Unbelievable! Major League Baseball, yes, the organization that knowingly turned a blind eye to the steroid epidemic for years, felt the need to confiscate the first responders caps from the club that is synonymous with the recovery after September 11, 2001.
Ten years later, people still remark how the Shea faithful and the NY Mets were a huge part in the healing process that was capped off with a Mike Piazza moon shot off Steve Karsay on that September 21st night in 2001. That Mets team was also told not to wear first responders caps, but Todd Zeile, the Mets player rep responded by saying, "They're going to have to pry them off our heads if they think we're going to take those off."
Where was the guts from this cast of Mets? Wright wore a NYPD hat in the dugout, but what would Bud Selig and his cast of idiots, most notably Joe Torre, have done if Wright walked out on the field with the hat on? Wright is the golden child of the Mets, and yes, baseball. Joe Torre was manager when A-Rod, Clemens, and Pettite were juicing, and that was OK. But, if players wore the caps of first responders during a game...that's big trouble.
This topic has been beaten to death, and I don't want to continue to harp on it, but it's a matter of what is really damaging to baseball, and wearing hats in tribute to those brave men and women who sacrificed their lives so that others wouldn't perish is not.
I have a difficult time believing Joe Torre or MLB would be able to enforce any type of fine if the Mets ignored the mandate. The public outcry would have been for a lynching of Selig and Co if they did.
What would have happened if Dickey or Duda or Wright or Reyes or Bay - had not allowed officials to take the hats? My belief is absolutely nothing.
OK, I'm done. I have now taken off my Cap-Gate hat.
Sources: RA Dickey Twitter, Adam Rubin (Zeile Quote)
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