The NY papers just cherry-picked that quote and ran with it, making it seem as if he didn’t care at all. Which is far from the truth. Glavine has been a stand-up guy, a complete professional all his career. Do you really think he just stopped being that way after that game?

He wasn’t good that game, not even close. There’s no arguing that. But neither was Ollie two nights before…or (insert name here) for the previous two weeks. Glavine didn’t lose us the division last year — he just lost the last game. And he felt awful about it.

if anything, it makes me feel better about him leaving. It says to me, he didn’t hate being a Met, he went back to the Braves to be closer to home. He inquired about it, he didn’t insist. When the Mets didn’t entertain the idea, he dropped it. No big deal.

Glavine gets way too much hate around here. Was he as good as I hoped he’d be? No, but he took the ball every fifth day, didn’t shy away from the media and was a spokesman for the team. He was good in the community and was completely professional in his time here. He had the misfortune of pitching for some bad teams his first few years (although, he could have pitched better himself, of course) and then picked the wrong time to have one of the worst starts of his life. I never had a problem with his “devastated” comment, because I thought he was right. He was upset, he was angry, he was disappointed, just like I was. I moped around for weeks, but I wasn’t devastated — to me that’s a whole different context and shouldn’t be applied to a baseball game. He’s even tried to better explain himself on several occasions, and some Mets fans still won’t let it go.

He’s had a long and very successful career — he’s going to the Hall of Fame — and now he wants to spend his last year near his wife and family. I can’t blame him for that.