Professional athletes are great athletes. If they weren't they wouldn't be professionals/ They are getting paid a lot of money to play a kids game. Being a pro athlete means that you have the spotlight and a lot of eyes on you. Even more so in a market like New York. And for Mets middle infielders Francisco Lindor and Javy Baez, they found out the hard way what that can mean.
The two Mets stars, along with Kevin Pillar had started making the thumbs down gesture during a game against the Nationals on Sunday. The reason they were doing that was, according to them “are going to get booed when we have success."
Basically what they were saying was, they were making that gesture in response to the fans who had been booing them during the rough stretch they had just come off of. The two players were unhappy with the treatment from the fans and that was their way of responding to it.
Baez made a statement in regards to the incident: “I didn’t mean to offend anybody, this is something I’ve done in the past against other teams. I did it in LA to the dugout. I might have said something wrong that I was booing the fans, I really meant like ‘boo me now,’ and not to the fans, to the dugout.”
Lindor added to that, by saying: “It was to the dugout, thumbs down for me means the adversity that we’ve gone through, the negative things, we overcome it, so we did it. We went over it. However, It was wrong and I apologize to whoever I offended. It was not my intent to offend people, we can't go against the fans. I’ve never done it in my career. We play for the fans.”
From the fans point of view, I get where they coming from with this, but this should have been said right away. Not a couple of days after the fact. I understand the way they feel and that they want to play to win. Sometimes you really need to avoid putting your foot in your mouths. If you had said that right from the get go, then the backlash from fans wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad. Just a better thought out response is all.
It's tough to try and make it in any sports town, but in New York its even worse. The fans in NY are SO passionate about there teams, and when the teams aren't doing well, the fans have no problem letting you know about it. We just want our clubs to be a success. If its not winning a title, at least give us something competitive to watch and give us hope for. What these two guys did was stick their foots in their mouths at the wrong time. And given how much money Lindor is making on his deal, and how little he has been producing compared to his bank account, I don't blame us Mets fans for reacting the way we did.
All I'm suggesting is that a better choice of words for the explanation would have smoothed things over a little.
