Cole Shoulder: Phillies Ace Calls Mets "Choke Artists"
Hamels blasts team during WFAN radio show
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Cole Hamels enjoys the view from the top.
The Mets have had great battles with the Braves, Cubs and Cardinals, but none of them were more than temporal issues which realignment and the vagaries of competition have rendered meaningless. At their most heated, none of them approached anything from the Bronx/Beantown blood feud. Their current animosity with the Phillies has some potential, though.
Two years in a row as the Mets have collapsed in September (come to think of it, their biggest feud may be with themselves), and two years in a row it has been the Phillies standing tall when they fell apart. Jimmy Rollins fanned the flames by predicting the Phillies would win in 2007 after the Mets just missed a World Series berth and then kept on talking all the way through the World Series in October. Just a couple of days ago, GM Ruben Amaro said that Francisco Rodriguez didn't do much to improve his opinion of the Mets and, in general, the Phillies never miss a chance to rain on the Met parade.
Then came today's visit to WFAN from Phillies ace Cole Hamels. Hamels was asked if he thought the Mets were choke artists.
"Last year and this year I think we did believe that. Three years ago we didn't because they smoked everybody, and I think we all thought they were going to win it all. Unfortunately that didn't happen. But, yeah, that's kind of what we believed and I think we're always going to believe that until they prove us wrong.
For the past two years they've been choke artists."
You can't get too upset about what Hamels said. Everything's true. It could be worse though. It's not like they are just chokers. The Mets have imploded so spectacularly that you have to consider it artistic. That's something.
The thing you've got to wonder is why the Phillie players feel the need to keep dumping on the Mets. They've proven their superiority pretty decisively over the last two seasons. The Mets got Johan Santana and fell further behind the Phillies last year, and K-Rod offers no promise that they'll change things back around.
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