Mets hire 2 coaches for Mendoza's new staff

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Mets hire 2 coaches for Mendoza's new staff

2025-10-15 23:45 Last Updated At：23:50

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Mets are hiring Kai Correa as bench coach and promoting Jeff Albert to oversee their major league hitting program, the team announced Wednesday.

Correa and Albert are the first replacements after the Mets elected to overhaul manager Carlos Mendoza's coaching staff in the wake of a disappointing 83-79 season that ended without a playoff berth.

The 37-year-old Correa, born in Hawaii, spent the past two seasons as the Cleveland Guardians' major league field coordinator. Added to his title this year was director of defense, strategy and baserunning.

Before that, Correa was San Francisco's bench coach from 2020-23 and served as interim manager for three games after the Giants fired skipper Gabe Kapler in September 2023.

Correa replaces John Gibbons, who resigned as Mendoza's bench coach after the season.

Albert, who turns 45 on Halloween, was the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach from 2019-22. He spent the past three seasons as the Mets' director of hitting development and now will assume a prominent role with the big league club.

New York announced Oct. 3 that hitting coaches Jeremy Barnes and Eric Chavez won't return in 2026, along with several other members of Mendoza's staff.

The team still needs to replace pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, third base coach Mike Sarbaugh and catching coach Glenn Sherlock, who retired.

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Holiday ornaments decorate life all year long in this Belgian shop

ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) — Getting ready for the holiday season has never been stressful for Christel Dauwe — after all, her holiday period lasts all year long in her Christmas ornament shop in the Belgian city of Antwerp.

Her collecting began in her teenage years, and she now has more than 64,000 ornaments in her personal collection and another 18,000 displayed in her shop, the Christel Dauwe Collection.

“My personal wish is to have a Christmas museum, where ornaments and the idea of Christmas can be on permanent display,” she told The Associated Press. But until that day comes, her small shop uses every corner to display its vast inventory.

Its wares include birds of every feather, fruit arrangements, cars, angels, snowmen and other figurines, ranging from a few euros for a wood laser-cut Cathedral of Antwerp to more than 500 euros ($580) for a special ornament of Alexander the Great on horseback.

The store began 35 years ago as an antiques shop, selling a few ornaments on the side, but Dauwe wanted to try selling more.

On the suggestion of a Polish au pair, Dauwe and her husband traveled to Poland and found a factory that could produce exactly the ornaments she wanted. The only catch was that 200 pieces of each design had to be ordered at a time.

They returned home deflated.

“After second thoughts though, we decided to order 20 shapes of 200 each, and one day they arrived -- all 4,000 of them. We gave some away and the rest we put in the shop and, well … That’s the story from there,” she said.

The original Polish factory still supplies many of the shop’s ornaments, in addition to 32 other European companies.

“There is an ornament here for everyone. We’ve had people come in who say they have a new pet or even a new car and we try to match an ornament to them. In the end the goal is not to have some kind of posh tree decorated all with the same colors and Christmas balls. The goal of ornaments is to make you smile,″ she said.

Some ornaments are more personal. And one year there was an ornament of Christel herself, designed by her husband as a surprise.

She’s been asked to provide ornaments for weddings and other events as well.

As far as having Christmas all year round, Dauwe says she is never bored with it. Twice a year she goes around the shop and dusts each ornament individually. She has met people from all over the world, and entertains die-hard locals who stop into the store just for a morning chat.

“There are two ways to go with Christmas. It’s either the nostalgia of the past or the hope for the future,″ she said. ″Hope is what is the most important to me. It’s what keeps you going.”