It led to a comment like this from one prominent blogger who wrote last week: Happy that the Mets had won, although it a homer was by my 25th favorite Met, I rolled over, hit off and drifted off to dreams of updating this post in the morning.What kind of message is that?
via Valdespin Is Getting the Beltran/Tejada Treatment… Shocker… | Mets Merized Online.
Dear Joe,
To answer the direct question, the message was that I went to bed early, and that the Mets had won on a home run by my 25th favorite Met. There were 24 other players who could have homered that would have made me even happier.
Sometimes I just don’t enjoy a player. There is a chapter in my eBook about John Franco. Other Mets I did not enjoy include Jeff Kent, Ryan Thompson, Lastings Milledge, Doug Sisk, Garry Templeton, and Bobby Valentine (manager version, I liked the player.)
Which Met should be my 25th favorite? Am I allowed to like some more than others?
I hate the guy. Still root for him just because he’s a Met. I didn’t like Reyes either. I think Valdespins antics are worse. Reyes was a jerkoff in a fun loving way. JV1 is just a prick.
I honestly find Valdespin’s behavior less irritating than Reyes’, for pretty much the same reasons you think the opposite. Reyes’ “fun loving” behavior was just childish and came off as a constant effort to draw attention to himself. Valdespin’s prickishness strikes me as a lot more genuine: he truly believes he’s all that as a baseball player and anybody who doesn’t agree can just pucker up and kiss his a$$.
Objectively, I’m not sure there’s any real difference between the two’s behavior except for how the media presents/presented it.
You may be right about that. It seems like Reyes’ behavior was accepted more on those teams too because it was a heavily Hispanic influenced roster. In not trying to bring race into it, but there was a strong hispanic cultural presence on those teams. Reyes also had Pedro, Beltran, Valentin and Delgado as mentors. Even a majority of the coaches were Hispanic.
JV doesn’t have anyone on this team like that. It’s a predominantly American roster. You have a few “old school” baseball men running the show now. And you can see the team isn’t on board with that stuff like it used to be, and the media is recognizing it.
Like I said earlier, I will root for him because he is a Met. I’m 32 now and have played baseball and football on the college and semi-pro levels. I’ve played against guys who played in the minors and NFL and big D1 programs. I’ve always been taught to be humble and, just like Shannon said, act like you’ve been there before.
Ill end it with this. Winning cures everything, and if this team had the best record in baseball right now, no one would care what JV does.
JV1 doesn’t really bother me YET, but i fully support you not liking him 🙂 sometimes people just irk us. at least he isn’t met royalty – i don’t like piazza – which after many years is an opinion i’ve learned to keep to myself. i wish he gave me the warm fuzzies like he does everybody else, it’d probably make my life as a met fan much easier…
I don’t think I ever disliked Piazza, but I was pretty indifferent towards him until his last couple of seasons with the team. I’m sure some of that had to do with him replacing Todd Hundley (Hundley’s probably the last Met I truly hated to see go), and I *know* some of it was difficulty flipping the switch from hating him as a blankety-blanking Dodger to loving him as a Met.
I freely admit I was always and still am a bigger fan of Edgardo Alfonzo than Piazza. Alfonzo was home grown, a great hitter, as clutch as they come, and an excellent infielder no matter what position he was asked to play. Piazza was a monster in the lineup, but a) again, originally a hated Dodger and b) not as complete a player.
Fonzie is my all time favorite Met. Have his jersey autographed and shadow boxed, hanging up in my home.
I first saw Valdespin in a spring training game last year. I’d never heard of him before, but I watched him make some mistake (can’t remember what anymore) that would’ve been utterly ridiculous even in Little League. So, I felt compelled to actually boo him. Yes, in a spring training game. Yes, after I never booed Jason Bay, for example. As a result of that incident, I was predisposed to dislike him, and his behavior since then confirmed my initial judgment. So, he’s my 25th-favorite Met, too–on the active roster, that is. He’s my 40th-favorite Met on the 40-man roster, and my ??th-favorite Met in the organization.
As long as Shaun Marcum sticks around blowing leads and losing games, JV1 can be my 24th favorite Met… after all, if we’re allowed to have favorite players, we’re going to have least favorite players.
I gotta say, Shark, your ability to rattle off seven names without a mention of Juan Samuel is pretty impressive.
Good call on Ryan Thompson. He’s my all-time least favorite.
Today in Atlanta Valdespin signed my kid brother’s baseball for him. Maybe he’s an arrogant player, but at least he’s a good guy. I was an expert autograph-getter when I was a kid, and players simply did NOT sign on getaway days, after a loss. “Sorry, gotta get to the airport.”
My 13 year old brother thinks JV1 is the greatest guy on the Mets right now.