Wake Up With GTOG: Is Jose Reyes For Real?

By Finesse

A few thoughts on last night's wild finish to the baseball season.

- The Rays' comeback on the Yankees, coupled with the Red Sox collapse, is what makes baseball so great, you know, so long as you forget the past 6 months of games.  Seriously though, it was exciting, and it reinforced an undeniable truth about baseball: If you want to come back from a 5+ run deficit, load the bases and then have the opposing pitcher walk/bean in the next 2 runs.  Floodgates city.

- If anyone deserved to blow a 9-game lead in September, it's the Red Sox.  Not necessarily because of their current players, but because of Curt Schilling.  I know he retired years ago, but the stench is still there.  He made nonsensical comments the other day about the collapse being "100 percent on the players" but also blaming the general manager.  He has a long history of obnoxiousness, highlighted by his railing against Yankees' players for being on steroids, as if Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were just eating egg whites and doing burpees in 2004.

Went to Zumba class and Whole Foods together three times per week.

- Jose Reyes won the NL batting title, but not without sacrificing the integrity of the game in the process (first and last time GTOG will ever talk about "the integrity" of anything).  He got a bunt single in the first inning, taking his batting average to .337.  Then, because he's a team-first guy, he asked to be pulled from the game so that he'd end his season ahead of Ryan Braun in the race and put all the pressure on Braun to pass him (Braun went 0-4).  Let's let Reyes explain:

"I said, 'If I go 1-for-1, take me out of the game.  And I did that. If I went 0-for-1, maybe I'm still in the game until I get a hit. ... I wanted to stay in the game, but (Mets fans) have to understand, too, what's going on. They have to feel happy about it if I win the batting title. I do that for the team, for the fans too, because they've been supporting me all the way through. I've (had) throughout my career a lot of ups and downs here with a lot of injuries. One thing I do all the time is give 100 percent on the field."

You see, Mets' fans?  He did it for you, so that you can spend the next week getting teased at work by your friends because Reyes pulled himself from the game.

The only time it's acceptable to sit people in an attempt to reach specific milestones is if there is an organizational decision made to tank games to get the #1 pick.