Endy Chavez: Mensch of the Week
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by user Rickey Henderson
Does it get any better than a walk off bunt by Endy Chavez to win last night’s twelve inning marathon game? Rickey thinks not. A walk off drag bunt?! It doesn’t happen every day. It’s the baseball equivalent of a goddamned lunar eclipse! For you statistics minded individuals (Rickey does not fall into this category of Mets fans) there was exactly one walk off bunt in all of MLB last season.
For this reason, Endy Chavez is our "Mensch of the Week" over at Riding with Rickey.
Bear in mind that we get to see our boy Endy roughly once a month, and when we do, he manages to do pull off something mindblowingly awesome. Something that says “hey, you Mets fans don’t get to see me often, so here’s a little razzle dazzle to hold you over for a while.” And then he does it. Something ridiculously clutch. Something that causes you to jump up from the couch, spill your beverage, and proclaim: “Endy fucking Chavez!!!”
And then there’s THE CATCH from game seven of the 2006 NLCS. Yeah, remember that? To this day, Rickey has no idea what Endy Chavez said in the postgame interview about that heroic catch. If memory serves Rickey correctly, it was something along the lines of: “I cat the bell, and we’z haping de bell wuz in da gleve!” Seriously, if you think Reyes is tough to understand, try listening to Endy give an interview. It’s comedy gold. If Rickey ever wins the Lotto, he will be making arrangements to get those two delightfully unintelligible Mets players together to do a reading of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.”
And let’s not exclude Damon Easley. His homerun last night (with two outs and two strikes against him!) to tie the game deserves honorable mention to say the least. Factor in the slumbering bear that is Ramon Castro, and you’ve got quite possibly the best backup team in all of Major League Baseball. This isn’t even the “B-Team” of Mets players; it’s the freaking reserve squad. Hey, production comes in all shapes and forms, and Rickey is more than willing to take it.
In further good news, Wright went 2 for 4 last night with a pair of solid hits. Can his slump finally be coming to an end? Last year we all blamed the All Star Game for his poor second half performance. What’s the silly excuse now? The new D-Wright wax statue that was recently unveiled at Madame Tussaud’s? Willie not giving him enough days off? The earth’s gravitational pull on the moon? Rickey’s not asking for an A-Rod level of production, but come on already Golden Boy, last night had better be a sign of things to come.
…by the way, it’s a real shame A-Rod can’t pitch, no?
