Jose Reyes is now a Miami Marlin. Nobody should be shocked to read those words. Heck, more beloved players than him have bolted their adopted hometowns for South Beach (see James, Lebron). And $106 million would entice the majority of us to relocate.
But that doesn't make it any less painful.
Like many Mets fans, Reyes was my favorite player. He was like Rey Ordonez, my teenage self's favorite Met and the shortstop Jose replaced, except Reyes could actually hit and run in addition to flashing a great glove. I'm not a jersey wearer, but I still have the faded Reyes t-shirt that I bought seven years ago. He was, by far, the most exciting Mets player I've ever seen.
Reyes was always a source of debate for Mets fans. He never walked as much as we wanted, never played as smartly as we wanted him to, and never stayed healthy enough for our liking. To some Mets fans he was a great player, to others he was a disappointment. At times he looked like a superstar, while at others he looked clueless. To this day we are split on whether or not he is worth a boatload of money and a long-term contract.
Yet despite these contradictions, Reyes has been almost unanimously considered the most exciting player in baseball since he slid into third base for his first triple. He single-handedly won countless games for the Mets in ways that no other player could, whether it was with a walk-off balk or a diving stop in the hole at shortstop. Watching Reyes hit a ball in the gap and dash around the bases was worth the price of admission (at least upper deck admission) even during the dark days of the past few seasons.
Reyes is the type of player that, because of a few faults and a long injury history, will never be fully appreciated until he is gone. Well now he is gone and will be appreciated, especially when we see him play against the Mets. And that is one of the worst parts of this whole thing: although Jose is going 1,200 miles south, he really won't be very far away at all. He will be facing the Mets 19 times a year for the next six years, and will be announced as the opposing lead-off hitter at Citi Field in nine or ten games in each of those years.
And in each of those games, the famed "Jose, Jose, Jose, Jose" chant will probably be replaced with "boos". What a shame.
