But enough about watching David Wright walk around naked all the time, following Thursday’s reports that longtime Mets clubhouse manager Charlie Samuels had been suspended without pay following gambling allegations, the New York Daily News’s team of Terri Thompson, Alison Gender, Michael O’Keeffe and Christian Red add charges of embezzlement and theft to the mix.
The Mets suspended the 53-year-old Samuels last week after an internal probe that began in midseason revealed that he may have written checks on Mets accounts and cashed them out to cover his own bills and later repaid the “loans” in two to three weeks, the sources said. It is unclear how much of the “loans” were never paid back. Samuels is also under scrutiny for possibly skimming money on the hotel rooms he ordered for players as the team’s traveling secretary and for Mets property that went missing from the clubhouse, including hundreds of bats, balls and jerseys.
Law enforcement sources confirmed the investigation to the Daily News after the Mets said in statement that they had suspended Samuels on Oct. 27. The office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown is heading up the investigation.
Samuels, who has not been arrested, is believed to have told Major League Baseball that he bet on baseball games, a strict violation of baseball rules. Samuels, the Mets’ clubhouse manager for 27 seasons, was described by a source as a “spider who sat in the middle of a money web,” a man who earned about $80,000 a year from the Mets but whose tax returns showed about $600,000 to $700,000 in income. He has homes in Huntington, L.I., and Port St. Lucie.
Elsewhere in the Daily News piece, Samuel is alleged to have admitted betting on baseball, which might explain how he made so much money (ie. consistently betting against the Mets). Much as I hate kick the franchise when it’s down (again), is it safe to say that between Steve Phillips, Bernie Maddof, Paul Lo Duca and Charlie Samuels, the Wilpons have proven to be absolutely lousy judges of character?