Born For The Hate List

When the Colorado Rockies threatened to turn the bottom of the fourth on Saturday into the bottom of the fifth on Friday, and pitcher Guillermo Moscoso battled Dillon Gee to end an eight pitch at-bat with a go-ahead single, I fully expected Peyton Manning to grab a bat muttering to himself “this looks easy”, and hit a home run off Manny Acosta. Thankfully, Dillon Gee hung in there, and the Mets responded with a three run inning of their own to take a 6-4 lead and escape with a 7-5 victory.

Gee gave up four straight hits in the fourth which started with Carlos Gonzalez’s bunt single to tie the game at three before Moscoso’s greatest plate appearance in his life (he only had three before tonight) gave the Rockies a 4-3 lead. But with two outs and nobody on, the Mets got it back off Moscoso with hits by Ruben Tejada (seven hits in his last two games … I’m not sure Jose Reyes has seven hits all season) Daniel Murphy, and David Wright to tie the game at four apiece. Then, after Wright stole second base (key), Lucas Duda chopped a two-run single up the middle to give the Mets a 6-4 lead. After a contentious ninth by Frank Francisco, the Mets recovered to get the win.

The most fun aspect of Saturday’s win came after it was over. Francisco’s contentious ninth came courtesy of Dexter Fowler, who hit a two-out solo HR to make Mets fans nervous. After the game, Fowler, who is on twitter, searched his name and retweeted a bunch of Met fans who said that they hated him after his second HR in as many days against them. Then Fowler responded:

Mind you, Fowler didn’t respond to tweets that were directly addressed to him at his handle that he would have gotten e-mail alerts for and seen without any effort, but searched his name and put Mets fans on blast. That takes work. Seems to me somebody can’t seperate sports hate from real hate. Mets fans don’t hate Dexter because … wait, Mets fans don’t hate Dexter. They hate that he hits home runs against them. But in 140 characters or less, it’s much easier to type “I hate Dexter Fowler”. Fowler took it the wrong way and decided to sic his twitter followers on these Mets fans. Too bad Dexter couldn’t do this on Friday since there was a panel at the Mets 50th Anniversary conference at Hofstra on Saturday where Kerel Cooper of On The Black talked about the effects of social media on baseball. He would have had a field day with this.

So way to go, Dexter. Now Mets fans really do hate you right now. But good luck finding anybody to hate you when you go 0-for-4 because nobody will care about you. And here’s the best part, and something you should keep in mind before you get mad at Fowler: Used to be a guy like Larry Jones would hit a million home runs against the Mets and he’d be in all the Mets fans’ heads. This guy hits two home runs against the Mets in two nights, and Mets fans are renting space in his head? It’s supposed to be the other way around. I mean, this guy doesn’t get to Dexter, but a few people on Twitter react to his home run and he gets sensitive? Great. You cry at sad movies, we get it. Newsflash: you had four hits in two nights and you’re still hitting .254 … we don’t hate you that much, so don’t flatter yourself.

But if you want to retweet something, I have a hate list that I update every once in a while. Now who should I put on it tonight? This is a tough choice …