Photo Credit: MetsBlog
It’s time for the Mets Spring Training Comedy Hour! In case you missed it yesterday, Mets reliever Tim Byrdak came darting onto the field at Digital Domain Park dressed as professional wrestling legend, Hulk Hogan. And as you can tell by that hilarious photo, he really did pull it off!
It’s amazing the things you can do when you have a blond Fu Manchu mustache, lol.
Big League Stew explains the motivation behind it:
Believe it or not, Byrdak claimed the stunt was conceived as a teaching lesson for the team’s younger players. The Mets had held a team meeting earlier in the morning and the power of social media was stressed. Byrdak wanted to demonstrate how anything a baseball player does can zoom around the Internet in seconds. Sure enough, Cerrone’s tweet and a few from the team’s official account made their way around Twitter faster than a Hogan legdrop.
But Byrdak couldn’t claim in good faith that he was just being an instructor because he enjoys having a bit of fun in the clubhouse. He dressed up like a football referee before a game last season and handed out penalties to teammates. He even started re-growing his Hulkster goatee before the season because he thought it’d look cool on photo day.
“I just want to let these younger guys know that it’s OK to have fun and that spring training doesn’t need to be so serious,” he said.
This was the perfect cure for that Wilpon/Underdog t-shirt fiasco. Things like this only work best when it’s player inspired. You can check out a pretty funny video of Byrdak’s “Hulkamania” act on MetsBlog.
