On the heels of yesterdays
loving opus to my beloved Phillies, a man who has already given me so much sent
me an early Christmas present. During an interview with a New York sports radio
station, Cole Hamels was asked if he considered the Mets to be "choke
artists," and he went right ahead and called a spade a spade. Cole's reply
to the question: “For the past two years, they’ve been choke artists.”
This answer has made some waves up there in the Big Apple. The idea that a team
that was up 7 1/2 games and 3 1/2 games with just over two weeks left in back
to back seasons and loses both times, as sure a definition of that art as any I've ever heard, is a team that has choked is too much for
some Mets fans to swallow. The response to this little bit of thunder-stealing
just hours after their acquisition of K-Rod has put a worm in the Big Apple.
Some dude named Chino has
decided that them's fightin' words! Look for his comment on this article at
4:47 PM on December 11th. This typical specimen of a living, breathing, typing
(but, as is sadly typical, not thinking) Mets fan is absolutely priceless. He's
got an opinion and everything! What an animal! Among his views: "you guys
arent great and i still dont respect your team! Yes you guys have potential,but
no way in hell you guys would of won against the yankees or the redsox!"
and then this: "
So please, if you go head to head with good teams you
guys will lose,you sure damn lost 11 games against us! so i have no idea how
are you guys better than us,lol idiots!" "
so please you know if you would of lost lidge, you
guys wouldnt of made it!" "DEBUNKED," he says. [sic, all of this is as I found it in its primal
habitat, I swear.]
I mean, this guy is for
real. He really means it. He does not respect the Phillies because Lidge could
have been injured, and because he doubts that we would have beaten the Red Sox,
the Yankees, his beer league team, etc. Oh boy. The reason that I am mentioning
this idiot’s rambling, panicked, angry post is that I think it speaks volumes
about where the Mets and their fanbase are now. The Mets, as I alluded to
yesterday, have spent four years trying to buy a championship by building
around 2 very good farm-raised players, Wright and Reyes, by going out and
acquiring top-tier free agents, or trading for people like Delgado and Santana
who were either a financial drain on their older teams, were injury/erratic
performance problems, or were just a year away from free agency. This four
–year shopping spree represents a concerted financial effort to win a World
Series of the sort most fans can only dream about. In their exuberance, the
Mets fans and roster seem to have anointed themselves the World’s Rightful
Champions.
Evidence of this attitude
abounds. The mood of the crowd as the Mets were denied their trip to the 2006
World Series in Game 7 of the NLCS was one of shocked disbelief; by the time
the Mets got around to collapsing down the stretch in ’07 and ’08, that
attitude had gained steam, grown teeth, mutated a bit to where it sits now,
which is at the emotional confluence of despair and self-righteousness. The
Mets are operating on a similar plane to the Yankees, spending a ton of money
and unable to outrun their team’s fundamental lack of heart, courage and
brains. What they need to do, right now, is to go back to the yellow brick
road drawing board.
These truths in mind, the
raw panic and rage of the Mets fan is a perfectly rational and sensible
response to the simmering truth that his team is wanting in the fundamental
qualities inherent to championship-caliber ballclubs. When they have, needed to win the most, they have played their worst. The Mets, right now, are
over-hyped, over-wrought and over the hill. Their window is closing, not opening. They have run themselves into the
ground searching for ways around this truth, but their chickens are coming home
to roost on a place called Citifield, a fine-looking, hugely expensive ballyard in the middle of an asphalt swamp. Cole Hamels, when asked, simply reminded
them of the facts, speaking from his eminent position as the reigning World
Series MVP, a champion who has displayed the heart, courage, talent and brains to be the most important player on the best team in the world. And that, my friends, is why he is the Wizard of Oz.
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