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Thursday, March 29, 2018

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Managing the Major Leagues

Aaron Boone of the Yankees, left, and Mickey Callaway of the Mets. Lynne Sladky/Associated Press, Jasen Vinlove/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

Good morning.

It’s opening day for Major League Baseball, and our two teams have two new faces that will be hard to miss this season.

Their managers.

Mickey Callaway has taken over for the Mets, and Aaron Boone will lead the Yankees.

“The manager is the most public face of every single team, more so than the players,” said James Wagner, who covers the Mets for The Times.

“Both teams had managers for a long time,” he added — Terry Collins had been with the Mets for seven years, and Joe Girardi with the Yankees for 10 — “so there’s been continuity for both teams that changed at the same time.”

It will be a gamble for both squads because neither manager has done the job before; Mr. Callaway was the pitching coach of the Cleveland Indians, and Mr. Boone was an ESPN announcer with no coaching or managing experience.

They are also younger than most managers. At 68, Mr. Collins, was the oldest manager in the major leagues. Mr. Callaway, 42, is one of the youngest.

“It’s become a trend to have younger, more inexperienced people be managers,” Mr. Wagner said. “Knowing how to handle data and information and knowing how to relate to the players is more important than having done this for 30 years.”

And Mr. Boone, 45, is nearly a decade younger than Mr. Girardi.

“He was very hard-nosed and didn’t have much of a sense of humor,” Billy Witz, who covers the Yankees for The Times, said of the team’s former manager, “and I think his communication skills were drawn into question.”

“They got somebody who was that antithesis of that in Aaron Boone — he’s very engaging and his strengths are in some of the areas that Girardi was lacking, so it’ll be interesting to see how much his lack of experience is a factor,” Mr. Witz said.

The Mets host the St. Louis Cardinals today at 1:10 p.m. The Yankees, who are playing the Blue Jays this afternoon in Toronto, will host their first home game of the season on Monday against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Here’s what else is happening:

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In the News

Congregants placed their hands on Aura Hernandez as a symbol of their commitment to protect her. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

• A Guatemalan woman and her 15-month-old daughter have found sanctuary in a Manhattan church as they face deportation. [New York Times]

• Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey announced that he would be running again, just months after corruption charges against him were dropped. [New York Times]

• Could one question on the 2020 census affect the $7 billion in funding the federal government gives to New York City? [New York Times]

• Congress wants to study why it’s so expensive to build new subway lines in New York City. [New York Times]

• Anti-Trump activists are looking to reclaim New York State by setting their sights on breakaway Democrats who have helped Republicans control the State Senate. [New York Times]

• The governor floated a proposal during budget negotiations to create state-owned developments around Pennsylvania Station. [New York Times]

• Food service workers at CUNY are reporting a high rate of injuries, low wages and labor violations. [New York Times]

• How often are trains delayed because of signal issues? Just check on Twitter. [New York Times]

• The state budget deadline is looming. The question is not what will be included in budget talks, but who? [New York Times]

• The daily grind in Albany was disrupted by a few out-of-the-ordinary occurrences: a reporter thrown in jail and a coyote spotted near the Capitol. [New York Times]

• A community board on the Lower East Side is pushing to save the neighborhood’s weekend bus service. [The Lo-Down]

• The Brooklyn Youth Chorus is lending their voice to the underserved by trying to combat prejudice in a concert series next month. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]

• The folk music icon Joan Baez has joined Brooklyn locals in a fight to save a Carroll Gardens schoolhouse. [The Brooklyn Paper]

Coming Up

• An evening of cocktails and crafts, during which adults can dye Easter eggs, at the Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing. 6 p.m. [$18, registration required]

• The jazz singer Whitney Marchelle performs at the Pelham Fritz Recreation Center in Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. 6:30 p.m. [Free, R.S.V.P. here]

• “The Irish-Jewish Couple in Feature Films,” a lecture by the historian Lawrence Baron on Irish-Jewish romance in cinema, in the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at N.Y.U. 7 p.m. [Free]

• “Jazz Then and Now,” a concert by the Manhattan School of Music Jazz Arts Program and a talk on the past, present and future of jazz, at Harlem Stage on Convent Ave. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

• The marine researchers Mandë Holford and Mercer R. Brugler join Randy Cohen’s “Person Place Thing” talk show at the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. 7:30 p.m. [$15]

• Mets host Cardinals, 1:10 p.m. Yankees at Blue Jays, 3:37 p.m. Devils host Penguins, 7 p.m. (MSG+).

• Alternate-side parking is suspended.

• For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

And Finally ...

Ask Andy. Joshua Bright for The New York Times

Subway riders: This morning could be your chance to have your thoughts about the trains heard by the people in charge.

At 10:30 a.m., Andy Byford, the new president of New York City Transit, will field your questions about the subway, live and online.

Mr. Byford will tune in for the Twitter chat from the Rail Control Center — you can follow along on the @NYCTSubway account and use the hashtag #AskNYCT to share your comments.

The goal of the session, in the age of seemingly endless subway woes (and more subway woes, and more subway woes, and more subway woes), is to increase transparency and create a conversation between transit leadership and straphangers.

The focus of today’s chat will be our subways; the next of the monthly cybergatherings will address your concerns about city buses and paratransit programs.

Metropolitan Diary

High-Flying MetroCard

By ALICE SWERSEY

Dear Diary:

My 15-year-old grandson and I arrived at the bus stop on Columbus Avenue. He said that if a bus didn’t come in five or six minutes, we should walk to the subway on Broadway.

“A bus will be here in six minutes,” he said after checking his phone.

Reaching into my pocket for my MetroCard, I realized with dismay that I didn’t have it.

“You left it on the kitchen table,” my grandson said.

I called my daughter-in-law. She said she would toss the card out the window of her 12th-story apartment. A few people waiting for the bus overheard and urged us to hurry.

My grandson and I ran a block and a half to 90th Street. Sure enough, a plastic bag floated down and landed at my feet. In it were my MetroCard and a few small batteries to give the bag weight.

We ran back to the bus stop, and the bus was still there. The other passengers cheered as we got on.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that publishes at 6 a.m. If you don’t get it in your inbox already, you can sign up to receive it by email here.

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