When Jerry Manuel said “It's very, very fertile ground for growth in Shea Stadium. It's fertile ground for a team's growth and development. Sometimes, fertile ground has fertilizer," I immediately knew it would be blown entirely out of proportion.
Just as I predicted, the NY Post took this story and ran with it. Here is the classic example of “taking the quote out of context.” When you look that term up in the dictionary, you see an issue of the New York Post. (Please don’t fire me, News Corp.)
If they wanted to be correct, they would have noted that Manuel said this, laughed, and then continued. He was smart enough to attempt to clarify, simply because he knows how some media outlets work.
It worked on one radio host, Mr. Craig Carton of WFAN. Hopefully, he was doing it for the ratings because I simply cannot believe that anyone who is sane and of clear mind would actually thing a new manager would come out and say the fans are akin to cow manure.
Of course, as I walked to Penn Station today, people were scooping up issues of the NY Post to see what Manuel had said. Obviously they’re doing something right, but I wish some of the editors had just the tiniest bit of discretion when it comes to using quotes out of context.
