Early on, he appeared to have gotten the memo: you are not the Dark Knight and your career may fizzle and he lost about 10lbs of fat.
This past weekend while rehabbing his dead arm, the NY Post caught him focusing his work on his elbow joint, bending it repeatedly.
Harvey's love of alcohol is stronger than love of baseball and the NY Post has spotted him running tabs with the boys in the Hamptons rather than the utter dedication to the sport that his talent deserves.
As a rookie, he burst onto the scene and was immediately beset by media.
When he opened his mouth, he scared Met executives.
He did not talk about winning, nor his fast ball, nor New York fans and the potential for World Series;
He spoke about, in this order:
Alcohol
Food
Girls
Of course, the interviewer went with it and let him talk. He was almost childlike in his love for the 3 above with few words thrown in about baseball.
His parents only showed their own modernist bent: rather than being the voice of reason, their leftist progressive views reaffirmed their pride in his love for all things alcohol.
Harvey is a world class athlete which means that the body fat under the chin and around the middle got there by overcoming the stress of vigorous workouts.
Alcohol, in excess, produces an increase in estrogen in men. One need only to look back upon last year when the Mets deliberately produced some photos of bloated Harvey for media to understand the message sent to him: get a grip. Everyone sees the excess weigh under the chin and around the middle. When one can weight lift and run and still gain body fat, alcohol is usually the culprit. It takes a considerable amount of alcohol to overcome the exercising in anyone, but a great deal in an elite professional athlete.
Harvey has a window of opportunity in life to make a fortune, but it is a small time frame and getting even smaller. Thus far, he has, since 2013, not taken advantage of it. He just wants to be Derek Jeter, sans the whole baseball success part.
Post baseball?
Expect Harvey to be a cartoon version of himself, still living off The Dark Knight persona, perhaps fighting sexually transmitted diseases and undergoing various surgeries to remove fat to maintain vanity, dressed embarrassingly to both hide his weight and look younger. Think lots of ostentatious jewelry and the open neck shirt with male pattern balding and too much cologne. Perhaps a pendant with "DK" to distract from the drooping chest.
A pathetic finish to stunning potential unrealized.
The Mets must hope to get a few good starts out of him in order to trade him.
I still think Colorado would still be best for him.
He is and always has been, Me First and gives a Mea Culpa, weak on Mea, only when forced to by circumstance.
He is a nightmare employee on a team where there are a few such trouble bringers.
Coddled from the beginning, Mets brass know that the inability to reign in players is always bad for internal discipline, change must come.
The Mets are very low on personal responsibility and holding players accountable, but really big on being bullied themselves, via their own weakness.
With any hope of long term success, a cultural change is needed in Flushing.
Only Matt Harvey has the paint brush to paint his career portrait. Let's hope he can do what it takes to succeed and not screw it up.
ReplyDeleteHe's had unfortunate injuries - time will tell if his best days are behind him, or ahead.
Still the big question remains: why knowing how they felt about him from the beginning didn't they deal him after the World series when his value was the highest and everyone knew we weren't going to sign him long term. Your take on Harvey reminds me of the story about the NFL draft back when Manning and Leaf were the 2 big name QB's and when the club asked Manning what would be the first thing he would do if they signed him and he said he couldn't wait to get the playbook. Leaf's answer was he was gonna party hardy and the rest as they say is history.
ReplyDeleteNews flash: we've just won 5 of 6 and if this continues we'll be flipping the narrative here and I hope they make me eat crow..Lets Go Mets!
ReplyDeleteI agree that Harvey is a self-absorbed wanker.
ReplyDeleteBut Peter:
"their leftist progressive views reaffirmed their pride in his love for all things alcohol."
??????
What is this, Breitbart News?
What does that even mean - most drinkers are progressive lefties? Hadn't noticed that last time I went to a bar.
Mack may remember how despondent I was over passing on Sale to draft Harvey.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't so smart for while...now genius,,,and hopefully not so smart again soon.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteOK, curious to read the article you mentioned. Couldn't find it with a google search - do you have a link or date and publication?
thanks