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The New York Mets had their season come to an abrupt end Sunday night when they lost Game 3 of their wild-card series with the Padres, 6-0. It was an empty night for a team that had an empty final month of the season and it all came to a crushing end at home in front of their disappointed fans.
There was one embarrassing moment in Game 3 which was tough to watch and it made me feel glad that the Mets ended up losing because the move their manager, Buck Showalter, did in the sixth inning was so sad and desperate that it became quite easy to root for their demise.
I’m talking, of course, about when he stepped out of the dugout and asked the umpires to check the shiny ears of Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove. Seriously, an older man wearing a baseball uniform went out on the field and asked some other grown men if they could go check the ears of a pitcher who was dominating the game because the manager felt like there might be something on those ears that could be helping Musgrove.
Mets manager Buck Showalter asked the umpires to check Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove for foreign substances after it appeared Musgrove's ears were shiny. pic.twitter.com/U6alihJnfD
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) October 10, 2022
Just writing that out makes my skin crawl. What a lame thing to do. What a cowardly thing to do. What an embarrassing thing to do.
Just because your team couldn’t string together some hits you’re going to go out there and ask the guys in blue to see if the pitcher is cheating? And to see if the pitcher is cheating by having stuff on his ears? I mean, everyone in the world can see his ears. You think if a very good pitcher is going to cheat he’s just gonna put the stuff out there where everyone can see it?
Musgrove said after the game that it fired him up even more to keep shutting down the Mets, which he did by giving up just one hit in seven masterful innings of work. He was fired up after being accused in front of the baseball world of cheating, which is 100 percent understandable. He also had some fun with a great Kenny Powers-inspired celebration.
But it was just really dumb that he was ever put in that situation in the first place. If you’re going to ask for his ears to be checked for a foreign substance in that big of a situation and on that big of a stage then you better darn well be right or you or you are going to be an embarrassment to the game, which Showalter ended up being.
And now his season is over, which is nice.
Quick hits: NFL Week 5 Awards… Brady gets horrible call from refs… Steelers-Bills fights… And more.
– My look back at the good, the bad, and the hilarious from Sunday’s NFL action kicks off with an unfortunate groin shot at the end of the Giants win over the Packers.
– Tom Brady couldn’t defend the terrible roughing the passer call that he got at the end of the Bucs win over the Falcons.
– The Steelers and Bills had some heated scuffles late in their game Sunday after a few questionable hits on rookie QB Kenny Pickett.
– NFL fans still had a lot of questions about Aaron Rodgers’ hair.
