The Mets Need to Stop With The Claw

I've written at length about the merits of celebration moves in this space before, and it's a well known fact that this is the true heart of American sports. Leave all that sportsmanship and stoic victory celebration clap trap for Bob Costas and his moralizing middle-aged white men. We want to see those monkeys dance! However, a celebration lacking originality is worse than any boring old wave to the crowd or cliched fist pump that looks best in slow motion with "One Shining Moment" played behind it. That's the problem that the Mets have this season, and it is without question the absolute biggest issue that the Mets have faced in 2011. How to celebrate those Reyes triples and big-time comeback victories? If you're this incarnation of the Metropolitans you just rip off whatever last season's plucky Cinderella team that just don't quit did; in this case the Texas Rangers' "claw" move.

I know the claw wasn't invented by those Rangers either; it's roots are long and historic beginning where most great ripped off victory moves do: professional wrestling. Mick "Mankind" Foley and giant The Big Show did a variation of their claw move as an actual wrestling move, and then also as a celebration and signature hand signal for Big Show and all his fans. Jim Carrey also famously did a claw to amuse his fruity looking annoying son who he ignored for most of the movie in "Liar Liar", a film best known for Jennifer Tilly's cleavage and maybe Carrey's last good comedic performance (maybe). Some theories point to Miguel Tejada as the first beisbol player to flash the claw during game action though, first debuting it during the World Baseball Classic for the Dominican team. This seems plausible as anyone in Brooklyn can tell you, Dominicans love wrestling. However, most mainstream celebration enthusiasts didn't really have it on their radars until Texas started to do it (along with those goofy antlers) during their Yankee killing run through the playoffs last season.

Whoever started it, it wasn't these never-say-die Mets. So I think they should come up with a move of their own, like a M for Mets or an M for Madoff followed by a throat slitting motion (screw you, Bernie). Whatever they choose, they should all put their heads together and come up with something cool soon or they've lost this Yankee fan forever.