Rubin, Adam

views updated

Rubin, Adam

PERSONAL:

Born in Bronx, NY. Education: Graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Long Beach, NY. E-mail—arubin@nydailynews.com.

CAREER:

New York Daily News, beat writer for the New York Mets, 2003—.

MEMBER:

Baseball Writers Association of America.

WRITINGS:

Pedro, Carlos, and Omar: The Story of a Season in the Big Apple and the Pursuit of Baseball's Top Latino Stars, Lyons Press (Guilford, CT), 2006, revised and updated edition published as Pedro, Carlos (and Carlos) and Omar: The Rebirth of the New York Mets, Lyons Press (Guilford, CT), 2006.

Also author of sports Web blog Surfing the Mets for the New York Daily News Web site.

SIDELIGHTS:

New York Daily News sportswriter Adam Rubin's book Pedro, Carlos, and Omar: The Story of a Season in the Big Apple and the Pursuit of Baseball's Top Latino Stars was released in a revised, expanded edition with a new title less than a year after its original publication. The new edition, titled Pedro, Carlos (and Carlos) and Omar: The Rebirth of the New York Mets, was necessary because of the meteoric rise of the underdog baseball team during the summer of 2006. The New York Mets swept the Los Angeles Dodgers from the field in only three games in the National League division championships, but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League championship, played in mid-October.

Rubin is a longtime Mets fan as well as a professional sportswriter. "I was born in the Bronx but moved to Long Island in the third grade," he told Jason Mastaitis in an interview for the Mets Geek Web site. "Early on I was more of a Yankee fan, then drifted toward the Mets, especially after the World Series in '86. I was one of those fans who wanted to see both [teams] do well, though definitely from high school on I would root for the Mets in a head-to-head matchup."

The first edition of Rubin's work Pedro, Carlos, and Omar concentrates on the relationship between Mets general manager Omar Minaya and the two powerful fellow Latinos he recruited to the team after the 2004 baseball season: right-handed pitcher Pedro Martinez (whom Omar hired after the conclusion of the Dominican Republic native's triumphant career with the Boston Red Sox) and outfielder Carlos Beltran (who had previously worked for the Kansas City Royals and the Houston Astros). Together, the three men began to change the team's fortunes for the first time in half a decade. At the end of the 2005 baseball season, Omar added yet another Hispanic big-name player to the Mets roster: the heavy hitter Carlos Delgado (the "and Carlos" of the title of the revised edition of Rubin's book), who joined the Mets after playing for the Florida Marlins. "Money alone doesn't guarantee success for a baseball franchise; teams must spend wisely," wrote Booklist contributor Wes Lukowsky. Omar, who had performed a similar function for the Montreal Expos in the 1990s until the team moved to Washington, DC, worked hard to attract Hispanic talent to a baseball club that had limited funds to pay players. He showed that men from Latin America could play baseball with the best players in the game and that American baseball clubs had been slow in signing them for their teams. A Publishers Weekly contributor stated that Rubin's analysis of the "impact that the three Latino men made on" the New York Mets, which "soon became known as ‘Los Mets,’ is entertaining."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2006, Wes Lukowsky, review of Pedro, Carlos, and Omar: The Story of a Season in the Big Apple and the Pursuit of Baseball's Top Latino Stars, p. 15.

Hispanic, June 1, 2007, review of Pedro, Carlos (and Carlos) and Omar: The Rebirth of the New York Mets, p. 80.

Publishers Weekly, January 16, 2006, review of Pedro, Carlos, and Omar, p. 51.