The New York Mets have been frequently booed by their fans during their nosedive in the standings this month, so the players decided to boo the fans back in their own way. They began a unique celebration of giving a thumbs down every time they performed well. Javier Báez explained Sunday that it's a message to the home crowd.
"It feels bad when I strike out and I get booed. It doesn't really get to me, but I want to let them know that when we have success, we're going to do the same thing, to let [fans] know how it feels," Báez told reporters. "...They got to be better. I play for the fans and love the fans. If they're going to do that, they're going to put more pressure on the team."
Former Marlins president David Samson weighed in on the situation on his podcast "Nothing Personal with David Samson" on Monday.
"Who doesn't love booing players, or booing executives? It's like a right of passage, Samson began. "You get to boo."
Samson said when he was a president in the league, he spent so much time talking to players about booing and letting them know you just have to forget about it and ignore it, you can't think about it.
"Steve Cohen the owner has made things worse not better through his tweeting and all the things he does," Samson added.
Players doing their own celebrations is nothing new, but they usually aren't sharing the meaning behind them to everyone.
"Players do these little hand signals all the time. They're inside jokes that they come up with in the clubhouse that the manager always knows about," Samson says, though Mets management claims they had no clue what was going, to which the podcast host says "horsehockey."
Samson says he "couldn't believe" when he saw Baez reveal the meaning behind the gesture. "Baez makes the mistake of actually telling us what the thumbs down is for," he said, adding that you're not supposed to say anything bad about the fans.
Mets manager Luis Rojas has a problem, Samson says, so bad that he may have to find a new job shortly.
