Q&A: Former Mets reporter Adam Rubin
đ§Â by Blake Zeff
Despite not having covered the team for four years, former ESPN and Daily News reporter Adam Rubin remains a popular figure among many Mets fans, who remember his morning briefings, farm reports and continued engagement with fans on Twitter.Â
We spoke with Rubin this week to learn what heâs up to, whether he still follows the Mets, and the back-story behind his âOH NOâ catchphrase. Below is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:Â
Letâs just start by catching up. What are you doing now professionally?Â
Iâm actually doing a lot of what I did covering the Mets, except it's working on the team side. Iâm the in-house person creating content for Stony Brook athletics, including writing articles for StonyBrookAthletics.com.Â
Whyâd you leave the sportswriting business?
I don't think the primary factor was being on the road 170 days a year for 15 years and working nights and weekends, but that does take a toll. I think the primary factor was just a realization of where journalism is, in this day and age. ESPN was dismantling its baseball coverage. You saw even the national reporters, like Jayson Stark and Jerry Crasnick, ultimately got pushed out, in addition to all the baseball beat reporters.Â
I had opportunities at that point to return to a newspaper in New York to cover either baseball or hockey. But I'm in my 40s now and you have to look at the financial landscape and decide: If I do this, am I perpetually going to be looking for a job? Certainly there's things like The Athletic and I'm rooting for that to succeed -- because I have a lot of friends who work there. But that model is still, in my mind, an experiment.Â
How much baseball do you watch now?Â
Uh, not much.Â
Do you know the Mets lineup now?Â
I mean, I certainly follow all the players on Twitter. If you put me on the spot, I probably could. Actually, I'm not sure I could do it, to be honest. I couldn't tell you the rotation. I mean, I just read the rotation too and I'm not sure I could regurgitate it. I'm sure I know less right now than most fans do about the team.Â
Do you know who the manager is?Â
Oh yeah. The funny thing about that is, actually he's such a nice guy, I did a lot of stuff with the Minor Leagues, so we interacted a fair amount. It's kind of crazy, all the people I see now around baseball who I covered as players. Jeremy Hefner's pitching coach now, right? It's funny. You never know who's gonna actually make it, so it's good that you're nice to everybody and cast a wide net as a reporter, because you never know.Â
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Fondest memory on the beat?Â
You don't really root for or against the team. But Anthony DiComo said this in your interview with him, too: Certainly the guys that are nice to you, it's human instinct to feel good when they have good moments. So I still remember David Wrightunderneath the bowels of the stadium at Wrigley Field in â15, after they had qualified for the World Series. How big a smile he had. It's a privilege to see those kinds of things. It had been so long in the wilderness for the Mets.Â
You would famously tweet, âOH NOâ when something bad was happening to the Mets. Did you do that just to play with the fans, or were you kind of rooting along with them?Â
It was more shtick than anything. And it's funny, I started in journalism at The Birmingham News at a time when journalism was much more conservative. And it was a conservative newspaper, so to imagine ten years later youâd be tweeting âOH NO,â and drawing attention to yourself.... you would have never thought thatâs how journalism would have evolved. But I mean, that was playful and I think most people got that.Â
Youâre from Long Island. Mets fan growing up?Â
When I was young, I was into the Don Mattingly and Willie Randolph era. In fact, I told Willie this when he got hired by the Mets as manager: the glove I had as a kid had his signature on it, so that was kind of cool. But yeah, when I was young I identified more with the Yankees.Â
Any favorite players?
I'm always partial to David Wright. When I started covering the team, he was in A-ball. David was a sandwich first-round pick, so people had high expectations for him -- but no one really knew at the time he was going to be the future third baseman. David told me that a long time ago his family had a scrapbook of articles, and [my article] was one of the first ones from when he turned pro in that scrapbook way back then. So our careers kind of followed the same trajectory, in terms of starting and leaving the Mets organization.Â
It's funny: when I got off the Mets beat, I texted him and said, âYou outlasted me.â And he was pretty funny with his reply. Because by that time, his back was in bad shape and he was pretty much idle anyway, so it was a qualified âoutlasting.â He made it known that he did outlast me, but that it was kind of technical, more than actual.Â
With an asterisk.Â
Yeah. And that's not to suggest that David was like a big source or anything like that. He was very close to the vest. But just a very nice person, whoâd ask you how you were doing, things like that. But for the most part, the people who I was closest to were kind of the fringey guys who are just like real people. I still keep in touch with some of them. I remember when we hired Frank Catalanotto as the baseball coach at NYIT, I reached out to guys I was close with, like [former Met] Nick Evans to see if he might be interested. My Facebook page is now littered with a whole bunch of guys who never made the majors, but were minor leaguers I felt close to because we always talked.Â
What's the best story you never reported or shared, that you can now?Â
Oh, I don't know. If it was good enough. I probably wrote it. If I wasn't able to use it, then I probably can't say it now.
I'll give you a funny one, though. I knew before David Wright did that he was coming up [to the major leagues]. We got a laugh about about that. I knew he was getting promoted before he did.Â
You just got it through sources?Â
Yeah, someone in the organization told me, and actually the Mets used to get frustrated beyond belief that I was able to get who was getting called up. Because in the ideal world, if someoneâs going on the DL, they don't want to put them on the DL until like 3-4 in the afternoon on the day of the game. So theyâll fly in the person the night before and I was frequently able to get who was getting called up the night before. So you knew there was going to be a roster move. The Mets kind of gave up after a while, and just started saying themselves who was coming up, because it was getting ridiculous.Â
Finally, do you have a message to Mets fans, some of whom still reach out to you?Â
The Mets fan base really is special, because the interest level in other teams just isn't the same, especially on social media. And so I'm grateful, because â it sounds hokey, but â without them I wouldn't have had the career I did. Iâm really appreciative.