Go ahead. Be mad. Be furious. Boil all of your venom and aim it all at Matt Harvey, who’s got it coming. Harvey has proven to be the worst kind of sporting phony — the fake tough guy, a fugazi in full, all talk and no action. Rip away.
Here: Here’s my blowtorch.
What, he thinks we forgot all the times this year when he rolled his eyes at all the times the Mets tried to curtail his activity in this first year back after Tommy John? He thinks we’ll have selective amnesia for all the times he scoffed at being held back from taking his turn as the Alpha-est Alpha male of all?
He thinks we can forget what his manager, Terry Collins, has said of him all year — the way he’s marveled at his toughness, his resolve, his will. It was just last Wednesday when Collins said this of Harvey, in tones that were almost reverent:
“This is the time of year we’ve talked about, that he’s talked about. One of the things we had discoursed all summer long when all the innings things started to rear its ugly head, Matt said, ‘I’m pitching in the playoffs. If we get to the playoffs, I want to be able to pitch.’ In all the discussions we’ve had, he’s said, ‘Listen, I’ll do it but I’m pitching in October.’”
My goodness, how fraudulent does that sound now? And look: We get it, all of us. Tommy John is a grind. It’s a major procedure. That’s why the Mets refused to let Harvey throw in real games last year (and today, right now, how many of you can possibly believe he meant it when he said he wanted to do that?).
It’s why they’ve spent so much time preserving him this year, and enduring his Chuck Bronson nonsense whenever he bristled like a kid being kept in detention. If he’s hurting, then he should say that.
If he’s worried he may be pushing things too far? Say that, too.
But this preposterous passive-aggressive game?
Which he springs now on the Mets?
Now is when he decides to usurp the attention of Mets fans, first sending out his messenger-boy agent to serve as a human trial balloon — and then, seeing that zeppelin savaged by the arrows of public scorn, admitting it’s his idea, too, to shut himself down at 180 innings, after letting the Mets believe — no! Letting them shout! — that he was going to be their October horse?
Sure. Scream at him. Shake your fist at him. Demand he be traded, all of it, because he has it coming.
The Mets? They can act similarly upset, and you had better believe that Jeff Wilpon, never the biggest Harvey fan, will allow general manager Sandy Alderson to exile him in the winter in exchange for something the Mets really could use, a legit bat.
But they also can act like the grown-up in all of this.
They can have Harvey throw his swan-song start Tuesday at Washington. And then they can realize Harvey may actually have helped them solve their most daunting problem spot: the seventh inning. Convert him to a one-inning specialist. See how that might play in an October that they are still very much on play for, despite Harvey’s brutal 24-and-1 play here.
And when that’s done? Well, judging by the reaction of Mets fans, there ought to be plenty of residual anger to draw upon at the end. Harvey has played this in the most inexcusable way possible. He’ll pay for it plenty. But it makes no sense not to make chicken salad out of the word that best describes Harvey’s behavior in all of this.