‘I’ve barely hit on you’: Inside a Mets culture rotten beyond Mickey Callaway and Jared Porter

On March 8, the Mets played the Washington Nationals on a warm, windy day in West Palm Beach, Fla., an early spring training test before a season holding great promise for an organization with a new majority owner, hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, and a new star, shortstop Francisco Lindor. In an email to employees sent March 19, Cohen announced that the law firm’s external review would focus on “sexual harassment, misconduct, and discrimination issues.” That examination, current and former employees say, is long overdue. The three women who complained about Ellis were interviewed by an HR official, with one sharing that Ellis had said to her: “I stare at your ass all the time.” Newman’s alleged behavior prompted one woman to have her lawyer contact an attorney representing the Mets and was referenced in the Castergine lawsuit. Castergine said Jeff Wilpon “frequently humiliated Castergine by … pretending to see if she had an engagement ring on her finger and openly stating in a meeting of the team’s all-male senior executives that he is ‘morally opposed’ to Castergine having this baby without being married.” In the complaint from that lawsuit, Castergine also said that Jeff Wilpon told her “when she gets a ring, she will make more money and get a bigger bonus.” Castergine said that her boss, Lou DePaoli, and the team’s general counsel, David Cohen, heard Wilpon make sexist comments to her, and that “neither one did anything to stop it or even, at minimum, reported Wilpon’s behavior as they were required to do.” According to the complaint, when Castergine complained to Lindvall about Wilpon, Lindvall urged her to quit, on multiple occasions. The woman that Newman said in a meeting “hasn’t been the same since she had children” told The Athletic that Lindvall approached her in the office within a few days of Castergine’s lawsuit being filed and said Newman’s alleged comment had been “taken out of context.” Said one of the women who recently spoke to the Mets legal department to report DeVito’s alleged actions: “Maybe in other places, but not here.” Despite the complaints that reached Lindvall and those above her, none of the trio of Callaway, Ellis or Newman was demoted or fired when the allegations against them surfaced.