This will go down as one of the best stories of 2021.

The New York Mets, who are 63-67 and 7.5 games out of first place in the NL East, beat the Nationals on Sunday afternoon for a BIG win. During the triumph, new addition Javy Baez and some teammates showed a thumbs down gesture to the crowd, which amounted to “booing” the people who have booing them during their embarrassing summer.

Baez explained it this way, via Anthony DiComo at MLB.com:

“When we don’t get success, we’re going to get booed,” Báez said. “So they’re going to get booed when we get success.”

…

“We’re not machines,” Báez said. “We’re going to struggle. We’re going to struggle seven times out of 10. And, you know, it just feels bad. When I strike out and I get booed, it doesn’t really get to me. But I want to let them know that when we have success, we’re going to do the same thing to let them know how it feels. If we win together, then we’ve got to lose together, and the fans are a big part of it. They’ve got to be better. I play for the fans. And I love the fans. If they’re going to do that, they’re just putting more pressure on the team, and that’s not what we want.”

This is some of the softest shit ever said by a professional athlete. It feels bad? Then play better. Win some games. Mets fans are booing you guys because you’ve lost 12 of your last 16 and watched your division lead disappear in a way that would make David Copperfield blush.

The ensuing criticism of Baez and the Mets got so bad that team President Sandy Alderson stepped in with this statement:

It seems like this kind of story pops up every few months, and we’ve had quite a few in this market. Ben Simmons told fans to “stay on that side” after Game 1 of the 2019 playoffs, then had one of his best performances of all time in Game 2, and that was the end of that. The booing turned into cheering because he played the way he was capable of playing. And it’s similar when Danny Green asks fans to be more supportive of players in general, even though the default behavior is unconditional support and the booing only ensues when they go on to stink up the joint.

So that’s the gist of this whole thing. The fans are the customer, and the customer is usually justified in expressing disapproval. Sometimes it’s overblown and totally misses the mark, like when 30 losers went to the draft to boo Donovan McNabb, but in this case, it’s not. The Mets have immensely underachieved and deserve every boo coming their way. They absolutely blow.

It doesn’t mean it’s a one-way street, and players can clap back if they want to, but ask Sean Rodriguez how that worked out for him. Ask Danny Green. You gotta pick and choose your spots, and consider the possible outcomes. If you wanna ask the fans to back off in a professional and cordial kind of way, go for it. But giving the crowd the thumbs down is one of the biggest loser moves you will ever seen. There was so much loser energy emanating from Javy Baez and company that you could harness it and power the entirety of New York City. It is renewable and clean energy. Put it right up there with wind and solar.