NEW YORK _ The Mets made their newest managerial hire official, introducing Mickey Callaway as their 21st manager in franchise history Monday.
Despite expecting to go into a second round of interviews, Callaway impressed Mets brass immediately, to the point that they scrapped the idea of more interviews.
Sandy Alderson and ownership instead decided to focus on bringing the former Indians pitching coach to New York, coming away feeling that "there was only one man for the job."
"There seemed to be a real consistency between Mickey's approach and our approach," Alderson said. "We came out of our meeting excited at the possibility of Mickey being our manager. To me that, said everything."
"We're in the greatest city in the world. This is one of the greatest baseball franchises in the world," Callaway said. "I see a team that can compete and contend with anyone, and that's what I expect us to do.
"I'm gonna reach out to the players, let them know how excited I am and begin this very, very important offseason with them. ... We're going to get to work right away."
A Cleveland source told the Daily News on Sunday that Callaway is a "miracle worker with pitchers, even-tempered, smart and a great communicator."
The 42-year-old, a native of Tennessee who played college baseball for Ole Miss, will become one of the youngest managers in the game, which is in direct contrast to Terry Collins, who was the oldest in the league a season ago.
Callaway also comes with his own big-league experience, pitching parts of five seasons in the major leagues with Tampa, Anaheim and Texas while going 4-11 with a 6.27 ERA. He also went on to be a two-time All-Star in Korea before retiring and beginning his coaching career in 2009.
