Yoenis Cespedes said he won’t be speaking to the media this year. If he’s not speaking to the media, he’s not speaking to the fans. C’mon, Yo, talk to us.
You don’t have to say anything substantive. Hardly any of your professional colleagues do when they’re not suggesting what acts of vigilante justice they’d like seen performed on select members of the 2017 Houston Astros. We just like feeling a part of the conversation. Last season, Pete Alonso (have you guys met?) tweeted “#LFGM” and reiterated the message to Steve Gelbs in a postgame interview. We went nuts for it.
To make certain I accomplish nothing with my life, I carved out a half-hour Tuesday evening to watch the Hot Stove Report on SNY. A person couldn’t do less with his time if he tried. Still, I listened attentively when Gelbs chatted with Dom Smith, who captured the essence of baseball playerspeak when he explained how well the Mets “clicked,” “gelled” and “meshed” with one another. “Aren’t those three words that mean the same thing?” my wife asked. Indeed they are. No wonder the next episode of Hot Stove Report will be broadcast live from Roget’s Thesaurus.
It’s not what Smith said. It’s that Smith said it and evinced a happy-to-be-here demeanor that convinced me, baseball viewer back in New York, that my Mets are clicking, gelling and meshing beautifully in Florida. They’re genuinely happy to be there. And if I wasn’t sure, the show concluded with Gary Apple engaged in an intense dialogue with Brandon Nimmo. In a world exclusive, Nimmo revealed to Apple he really hopes to play every day.
That’s all I want from my players in February. Happy horsespit is fine. Acronyms are a bonus. Revelations can come later. Yoenis can surely hang in there for five minutes and tell the beat reporter steno pool that he feels pretty good, that he hopes to stay healthy and that he’s gotta go get his treatment. That will feed the fairly tame beast. Click. Gel. Mesh. Move on.
Once Opening Day rolls around, if Cespedes is back at the ranch, he won’t have anybody but the crashing boars to ignore. If he’s somehow fully physically rejuvenated and swinging at Citi, the talking doesn’t have to go as deep as his best-case scenario swings. Just don’t be the one Silent Sam amid a roster of Garrulous Guses. Don’t make Dom or Brandon or another of your teammates answer for you when you don’t catch up to a fastball at the plate or a sinker in left should we be so lucky so soon to be again graced by your talents. Don’t give Luis Rojas one more detail to master without proper preparation. The mysterious stranger persona is cool to a point. Now and then, though, chime in with a cliché. You felt good out there. You’re healthier than you’ve been in a while. You gotta go get that treatment.
See? That didn’t hurt a bit.
Trade him if you can.
“To make certain I accomplish nothing with my life, I carved out a half-hour Tuesday evening to watch the Hot Stove Report on SNY..”
Throwing shade on yourself in the most hilarious, Metsian way possible.
Well done.
Hey, as far as I’m concerned, if Ces ’20 can recapture Ces ’15, he doesn’t need to say a word. He can be Eddie Murray for all I care.
I also would have embraced a comparable outcome from Eddie Murray ‘92.
Being involved with the Mets in any way means giving fans something to discuss, over-analyze, complain about and go postal over on social media (where, if it’s already been said 4,016 times, there’s nothing wrong with a 4,017th). He’s only doing his job. There are no shortage of players perfectly willing to recite one or more lines out of the MLBPA Book of Interview Cliches, Spring Training appendix.
But seriously, I wonder if both sides want much more of each other anymore. The Mets have obviously had to make plans assuming he can’t play and have already paid lawyers to figure out how to reduce his salary, and my gut is telling me he’d rather not be here, if he in fact wants to keep playing at all. Athletes rehabbing serious injuries with the intent of continuing their careers either tell boars, wild or otherwise, to romp around on their spacious ranch all they want, or they hire a qualified boar-ridder to rid the place of boars, delegating work that’s so dangerous to ankles.
Isn’t “going postal” on social media an oxymoron?
And redundant.
Let Yo be Yo.
He’ll talk when he wants to talk. In the meantime. we have a Polar Bear who is happy to talk to the media, along with his menagerie of friends. We’ll get our platitudes.
Interested to hear what JD Davis has to say about the Houston cheating scandal, as he was on that team for the last two months of the season.
And I gotta say, sorry to say, that if it took some cheating to beat the Yankees, I guess that doesn’t make it all bad.
Regrets, he’s had a few (Marisnick, too):
https://nypost.com/2020/02/14/j-d-davis-now-ashamed-of-role-in-astros-cheating-scandal/
Interesting article, Greg, thanks for the link. JD Davis is still one of my favorites on this team, and he’s a breath of fresh air compared to the Wild Bore.
I cry no tears for any of these non-Houston players, as none of their brethren before them uttered a peep when the whole world knew they were all on steroids. Give the MVP to Mike Greenwell? Yes, but only if he had spoken out while the whole thing was going on. Since he did not, he is just as complicit.
A way in which the Astros can get over this, is to voluntarily vacate the championship and give back the metal, the rings, and the T-shirts. And the record-books need to show no WS winner, just as in 1994. Maybe they would not have even made the playoffs had they not cheated all year.
Well, *somebody*’s divine …! I will leave it to Cespedes whether he wants to play like a young god or like a diva.
And I have yet to get my hopes up that he plays at all.
Yo speaks! (And presumably reads FAFIF.)
https://www.northjersey.com/story/sports/mlb/mets/2020/02/23/yoenis-cespedes-speaks-out-return-ny-mets-2020/4832656002/