Inside John Gibbons’ return to the New York Mets dugout | Maqvi News

J
ohn Gibbons is sitting with that familiar lean inside a meeting room at Clover Park, the spring training home of the New York Mets, toothpick in mouth, hands resting on the knob of his fungo, all mischievous winks, impish grins and hearty belly laughs. He’s back with the team that drafted him 24th overall in 1980, with the team he logged all 18 of his big-league games, with the team that gave him his start in coaching way back in 1991. And he’s back in a big-league clubhouse for the first time since parting ways with the Toronto Blue Jays after the 2018 season, the bench coach for rookie manager Carlos Mendoza. He’s savouring the opportunity to be part of a staff, one that he’d accepted might not come again.

“The No. 1 thing I missed, man, is coming into the clubhouse, hanging out with the boys, the coaching staff, the players. I always missed the competition and hanging out with the guys. There’s something special about that,” says Gibbons, who is second only to Cito Gaston among Blue Jays managers with 793 wins amassed over two stints, 2004-08 and 2013-18. “I did it for so long. I didn’t miss the B.S. But the game is different, there’s no doubt. A lot more preparation, stuff like that. I had some great coaches in Toronto. They did all the work, I just ran the game, basically. Now that I’m not in that role, everybody’s got a specific job, so my job really hasn’t even started yet. Mendy’s awesome. I really, really like him. He’s going to be really good at this. And David Stearns [Mets president of baseball operations], he’s everything that everybody says. In a way, he’s a lot like Alex [Anthopolous, who was Gibbons’ general manager in Toronto and is now Atlanta’s president of operations]: Good baseball guy, he’ll listen to you. He doesn’t talk as much as Alex, but he cares what you think.”