March Badness: The Finals

Typically, March is one of the best sports months of the year. The NHL and NBA seasons are reaching their conclusion with teams battling for their postseason lives, NFL free agency is beginning, MLB Opening Day is right around the corner, and March Madness is in full swing!

With the coronavirus pandemic, March has been rendered a quiet month in the sports world, as all major leagues have needed to cancel or suspend their events in order to help stop the spread of COVID-19. To help pass the time, a few of us at Amazin’ Avenue HQ have brainstormed ways to entertain our incredible audience while we wait for baseball to return.

I’d like to introduce you to March Bad-ness! In order to fill the void left by both the absence of baseball and March Madness, we’ve devised an NCAA tournament-style bracket of the worst villains in Mets history. We’ve scoured the depths of our memories, digging up names we’d long since buried deep down in an effort to forget so many painful moments, and put together 64 names that cause Mets fans feelings ranging from mild annoyance to intense loathing.

After a fierce competition that saw its fair share of upsets and some decisive victories, we’ve arrived at our top two villains.

On one side of the bracket, there’s Chase Utley, who took down two of the baddest bad guys in Mets history in Roger Clemens and Chipper Jones to make it this far after breezing through the early rounds. In his most recent match, the former Phillies infielder turned leg-breaking baddie for the Dodgers upset the biggest Mets Killer in franchise history by a 66% margin (263 to 137 votes). Up to that point, Larry had cruised but was no match for Utley’s villainous ways. Not to be lost in all this is Utley, in addition to drawing the ire of fans for his vicious attack on Ruben Tejada, also crushed the team on the field, hitting .281/.374/.526 with 39 home runs in 700 regular season at-bats against the team.

On the other side, The Wilpons cruised to a decisive victory over Yadier Molina. Fred and Jeff advanced with 92% (365 to 30 votes) to take their rightful place in the finals. It would be impossible to accurately recap all the reasons the Wilpons ended up here, between their refusal to spend on top talent to firing a woman who was pregnant and unmarried. When they finally do sell the team—sooner, rather than later, hopefully—they will likely go down as the most vilified owners in franchise history, even if they’re maybe not technically the worst ones.

Voting will remain open until Thursday, at which point we will reveal the winner and spend some time airing grievances against them. If the March Bad-ness bracket has brought back some memories that you feel were better left buried, fret not! We plan to unveil a new (and more pleasant) bracket to pass the time as soon as this one’s wrapped up!