I will boo, but it's not for the reason you think. I don't blame Reyes for leaving the Mets last December. As a free agent in the prime of his career he made the right decision for himself and his family when he took the biggest offer, even if it meant leaving the team that drafted him and helped make him a star. Additionally, the Mets current financial limbo that the made it completely unrealistic for the team to sink an average of 16 million dollars into one player, especially one who is injury prone. I won't even boo because he joined the Marlins, a team that I have grown to hate after they gleefully ended our season two years in a row (fueled in 2007 by the antics of one Jose Reyes by the way.)
So no, I won't be booing because of Reyes' greed or a belief that he turned his back on the Mets. It won't be because he left for a rival team and it won't even be because of his highlighter orange hair.
Instead, I'll be booing because of September 28th, 2011.
On the last day of the 2011 season, many Mets fans showed up at Citi Field and tuned into SNY. they didn't do it to watch a sub-.500 team play one last game, but because they wanted to watch a homegrown player who they knew would be playing his final game in a Mets uniform. We wanted 9 more innings of the most exciting player to ever wear the orange and blue but instead we got three outs on the field and one pitch at the plate. After dropping down a bunt single, Reyes took himself out in order to win the batting title. To make it even worse he claimed that he did it for us, the long suffering Mets fans who have been clamoring for a batting champion for years, not for him and the millions that it would add to his contract (I guess I'm in the minority that would rather a championship or at least a pennant.)
So tonight I will boo. I will always remember the triples, stolen bases and "Jose" chants but tonight at 7:10 I'll think back 7 months and remember the man who dropped a bunt, walked away and blamed us for doing it.
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