Hour 2: Cohen Cheering

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This is The Michael Kay Show Podcast.

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Welcome back to the show everybody. Nets in the Philly, second game of their four game set. Three more games by the way, in the career of the legendary Howie Rose. And you can hear all the games right here on 880 tonight and this weekend as well. Sunday is his final game as the radio voice of the New York Mets. So take it in because he is one of the best. He's outstanding. The Yankees are in the Phoenix tonight to start a three game set against the Diamondbacks final three games on the road in the regular season. Now, much was made at the beginning of the week about Mets fans going crazy every time Pete Alonso showed his face on the field at City Field. They gave him rousing ovation after rousing ovation. It got to the point that they were cheering and they gave him a curtain call when he hit a home run off Kodai Senga in game two that tied a game. Blew the lead and blew a win for the Mets and the Orioles ended up winning in next innings.

A lot of people, even some Mets fans, why would you cheer for your Mets losing? There's a caller Phil who said, I go to a lot of games and I want my team to win all the time. I would not have cheered at that point. My point was the Mets aren't going anywhere. These games don't mean anything for them. If the Mets fans did that for Pete Alonso, when the Mets were fighting for playoff spot, that would have been quite curious and would have been something that I would have taken exception to. But I take no exception for a team that's in last place in the East. These games mean nothing and they were showing love for a guy that they wanted to stay around. Now whether or not they were right for wanting to stay around, that could be debated and it would be a nice robust debate. But what can't be debated is there is a video that's going around of the owner of the Mets, Steve Cohen, when Pete Alonso hits that home run against Senga, that he stands up and starts clapping and it seems to be motioning for the other people around to get up as well.

When the video made its rounds on social media, it certainly looked like Cohen, you know, the omnipresent Met hat, you know, the omnipresent Met pullover, looked like him, but nobody could swear to it. He obviously had good seats. It was on the first base side of home plate.

And Mike Puma, the New York Post, called him up and said, was that you? He said, yeah. He didn't even deny it. He said it was a great moment for him and I wanted to give him his props. This, to me, is somewhat problematic.

Because you would think that Steve Cohen, no matter what the record is, no matter where the Mets are, he's not going to stand up or shouldn't want to stand up and congratulate an opposing player, an opposing player, who just did a home run to take a win away from your team. It's a bad look. It's a bad look.

Because we keep bringing up when Reggie came back to the stadium and he had signed a five-year deal with the Angels. And George Steinbrenner just thought that Reggie's best days were over and didn't bring him back. So Reggie hits a home run against Ron Guidry. The crowd is chanting expletives at George Steinbrenner giving Reggie standing ovation. George was there. Did you see Reggie stand up? Or did you see George stand up and give Reggie a hand? And that was early in the game. Wasn't a game-changing blow. It was early in the game. But Steinbrenner would never cheer against his team. And it's just curious that Steve Cohen did that. Why? Is he trying to antagonize his fans? Is he sending a message to David Stearns? Yeah, I know. 300th homerun. It's not exactly his 500th homerun. It's not exactly his 600th homerun. It's his 300th homerun, which is a milestone, but it's not like a mind-blowing milestone. And I know there are stories going around that Cohen had offered him a contract, seven years, 150, whatever, and Alonso signed up with Scott Boris, and then Cohen gave him the bridge contract, one year with an opt-out, probably against the recommendation of David Sterns. But if Cohen loves Pete Alonso so much, and he even met him before the first game and said something like, New York will always be yours or something like that, whatever, something along those lines, he could have stepped in when the Orioles gave him the five-year $155 million deal and said, we'll match it. And then you put the onus on Pete Alonso. Well, do you want to stay here or not? Were you insulted because we didn't offer you this much money? And those that are kind of jumping on Pete Alonso for turning down the Met's seven-year $159 million offer, well, how did it turn out? He signed for five years at $155 million. So he got way more money in two fewer years.