It’s been a rough spring for Jose Reyes. First, the Mets SS had to contend with the screwy suggestion from his own manager that he’d be better off hitting 3rd rather than leading off. Shortly after, Reyes learned he’d be on the shelf for perhaps as long as two months due to a previously undiagnosed thyroid condition. Now, after amidst a flurry of speculation regarding his fitness, Reyes finds his fortitude being questioned by former Men’s Health scribe Will Leitch (above) via New York Magazine’s The Sports Section :
You will be relieved to know that Jose Reyes did not dissolve yesterday in a poof of smoke after being hit by a pitch. In fact, people were so enthused by his hitting yesterday that today he’s going to run the bases. Jose Reyes is such a delicate flower that we are complimenting him for basic human functions, like the morose neighbor boy you’re just happy to see out of the house in the sun once in a while.
It remains a mystery why New York Mag feels compelled to employ an avowed Cards fan to come up with the sort of thing that wouldn’t get past “Mike’d Up”‘s call screener on the grounds of redundancy. Would a St. Louis glossy allow a lifelong Mets fan to routinely skewer the Redbirds’ boozed-up skipper or Bunyanesque fraud of a first base coach? Not if they wanted anyone to take them seriously.
Leitch is a direct result of gentrification. Essentially, you get these surbanites teenagers of the 90’s using NYC as some sort of frat house social scene. They have no interest in New York, they find the locals hopelessly insular, think NY accents are silly and reveal illiteracy, etc. He’s sort of the perfect sportswriter for the city right now. I can’t wait until they all move back to the suburbs. These things work in cycles, don’t they?
Nick: I don’t disagree with your general point, but just for the record, Leitch’s background actually kind of mystifies me. He’s from Mattoon, which is a long way from Lake Forest or Barrington Hills. Other than the Mad Gasser attacks 60 years ago and BagelFest once a year, not much happens in Mattoon. In a way Leitch is sort of inspirational. He must have had to work extra hard at UIUC to turn into a bigger douche than the Loyola Academy and Fremd kids.
i’ve missed the “will leitch sucks” tag.
I like Nick’s assessment a lot. The wife and I purposely moved out of a very gentrified, charmless, baby stroller hell neighborhood in Brooklyn and bought a house in what some would consider a rough-ish (though the nabe’s rep is totally overblown) ethnic neighborhood. We love it. It got to the point at our old neighborhood (which had all of the conveniences that our new nabe does not have) that I wouldn’t leave the house for fear that I might beat to death one of these Leitch clones that were polluting the streets with their charmless and ignorant “values,” which consisted mostly of whining why the nearest Starbucks was on 7th Ave and not 5th, or describing the myriad of useless lifestyle shops (like places that only sell gourmet dog cookies) in the area as “funky,” which is suburban-speak for “I value big chains and name brands but I appreciate the efforts of these independent bourgeois middle-class free spirits.” Yeah, I’m more than happy to personify Leitch as THE PROBLEM in New York, insomuch as he represents millions of others who insist on coming here and giving people like Bruce Rattner a de-facto reason to build ugly stadiums and to abuse eminent domain laws because the only people really being displaced are the ones who really belong here. Brooklyn is becoming transient, much like most of Manhattan for the past 20 years. I’m all for starting some movement to buy this moron a short sale home in deep Southern Jersey where he really belongs.