Mr. Met continues long baseball tradition of flipping the bird

After a loss to the Brewers on Wednesday, Mets mascot Mr. Met gave some fans the middle finger as he walked down the tunnel after leaving the field.

It's been a rough year for New York Mets fans. After coming into the season with great expectations, the Mets are struggling along at five games below .500. They are 9.5 games behind the Washington Nationals in the NL East and eight games out of the second Wild Card spot. Injuries have been a big part of their ugly start. David Wright has yet to play an inning and Yoenis Cespedes, Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard have missed considerable time. They've also suffered through the early-season struggles of Jose Reyes, Curtis Granderson and Matt Harvey, among others.

It all came to a head on Wednesday when Jacob deGrom allowed seven runs in the first four innings and the Mets lost to the Brewers, 7-1. Their pitchers combined to walk eight batters and their hitters left 10 men on base. No one was more frustrated by the loss than Mr. Met, the team's longtime mascot. As he headed down the tunnel, a few fans reached out to give him a high five and he responded with a symbol known far and wide as an expression of extreme contempt . . . the middle finger.

The middle finger has a long history that dates back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It originally represented the phallus but has come to be recognized as a sign of disrespect. It's believed that the middle finger gesture traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to the U.S. via Italian immigrants, along with pizza, Jersey Shore and the word fuggedaboutit.

As fate would have it, Mr. Met was a mascot before his time. The middle finger has been a part of baseball for more than 130 years. The first documented appearance of the middle finger being displayed in the U.S. was by Old Hoss Radbourn, a pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters. During a team photograph in 1886, there's Old Hoss giving the finger to the cameraman, just like so many kids in high school yearbooks have done ever since.

According to the New York Post, an anonymous Mets official said the man responsible for Mr. Met's middle finger will no longer be allowed to wear the costume. His days as Mr. Met are done. He will head to baseball purgatory, much like former MLB pitcher Jose Paniagua. Paniagua flipped the bird at an umpire after allowing four earned runs in one-third of an inning in his first and only outing in 2003. He and his 108.00 ERA were released by the Chicago White Sox and he never played in the majors again.

Bigger MLB stars than Paniagua have displayed the ultimate sign of disrespect and made to pay the price. Ivan Rodriguez, Danny Graves and Jack McDowell were all suspended or fined for flipping the bird. In the case of McDowell, he made the mistake of flipping off his own fans when he played for the Yankees. Bad move, Black Jack. There was some good to come of it, though, as McDowell's middle finger was the inspiration for the song "Yankee Flipper" by The Baseball Project.

Ironically, baseball executive Chub Feeney once gave the finger to fans on Fan Appreciation Night. The fans didn't appreciation it and Chub resigned shortly thereafter. Former Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood took the middle finger to a whole other level during a 2008 game. As the FOX cameraman spanned the Cubs' dugout, it caught Kerry Wood flipping the always-impressive double-fisted middle finger two-pack.

Perhaps the least-surprising middle finger ever given by a baseball player was by Milton Bradley, never known for keeping his cool. Bradley was playing for the Seattle Mariners at the time. It was the eighth (and final) team he played for during his tumultuous 10-year career. In a game against one of his former teams, the Texas Rangers, Bradley showed the fans what he thought of them when he let his middle finger fly. He might have gotten away with it in his younger and more productive days, but after hitting .218/.313/.356 over his first 28 games that season he was released by the Mariners less than a month later.

More from Call to the Pen

It's not only baseball players who enjoy letting that famous digit fly. Many in the political arena have been known to express themselves this way. Abbie Hoffman raised the digit at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and it has been memorialized on a t-shirt ever since. Politicians from Ronald Reagan to Nelson Rockefeller to Pierre Trudeau to George W. Bush have used the one-finger salute. Former representative Anthony Weiner presented his middle digit to a group of reporters after losing in the 2013 primary for mayor of New York City. They got off easy; it could have been far worse.

Is the middle finger obscene? According to the Connecticut Supreme Court, it is not. In 1976, a 16-year-old student was charged with making an obscene gesture when he flipped the bird at a police officer. An appellate court ruled it was offensive, but not obscene, and the state Supreme Court upheld that ruling.

It may not have officially been obscene, but offensive was bad enough. The New York Mets organization certainly did not approve. They issued the following statement: "We apologize for the inappropriate action of this employee. We do not condone this type of behavior. We are dealing with this matter internally."

Back on the home front, Mrs. Met has been strangely quiet throughout this whole ordeal. You might wonder if she just rolled her eyes at her husband's latest antics but the truth is, I don't think her eyes roll. Hopefully, she'll be there for him in his time of need.