Friday, March 18, 2011

LUIS CASTILLO RELEASED.

I don’t have a lot of photos of Luis Castillo, which will probably not surprise you. It surprises me a little, because there was that golden period when we all loved him (or a lot of fans did, anyway). He was Johan Santana’s closest friend on the Twins, and I always gave him some credit for Johan choosing to come to the Mets.

I feel bad for Luis Castillo, because the wave of fan resentment was not his fault. It was Omar’s fault, for giving him that contract. He outstayed his usefulness. He became a constant reminder of the team’s mismanagement and bad decisions, on the field every day. There was no way that he could ever regain fan loyalty because of that. Add that to that dropped ball at the House of Evil, and the demonization of Luis Castillo as the representative of everything Mets fans were angry about was in full effect.

Andy Martino (whose story I will not glorify with a link) is an idiot who is clearly bored down in Port St. Lucie and desperate for a story that will get page views. I’ve heard a lot of vitriol flung at Luis Castillo, but the fact that he was Dominican was actually never one of them. He played hurt. He just played crappily while hurt. He faced the media over and over and over and over again about that one moment in the Bronx, to the point where someone in Mets PR just should have said “We don’t have anything else to say about that incident” and let it go already.

He was just here too long. Like fish and houseguests, Luis Castillo should have been let go a long time ago.

He becomes someone else’s problem now. Farewell, Luis.

And now, onto solving the Oliver Perez problem.