Friday, September 30, 2011

I Love Baseball, But Should I Be Done for 2011?

I am Mets fan. My baseball season has, for all intents and purposes, been over for weeks if not months. When the Mets are bad I generally follow the same pattern. I'll watch til football season since I'm back to having a horse in the race (I'm not saying the Jets are a Super Bowl contender, it's just that there is so much parity in the NFL) and then go back to baseball for the last two weeks to watch pennent and wild card races.

I honest to god can't remember having as much fun watching baseball as I did last night. That's how I want my baseball season to end. I know the playoffs ratchet up the intensity and everything but there is nothing the postseason is going to offer me that last night didn't already give me. I'm going to tune in more at least the last half of every game just to keep myself a well rounded sports fan but for the first time in my life I could do without October baseball. I already have the memory of 2011 that I need.

**Disclaimer**
I stated I'm a Mets fan only because I know that if you have a team in the playoffs you obviously care. I would care too. This is from a baseball fan with no team left. Thank You.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Jose Reyes - NL Batting Champion...and well deserved

Jose Reyes is taking alot of crap for the way he went about winning the NL Batting title. People see it as him being a coward and taking the easy way out to winning the batting crown. Just like last night's blown save by Jonathan Papelbon wasn't the reason the Red Sox didn't make the playoffs (it was a month in the making), Jose Reyes taking his last two at bats off did not win him the batting title. It took 537 at bats of hitting .337 that did it.

The Mets weren't playing for anything. I don't know why people are making such a big deal about a guy trying for something that would benefit him individually in a situation like that. It's not easy to win a batting title and now for the rest of time he can see his name on the list of former NL batting champions. I'm almost positive I would have done the same thing.

Then people talk about the fans who came to see Jose Reyes. There are two types of fans who showed up at the game yesterday, the suckers who bought season tickets and finishing out the string (you knew what type of season this was going to be) and the guys who paid two bucks on StubHub to get in (I was one of them the night before). Be happy that you got to see a classic Reyes bunt base hit, got to give him his ovation as he was pulled from the game and got an early ticket to go to McFadden's.

On a side note: Hey Rob Parker (from ESPN), why does Derek Jeter's name have to come up at all in your column? You're not un-biased enough to have a legitimate opinion on what Reyes opted to do yesterday.