I’ve been away from the laptop most of the weekend as my wife and I took off to Atlantic City for the weekend to celebrate our 25^th Anniversary.  Before our kids were born, we would venture to AC quite often , we’d see a show, do some gambling, have a few cocktails and have quite a good time.

When our kids were born, that put a end to our weekend getaways alone and going out drinking ( my wife of course couldn’t drink while she was pregnant so when we’d go out during those nine months I felt guilty having a drink while she sipped ginger ale so I joined her in having a soft drink with dinner. Funny thing is after our son was born, neither one of us wanted to drink anymore, one more thing to thank my kids for) after our kids were born we traded trips to AC and Vegas for jaunts to Sesame Place and Disney World after spending our first weekend in AC in seventeen years, we had a great time (after 25 years of marriage we still love each other’s company )but I’ll tell you this, it’s amazing how you change when you have kids, we miss Sesame Place more than we miss Atlantic City.

On the way down the Garden State Parkway, I heard the news that Luis Castillo was released by the Mets, no shocker there. What was surprising was Sandy Alderson citing among other reasons for Castillo’s release, the fact that the fans detested him. Not that Alderson was wrong in that easement; it was just something I didn’t think I’d here from the GM.

Why did Mets fans root for the day that Castillo (and shortly, like tomorrow, the release of Oliver Perez)  would be an ex-Met? Because the feeling amongst the majority was LC was here due to the $6mil owed him on his contract. Alderson stated that contract status would not be what keeps a player on this Mets team, and he should be applauded for sticking to that promise. Mets fans also see that Castillo is nowhere close to the player who helped the Marlins win a World Series, he’s 34 years old, with sore feet and achy knees that have hampered his range in the field and has led him to become a hitting into the “6-4-3 DP” machine. His days as an everyday player are over. Even if the Mets kept him and played him at 2^nd base everyday to start the season, he’d be broken down by Memorial Day. It’s sad that age and history have caught up to Castillo that led to his demise and it also didn’t help that he has had a hard time coping with that reality.

Did the fact that Castillo is a Latino have anything to do with the fans wishing him gone? Perhaps. I’m sure there are some Mets fans that held his ethnicity against him but I would hope that they are in the minority. The Mets beat writer for the NY Daily News has this strange obsession with race and the Mets. Early in spring training he wrote about the lack of minorities on the Mets coaching staff. Then he tried to portray adding Mookie Wilson to the staff as a token gesture. All that did was solidify my thinking that the writer is a talentless hack, lacking knowledge of Mets history and Mets fans as Mookie Wilson is one of the most popular Mets of all time.

See the race card is like a fire alarm, use it too many times in situation where it’s not warranted, it acts like a false alarm, and people never know when it’s the real thing. The Daily News beat man has been irresponsible in his reporting and on Twitter when it comes to the Mets  and comes off as a guy who hates his job, which is for him to deal with just don’t drag Mets fans into your world of despair.

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