Talk Me In Off The Ledge!

It’s nice to hear Mets fans get all excited over a paltry 4 game winning streak, especially with the last three coming against the dreaded Bronx Bombers.

Now far be it for me to dampen anyone’s party, but let’s keep it real Mets fans, the Yankees although in first place, are a shell of themselves due to age and injuries to Youkilis, A-Roid, Jeter, Granderson, and Teixeira.

Secondly, the play of Fearless Ike and Tejada are quite perplexing. If the Mets had any other options for 1B, Davis would have been sent down weeks ago. I like Ike, but he has been putrid. I want to see him do well, and I want to see him do well as a Met, but his head is so screwed up, I can’t see him getting corrected while playing in Flushing. Maybe a change of scenery to Las Vegas might help.

As for our imbecilic shortstop, his play last night against the Yankees should have warranted a Gil Hodges/Cleon Jones moment.  For those who didn’t see it, Tejada gave up on a ball hit up the middle that should have been easily played. He stopped hustling, thus letting a should be 6-3 groundout turn into a Yankee base hit.

I don’t want to rant, but…the score of the game was irrelevant. Tejada, as a Major League ballplayer is obligated to hustle, not take a play or a day off. His play this year has been abysmal, and his play last year was greatly overrated. The Mets believe Tejada is a better shortstop than former Met, Jose Reyes. I have seen nothing to prove that sentiment. Jose is much faster,  Jose has more power, Jose can change a game like no other,  Jose has a much better arm, Jose has much better range, and Jose was a 4 time All Star as a Mets player, Jose brought excitement to the game and to fans…other than that, Tejada is superior.

Tejada’s lack of hustle should have merited a slow walk by TC to Tejada and escort him off the field. I know that isn’t done now-a-days, but it was well deserved. TC did nothing, and lo-and-behold, Tejada got injured later on.

His injury looked faked at best; he didn’t appear to twist his knee, and slid towards the third base warning track. He didn’t collide with anyone, and came up lame. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but to me that is like begging out of a game. Reyes got killed for pulling himself out of the final game in ’11 to win the batting title, and I can understand people’s disgust with that, but what Tejada did was worse. He is creating an excuse for poor play, and if you want to play in the Majors, you have to be tougher than that.

Amazingly, the Amazin’s have put Tejada on the DL. That’s probably a lot easier than demoting him. To me, this DL stint is similar to what they went through with Oliver Perez, DL’ing him so he didn’t have to play. The Tejada incident is much of the same.

I have absolutely no tolerance for players’ sand-bagging it, especially a player on MY TEAM. Tejada is doing just that, and that is unacceptable. Let Omar Quintanilla play…at least he will give it his all. The Mets need to take a stand and let the players and fans know that this sort of attitude is not permissible in Flushing. Just because the team is poor, the attitude and discipline of the players shouldn’t be.

Think Jose would like to re-locate? I would even pick him up at the airport. Jose injured is still more valuable than Tejada healthy.

Talk me in folks, I’m on the ledge.