Update, 5:42 pm:

…here are my conspiracy theories, based on nothing:

…omar got emotional, went rogue, and said, ‘Screw it, if I’m going down, you, Adam Rubin, are going down with me, for making me fire my friend, Tony B,’… and, by doing so, omar is ready to face the consequences, since he’s already had to fire every one else he brought on in 2005, when he was given ‘full autonomy.’…

…or, rubin did try to get a job in player development, tony b said no, an rubin intentionally got the ball rolling to take him out, and the minaya had every right to fight back…

…or, maybe this was coordinated… maybe omar, ownership and others, were not happy about having to fire tony, and they were tired of the leaks through the media, and rubin, who broke the story on tony, and who wrote a ‘scathing review of omar,’ as he put it, was thrown under the bus in an effort to spook him and his colleagues in the press box…

In the end, Buster Olney of ESPN.com writes:

“He will not survive this, and this has nothing to do with whether what he said was accurate or inaccurate. He won’t survive because Minaya now has become a public liability, a target of criticism, and if there is a defining characteristic of the Mets’ organization, it’s a devotion to the whims of public opinion. Within seconds after Minaya’s press conference ended, talk radio in New York erupted with criticism of the general manager for how he handled the situation. And that’s just the quick response. This will only worsen in the hours and days ahead, as the blogs and columns of reaction are posted and the Mets fall out of contention.”

Update, 5:20 pm:

…hey, omar, in case you forgot, your team is five games below .500 in late July, and you’re trailing seven teams for the Wild Card…

…like my friend Roy O wrote me, “So now the Mets are what they Yankees used to be: a crappy team with more drama than a soap opera, and old players who are injured.”… great, so, then, can we bring back Rickey Henderson…

…here’s a shovel, Mets, keep digging…

Update, 5:15 pm:

Rubin said Minaya’s decision to call him out by name is a ‘low blow.’

Rubin acknowledged that he wrote a ‘scathing review’ of Minaya earlier this month.

“I thought Omar had a thick skin, obviously not,” Rubin said, adding:

“The bottom line is, too, they fired Tony Bernazard because he did the things I said he did… For them to change the story like this, personally it devastates me.  This is my livelihood.  Look, I have tremendous relationships with most of the people in uniform.  I guarantee you if I walk in to the clubhouse right now I’ll have more pats on the back, unless people are just scared to do that because it’s their bosses.  I could assure you they just made my job impossible to do in the short-term.”

Update, 5:02 pm:

Andrew Marchand of 1050 ESPN Radio asks, “We don’t doubt that Rubin tried to get a job with the Mets. That probably happened, though, we haven’t independently confirmed it. But what does that have to do with anything, even if true?”

In the end, Marchand explains why this is the beginning of the end for Minaya.

Update, 4:53 pm:

In a post to Twitter, Can’t Stop the Bleeding writes:

“Here’s a list of things the Wilpons and Minaya don’t understand : 1) public relations, 2) journalism, 3) ponzi schemes, 4) baseball.”

Update, 4:35 pm:

Rubin told reporters that he once probed Jeff Wilpon about how to get a job in major league baseball, ‘but that’s it.’

Rubin said he never asked for a specific job from the Mets, he just asked general questions on e-mail about how to go about finding a job ‘in the industry.’

“I’m floored,” Rubin said, “I don’t know how I’m going to cover the team now… To make this type of accusation is obscene.”

Rubin will also be a guest on SNY’s Daily News Live at 5:00 pm.

…i hope omar had Jeff Wilpon’s blessing for calling rubin out by name, because if not, and omar did this on his own, and just caused more heat, he better look out…

…John Ricco, hide in the closet, man…. no subtle movements…

Update, 4:30 pm:

Rubin will an on-air guest of SNY in the next few minutes.

…like Clark Griswold said, ‘This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy.’… i can’t believe omar called rubin out during this press conference… i mean, this was supposed to be a day of clearing the air, turning the page from last week, building on two wins in Houston and looking forward… instead, omar throws rubin under the bus and here we are at the cross section of Unique and Sensational, and as one fire goes out another is set…

Update, 4:15 pm:

During today’s press conference to announce the firing of Tony Bernazard, Mets GM Omar Minaya was clear to point out that Adam Rubin of the Daily News, who wrote the initial reports about Bernazard, had been lobbying the team for a job in the team’s player development department.

…interesting… so, maybe this will finally answer my question of why rubin is always wearing a suit… seriously, always with the suits…

…seriously, though, the insinuation, which is pretty serious, as i hear it from omar, is t hat rubin wrote this story about tony to try and get tony fired, because he was seeking a job in the team’s player development department… this is an amazing accusation, and omar better have proof…

Rubin, in the audience, then told Minaya, to his face, that he is ‘despicable’ for alleging that he set out to ‘tear Tony down’ to take his job.

…this just took a fascinating turn… i have never heard of anything like this, which is about to make national attention, i would think, in terms of sports and media…

In a post to his media watchdog blog for Newsday, Neil Best called this press conference one of the “strangest in the history of New York media!”