The MLB season is a mere three weeks away, and the injuries are piling up for Terry Collins and the Mets. As if Collins wasn’t already facing enough challenges in his second season as Mets manager, he now has to deal with injuries to David Wright, Scott Hairston, Ronny Cedeno and most recently Ruben Tejada, who went down with a groin injury on Tuesday that Collins described as “not serious” and said an aspirin and a day off would fix. New York’s manager is concerned about his patience, however, which is wearing thin as his players continue to go down.
“Oh no, I’m not mad at Ruben,” he said Tuesday according to the NY Daily News. “Not by a long shot. I’m not mad at anybody. I’m allowed to be frustrated. This is a team I’m trying to get ready to win. I’m sitting here trying to tell you we’re going to compete, but I’m going to tell you — we aren’t going to compete if we don’t have our players on the field.
“I talk about patience. Right now, I’m out of it . So I’ve got to regain it. I’ve got to go back tonight and have my wife beat me up so I can find my patience again.”
And if taking a beating from his wife doesn’t help, Terry said he has a friend who has used a different approach to acheive the same result.
“I had a buddy that used to have a bear — a pet bear,” Collins continued. “He used to, when he got mad, the bear would go kick him around the cage. And he finally said, ‘OK, I’m back down to earth now.’”
If the Mets manager — who has been known to blow a gasket in the past — is already worried about his level of patience, he could need more than his wife or a bear to save him in 2012. From the sound of it, Mets fans are in for another long season.
H/T Hardball Talk
