3 UP: Reyes’ Joy, Beltran’s Leadership, Hawkins’ Number
April 17, 2008 | 12:04pm
1.	My colleague Mark Hale writes in todayâs Post about how Carlos Beltran delivered a pep talk to Jose Reyes before his breakout four-hit game Tuesday night that essentially went like this: Be yourself. If you want to dance and clap hands and smile broadly, just go ahead and do it. Essentially be yourself and let your game flow again.
Maybe it is coincidence that Reyes has broken free. But I donât think so. In general, I think all of the talk about Reyesâ exuberance or Joba Chamberlainâs fist pump is ridiculous. If that is what it takes for a player to perform his best, so be it. These are not robots. We donât have a cookie cutter that is going to spit out athletes to look and sound and behave from some 1950s handbook. Not everyone is going to play with short haircuts and good manners. This isnât Hoosiers. This idea that you donât want to rile up the opposing team is ludicrous. The hell with the other team. If they donât like it, who cares? It doesnât fit anyoneâs Hoosier narrative, but Larry Bird was one of the great trash talkers in NBA history. Would you change a second of his career so he would be silent?
I donât care if Reyes is âshowing up the other teamâ â again who cares? It is the same with Manny Ramirez. If you donât like the home run stares here is a piece of advice: Donât give up home runs to him. Or if you think it has gone too far, well, the opposing pitcher has the baseball in his hand.
But I never thought Reyes was showing up the other team. I thought he was expressing his joy for playing as a musician would on stage. Suffocating that joy was a dumb idea (are you listening Willie Randolph). So telling Reyes to return to his happiest form was a good play by Beltran. The Mets need the lively Reyes. He is their engine, their catalyst. As he goes, so goes the team. So if I were a Met â and my fate rested on this player â I would tell him to break out in song as he rounded first base if that is what made him play best.
2.	The other positive part of this story is Carlos Beltran taking on a leadership role. The Mets have been looking for veteran players to emerge in this area, and here was Beltran not only counseling a younger player, but then stepping forward to the media to speak about the issue.
3.	OK, now that we have settled that, who cares what number LaTroy Hawkins wears? I mean he was wearing the same number that Paul OâNeill once wore not the Shroud of Turin.