Last month, Cougar Life – "the cougar dating site for younger hot men to meet sexy older professional women" – named Mets star third baseman David Wright, as their “hottest cub” after a survey of members.
Someone in the Mets marketing department tried to parlay Wright’s MILF love into an all-star come-up, by approaching Cougar Life to start a campaign urging its users to vote Wright to the All-Star Game, as Deadspin originally reported.
The Mets are hosting the All-Star Game at Citi Field on July 7th. With Wright trailing San Francisco‘s Pablo Sandoval in all-star balloting, the Mets are considering all options—no matter how crazy or unorthodox—to get a local cat in the starting lineup.
Scratching out wins has been hard enough for the Mets, who are 12.5 games behind NL East leader Atlanta and fading quickly into another lost, “rebuilding” season. In the Mets case, desperate times call for desperate measures, and hosting an all-star game with none of the home team’s players starting might wash in Milwaukee or Cleveland, but it’s a huge no-no in the Rotten Apple.
So according to The New York Post , the staffer wrote Cougar Life on Friday “wondering if you would be able to blog/post a story asking your users (who apparently admire David and would love seeing him play in the All-Star Game) to go to the below link to vote David and #VoteWrightNow as he needs their help,” according to e-mails obtained by Deadspin.
The idea, which reeks of desperation in the first place, was eventually shut down by the Mets hierarchy, who admitted in a statement that they reached out to the dating site:
Cougar Life voted David Wright as the hottest cub,” the statement read. “In our effort to expand All-Star balloting to wider audiences, so as to increase votes, we did reach out to Cougar Life. Last year there was a big swing of votes at the end that cost David the starting job. We decided to do everything to make sure that doesn’t happened again this year. We ultimately elected to pass.”
Maybe this ends gravy for Wright. If anything, it puts him on the radar of casual voters and could inspire people to rally in his cause. A happy ending would save the Mets some humiliation, because the only thing popping about that squad is Wright (and Matt Harvey), and him not repping NY as a starter in his own backyard is just ratchet.