Laura Albanese: Mets no-longer-interim manager Andy Green found passion in struggle

Andy Green has lived in the in-between.

By his own admission, he was a mediocre Major League Baseball player. He sheep-dogged a rebuilding Padres franchise to four consecutive losing seasons. He was essentially cornered into becoming the Mets’ interim manager — a role that should have been akin to being an oboe player on the Titanic.

Instead, he shrugged, figured he had nothing to lose, and wondered what it would be like to be the captain of the RMS Carpathia instead. (For those of us who aren’t into maritime lore, the humble Carpathia was the ship that far outstripped its assumed capabilities and sped to the site of the Titanic’s sinking to undertake a rescue mission.)

And so, a curious thing happened in the three months that we’ll call “the interim.” Players responded to his particular brand of candor, and to the well-worn grit that comes with having stumbled before. The rookies that he guided while serving in his role as senior vice president of player development continued to flourish. A team that had absolutely no business doing well, and no reason to fight, showed a spark of life.

You can’t necessarily put that all on one guy, but the Mets would have been foolish to not at least consider the potential.

On Tuesday, though, they weren’t foolish, and because of that, the in between is gone: Green is here to stay, with the Mets tendering him a three-year deal.

The franchise should be better for it, and he began proving as much during a heartfelt introductory news conference before a 6-3 win over the Rangers in Texas — done without fanfare, because he and president of baseball operations David Stearns wanted to provide their squad with another layer of stability sooner rather than later.

Already, that’s a good start.

As it turns out, Green caught the managerial bug pretty quickly, despite his initial reluctance. His wife and three daughters took notice and though he originally wanted to stay away from managing to spend more time with his family, his children — one in college and two about to graduate high school — endorsed their dad’s next step.

“It’s been amazing to see them not just be OK with this but encourage me,” he said. “To watch [my two younger twin daughters] go from being 13-year-olds to 18-year-olds who think about what makes dad happy and watch him to do what he’s passionate about, it’s been really cool.”

They no doubt learned that quality from their parents, and Green talks eagerly of the growth he himself has undergone.

The way he does it is also promising: He doesn’t really seem to shy away from his weaknesses, and you know that because he speaks them out loud — like they’re lessons rather than failures. That’s an important quality to harness, and an extremely important one to relay to the young core that should shape this franchise for years to come.

One indicator is how he describes his time managing the Padres.

“I probably specialized in truth without hope and expectation at the outset of my career,” he said. “I was really good at telling you everything that was wrong with you that wouldn’t allow you to be the big-league player you need to be. [But I did that] without looking into the heart of the person, seeing what was there, and calling that out too, and helping them understand that what they’ve gotten through in life is the very thing they’ll lean on to go to the next level of greatness . . .

“In this world you can tell people the truth and that’s a great place to start. It also not the place to end.”

Whether Green is successful or not, that’s exactly the type of message this snakebitten franchise needs to embrace. It has now been two straight years of being the worst team money can buy, and four decades without a ring. That type of corrosion runs deep.

But in his failures, Green learned that the past does not always have to determine the future, and that there’s more to success than just looking good on paper.

It’s also interesting to hear about how Green changed his mind. (Mind you, this was the executive who kicked off his interim managerial stint by finding multiple diplomatic ways to say he had absolutely no intention of keeping this job.)

“I suppose late July” is when it happened, he said. “It was a tough time. It was the trade deadline. We weren’t necessarily winning baseball games. There were a lot of conversations with players that had to be had to help walk them through difficult chapters. I started thinking, if I have such a passion for the hard times, I’m looking forward to the good times.”

In that, he sets an example. None of this has been fun. No team wants to be counted out by June and eliminated weeks before the end of the regular season. No one wants to be the butt of viral jokes, and players don’t sign here because they want to be booed.

But it happened, so maybe his players can use it as a tool for future growth.

“All those guys showed up knowing this is the hardest thing they’ve ever done in their life,” he said. “It doesn’t get easier next year. It only gets harder. You want guys that want what is hard because you don’t win a World Series looking for the easy way out.”

Nothing about Green’s journey here has been particularly easy. But it’s a testament to his promise as a manager that he doesn’t seem to want it any other way.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.