IF the Mets were looking for a turning point to their season, they’ve found it.
It was the moment Carlos Delgado rejected his curtain call on Sunday after his second home run. Mark that down as his New York minute. Delgado left the Mets’ fans hanging on their cheers. He says it simply wasn’t a curtain call moment.
“There are moments, and there are moments,” he explained again at Shea before last night’s game was rained out against the Pirates. “I don’t think that was the moment.”
Even if he went out there, he said, “What am I supposed to do? Am I going to stay out here until they start booing. I don’t know the etiquette.”
What is important is that the Mets, in the form of Delgado, took a stand against the “first-time, long-time” instant gratification mentality that has swept through Shea.
At first I thought Delgado was dead wrong to reject the fans’ love. The more I thought about it, Delgado, who is old school, did the right thing. No matter the reason, he refused to feed the beast, the beast he knows can turn in an instant. He refused to get caught up, as he said, in “the fan game.”Delgado was brought to New York to hit home runs and drive in runs, but he also was brought here to be a leader. By doing what he did, even though he repeated this was simply not a curtain call moment, he was standing up for the likes of Scott Schoeneweis, who has been booed unmercifully, and Aaron Heilman, who is giving up too many home runs because opponents are sitting on his changeup.
There are times when boos are warranted, but Mets fans have gone over the edge. Perhaps it’s because they’ve had their hearts ripped out too many times.
In a way, Mets fans are becoming much like Red Sox fans during the Curse of the Bambino Era, just bitter fans. Now, after two World Championships, Red Sox fans have gone the other way. Every night is a Sweet Caroline party at Fenway.
In no way, shape or form did young David Wright tell Delgado what to do Sunday. It’s not his place and it’s not his nature. The Talk Show Guys wanted Wright to defend himself yesterday, but Wright wouldn’t go for the bait.
The bottom line is that all this negativity is getting into the Mets’ collective head and Delgado took a stand.
“It doesn’t feel good,” the first baseman said of the booing, “I’m not going to lie to you.”
If the Mets are to toughen up and win the NL East and beyond, they can’t let boos from the home fans get to them.
“What we need to do is just go out and play baseball,” Delgado said. “We can’t start thinking, ‘Are the fans going to react this way or are they going to react that way?’ We can’t focus on that.”
Delgado essentially told the fans, you can’t have it both ways, batter to batter, inning to inning. Baseball is not that kind of game. There will be failure. Boos are part of this game, but not at every strikeout, not at every poorly located pitch and not during introductions.
“Support is important,” Delgado said. “It’s not nice when they boo you sometimes unfairly. Nothing is fair in baseball. You just have to go out and do the best you can.”
Delgado was asked when was the proper moment for a curtain call. He responded, “Five-hundred home runs, World Series.”
He admitted that even a World Series may not halt the boos.
What if the fans boo him more harshly now?
“You know what,” he said, “sometimes you do things and you got to live with it.”
For that he should be cheered.