One again, please sign up for the Offical Condition: Poor First Anniversary Giveaway Contest. It’s a hoot.

So today recent eBay pickup is just one card and it’s not even old. Imagine that. A card from the last 10 years on this blog. Ha!

This is card #242 from the 2001 Topps Traded set. As you can see it is of a very young looking Jose B. Reyes, not to be confused with Jose A. Reyes. I guess it’s pretty safe to say that Reyes is my favorite current Met, and he has been ever since he’s been up with the big team. I’m a fan of the home run just like the next guy, but to me there’s nothing more exciting than watching baseball the way Jose Reyes plays it (at least when he’s going good, that is).

Having watched Jose play for all these years, I believe there is defiantly such a thing as a patented Reyes run. Sometimes it seems to me that he is able to score in ways that nobody else in the game is able to. It’s not that other teams don’t have guys who are really fast, or guys who are more than capable of stealing bases. It’s more like when he gets on base he disrupts the game like no one else. I don’t mean disrupt the game like he keeps calling time out. I mean he gets the pitcher crazy. He makes the catcher paranoid. He distracts the first baseman. He makes it so that nobody can concentrate on the matter of getting the next batter out.

One of my favorite patented Reyes runs occurred on May 29, 2007 against the Giants. It was a pretty crazy game. The Giants jumped ahead early, 2-0. Then the Mets came back to tie it and then go ahead 3-2. Then the Giants came back to tie it in the 7th. The game became a stalemate until the top of the 12 when the Giants went ahead 4-3 aganist Joe Smith.

Leading off the bottom of the 13th, down by 1 run, facing the Giants closer Armando Benitez, Jose drew a walk. With Endy Chavez up, Reyes was repeatedly darting off of 1st base, almost daring Benitez to throw over. Eventually Benitez balked sending Reyes to 2nd base with no outs. At that point Chavez bunted him over to 3rd.  Beltran ended up grounding out to 2nd base, but not deep enough to score Jose. Now the tying run was at 3rd, but with 2 outs and Carlos Delgado up at bat. Again, Reyes began dancing down the line, running almost half-way home and then back to third. I know what you’re thinking. A veteran closer like Benitez couldn’t possibly balk twice in one inning, forcing in the tying run. Well, think again. That’s exactly what he did. On top of that, after Reyes scored, Armando was apparently so rattled that he served up a meatball to Delgado who deposited it below the scoreboard in right-center. That, my friends, is what Jose Reyes does.

Or did. Of course Reyes missed a huge chunk of last season with a series of leg injuries that sidelined him for the remainder of the season. Then again during spring training he was diagnosed with a thyroid problem that kept him from playing. He didn’t step onto a Major League field until April 10 of this year, almost 11 months after getting hurt the year before. So far this season, he’s had a few stretches where he’s played brilliantly, but he’s been far from the player that disrupted games. I fear that if that Jose Reyes doesn’t show up soon, the Mets will have no shot whatsoever of climbing out of this hole they’ve dug themselves. Hell, even if Jose catches fire for the remainder of the season, I feel like that’ll still be a pretty tall order.

But at least the remaining games will be more fun to watch.

Tags: 2001 Topps Traded, Jose Reyes
Filed Under: It Came from the 'Bay by slangon
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