By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on February 21, 2001.
“Already, (the Tigers) feel more like a family than Houston ever did. I don’t respect that organization at all. It’s a joke, from top to bottom.”
He switch-hit. He hit .300. He hit with power. He had more offensive ability than any catcher in Astros history. Yet with these sickening words, Mitch Meluskey made clear to anyone with doubt remaining exactly why the Houston Astros dealt him to Detroit. He has less class than a substitute teacher and about as much professionalism as Mary Kay Letourneau. There is no player more fit to wear the tools of ignorance.
It is all too appropriate that this mindset of Meluskey’s is revealed just as Gary Sheffield says his double-digit millions simply will not do. It comes just as Barry Bonds demands to be able to tell his family whether they will be in San Francisco in five years. It comes just as Sammy Sosa tries to parlay showing up to spring training hours early into some semblance of commitment to the Cubs after months of threats. There is a common thread.
Meluskey’s remarks should come as no surprise. It is exactly how he carried himself on the field for the Houston Astros all last season. Still, to hear such thoughtless words from the mouth of a 27-year-old man is a little frightening. He calls a Detroit team he has spent mere hours with “more like family” after the commitment the Astros showed him. He calls the Astros organization “a joke, from top to bottom” after rising bottom to top through their system. He doesn’t respect the Astros organization at all–the organization that went fishing with a wide enough net to reel him in and had enough faith to make him their catcher.
From Minor Opinions on this site in April of 1998:
“Picked up as a Class A catcher in one of those moves that doesn’t even make the paper, Meluskey was traded by Cleveland for Buck McNabb, an outfielder who played in the Astro system for approximately 50 years. At the time, he looked like a dime-a-dozen, can’t-hit-his-way-out-of-a-wet-paper-bag catcher.”
The Astros saw something in this kid and traded for him. They endured his fits and spurts, then said goodbye to the starting catcher from a division-winning team and gave him a shot at playing Major League Baseball. He had serious shoulder problems along the way, but the club never gave up on his ability. The catcher spot was his, handed to him on a silver platter with the trade of Brad Ausmus. The Houston Astros gave Mitchell Wade Meluskey of Yakima, Washington the opportunity to cash in a winning lotto ticket every year for the next ten years.
Sure, there were strings attached. They asked that he perform, and they asked that he carry himself with a modicum of class.
Meluskey’s answer was to curse to the heavens–repeatedly–in front of a home crowd that included the Baptist grocer who signs his paychecks, Drayton McLane, some thirty feet away. Not just any curse word, but the one you still do not hear on television unless you get HBO. Meluskey got benched for that, but he did not change.
On one occasion Meluskey bickered so intensely and incessantly with an umpire in Arizona that he was benched so the team would not suffer the crew’s wrath the next day, and so he might understand his role as a catcher did not include antagonizing his pitcher’s judge and jury. He did not change.
Meluskey spent the 2000 season asleep on defense, showed no special inclination to improve, and came to blows with a teammate who had the nerve to get to batting practice on time. The Astros traded him for the very catcher they traded away to give him an opportunity, but the irony was lost on Meluskey somehow, and through all this he did not change.
“Already, (the Tigers) feel more like a family than Houston ever did.”
Sure they do, Mitch. Several hours with your new Motown friends should be plenty to make a comment like that. Robert Fick and the fightin’est team in baseball are probably just your speed. But it will be interesting to see if you still feel that way after Phil Garner asks you to change something.
“I don’t respect that organization at all.”
Wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, you don’t have the respect to spare, Mitch.
“(The Astros organization is) a joke from top to bottom.”
Here’s a joke for you Mitch:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Ausmus.