Morning Briefing: Hide your furniture when the Mets come to town

New York Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen must hate chairs. Perhaps some sort of childhood sitting accident has led him to this state, but whatever the reason, he apparently flipped a chair after yelling at Mets manager Mickey Callaway after a loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.

After flipping the chair, Van Wagenen told Callaway to go conduct his “…. press conference,” according to the New York Post. You can guess what choice language was actually in the place of those four little dots before “press conference.”

Asked about the incident after Saturday’s win over the Phillies, Callaway said: “I think that when we have private meetings, we’ll probably keep all that content in that room, for good reason.”

Asked about his relationship with Van Wagenen, Callaway responded: “It’s fantastic. We’re both passionate guys and what not.”

The Mets began the season with Van Wagenen telling the rest of the National League East to “come get us.”

Which they have. The Mets are in fourth place in the East and aren’t that close in the wild-card race either.

But why take it out on a poor chair? Do the folks at IKEA know about this? They must be horrified at this abuse of furniture. Plus, it didn’t even work. The Mets won on Saturday, but lost Sunday 8-3 to the Phillies. If I was the clubhouse table, I’d be feeling pretty nervous right about now.

Lights out

Weeks of heated trash talk led up to the Jorge Masvidal-Ben Askren fight at UFC 239 in Las Vegas on Saturday, with Askren at one point wondering whether Masvidal understood English. And you have to wonder whether Askren understands any language after he was knocked out in a UFC-record five seconds. Askren bent to go for a take down while Masvidal went for a flying knee. Knee met side of head, end of fight.

The loss by Askren, who was undefeated and is (was?) also extremely fond of running his mouth, led to some fascinating responses from other fighters on social media.

Dustin Poirier: “Masvidal told me last night at dinner he was gonna start this fight with a flying knee and showed me video on [his] phone of him practicing.”

Jimmy Smith: “Ben is thinking ‘who are all these people and why are they all staring at me?’ No joke.”

Chase Sherman: “Scientific fact....can’t wrestle if your unconscious.”

Colby Covington: “Hey Ben Askren…. told you….. Listen to me next time.”

But perhaps the best response came from Askren himself, when he tweeted, hours after the fight, “Well that sucked.”

Bad form

Already on probation, 12th-seeded Fabio Fognini could be in more trouble for his remarks during a straight-set loss to unseeded Tennys Sandgren at Wimbledon.

During the loss Saturday, Fognini said he wished “a bomb would explode at the club.”

Of course, mentioning bombs anywhere these days is a no-no, but especially in Wimbledon. More than 1,000 bombs fell in the area during World War II, destroying thousands of nearby homes, and 16 fell on the tournament grounds. One hit Centre Court.

Forgnini later apologized, saying his comments came in the heat of the moment and that he was upset about not playing well and the condition of the court’s grass.

“If I offended anyone, I apologize,” Fognini said in Italian in a post-match news conference. “That definitely wasn’t my intention.”

The incident will be investigated to determine whether it rises to the level of a major offense because Fognini is under a two-year probation stemming from when he insulted a female chair umpire at the 2017 U.S. Open and got kicked out of that tournament.