they can take the phone and give their answers here, because this is where they’re engaged.”
Baird, whom Brodie Van Wagenen brought aboard shortly after his own hiring as Mets GM, came up with the concept of the Mets Way, a uniform philosophy to institute up and down the organization. As part of that initiative, Baird asked executive director of player development Jared Banner “to search out a really high-level educator. I said this is ridiculous. We’re in New York City. There are all these universities and colleges and everything.”
Banner recommended Lewis-McCoy, whose area of specialization, as per his NYU bio, is “the intersecting roles of race, class, and place” — he has helped schools and community groups on this matter — and who grew up a Mets fan in West Haven, Conn. Baird met with the academician at NYU before greenlighting him.
“The work that I am doing is really making sure that they are having a strong connection between the coaches and the players,” Lewis-McCoy said.
The first meeting occurred over the winter, at Citi Field, with then-manager Carlos Beltran and his major league coaches.
“We never used the term ‘millennials,’” said Mets hitting coach Chili Davis, at 60 the oldest member of the group. “It’s just the generation. The generation is different. How they communicate, how they learn. … It’s all about them and getting them ready to get whatever message you’re trying to get across to them.”
The rise of analytics and the accompanying increase of information dovetails with the way this generation digests its information. More than ever, teams must equally prioritize what data they share with their players and how they do so.
We of course can’t know whether this project will bear fruit for the Mets until we watch a season play out, and we won’t be able to watch a season play out for a while. Yet what’s the downside to this? If it caused some old-school baseball folks to scoff (and they did), let the record show that Baird himself, 58 years old and with as much scouting notches on his belt as anyone, quarterbacked this.
“I think being in the game so long, you have a choice,” Baird said. “… You have to look ahead, and you have to realize it’s not about what so much you believe. It’s what’s going to put those players in the best position to succeed.”
If we have a season and the Mets thrive, they might boost the case that a young person’s best, most natural position entails him clutching his cell phone.
