As the antithesis of the baseball traditionalist, I'm hardly the type to pound my fist on the table and bemoan a winning effort just because it wasn't conducted with the upmost class. Despite being professional in nature, athletes who make it to the highest level of their respective sport do so by way of a competitive fire that blazes hotter than any of us beer league bums could ever possibly stomach without getting heartburn. For that reason, I try to empathize with those whose emotional outbursts might slightly sour a victory in the eyes of those whose ass calls a sizable stick home. That said, there's a difference between showing a lack of class and being a total ass, and all it takes is one cringeworthy peak at a scoreboard that was hanging more lopsided than the work of an alcoholic interior decorator to know which best describes Shawn Kelley's mitt spike. Considering everything competitive about a complete joke of a game had already run it's embarrassing course by the end of the first inning that would have filled the most sought after of Super Bowl boxes, there was nothing remotely close to a legitimate reason to throw both his glove and a tantrum while still up by nearly three touchdowns. I don't care if he thought he was too good to be locked in a "who can get this crap over with faster?"-type pitcher's duel with Jose Reyes, of all people...
...or if he was annoyed the umpires for even slightly extending a game that has to be in contention for the world's biggest waste of time...
....or if he just hated giving up a long ball in that situation. There's no excuse for being that pissed off when the team your pissing on tags you with some of the most meaningless runs in the history of baseball. The Mets, who had already taken to laughing at their own incompetence, would have had every right to charge the mound out of principle to show someone who looked like an entitled infant what frustration really feels like. To be honest, I'm kind of upset they didn't, as getting the entire team tossed as one of their own was finally rounding he bases would have been the most comically fitting ending to a game that played out like a parody of the Mets' existence. Shawn Kelley definitely deserved his designation for assignment, and here's to hoping that assignment is to transcribe the following tweet on a blackboard ten thousand times...
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