Franco Is a Clubhouse Cancer

First off, I already made a short post about this on our blog, Nyjer Please. But this post is going to be longer due to the larger audience that Epic Carnival has. Exactly a month ago to this day, our very own Epic Carnival writer and creator of Nyjer Please, Luke Halpert made an "outlandish post" about a racial divide in the Mets clubhouse and said that Julio Franco was the ring leader. No pun intended. Luke's exact words were these: Secondly, Julio Franco, who recently celebrated his 89th birthday, is becoming a "clubhouse cancer". Since the losing streak, my source told me that Franco has become the ringleader of a "racial divide" in the clubhouse between the Latinos and non-Latinos. While it isn't a straight divide, it was painfully obvious there was something going on during last night's debacle at Yankee Stadium, where the Latinos were sitting in the dugout while the non-Latinos were on the dugout railing the entire game. Once these words hit the blogosphere, s*** hit the fan. Over at Metsblog, Matt Cerrone called out Halpert saying that his post was 100% false and the post was all a big lie because he is still in high school. He can also "only assume [Halpert] dropped my site's name so to make an attempt at adding credibility to his post". The Comments section at Metsblog was also furious at the post and here's what one Met fan had to say: Hey luke stop masterb***** while looking at yourself wearing your yankee gear in the mirror and stick to things you know about like zit creme. Perhaps if you kiss Steinbrenners a** well enough he will hook you up with a female yankee chearleader. I heard Susan Waldman is available. 16 year old with a source in the Mets clubhouse hahahahhahahahahahah As you can see, he was bashed pretty bad by some pretty ignorant fans. Some other blogs picked up the story such as Deadspin, The Big Lead, and The Fanhouse and all of a sudden, the post had 10,000 hits. A lot of smaller blogs picked it up too such as The Feed and The Uwe Blog . The guys over at NJ.com had this to say: Deadspin linked to a very-likely-fabricated blog post that claims Julio Franco is the "ringleader" in "a racial divide" in the Mets clubhouse. If Franco was the ringleader of a movement to take naps after batting practice, or to have rocking chairs installed in the clubhouse, I'd maybe believe it. This...not so much. Luke Halpert and myself also used to write for a blog called "Hotfoot". It was a Mets blog run by Anthony De Rosa, and right after the incident, we were both fired. So now that we have that out of the way, last week Julio Franco was designated for assignment by the Mets. That's pretty much a nice word for being cut. Anyway, when Willie Randolph was asked about Franco, Willie said, "that clubhouse stuff is overrated" and Jose Valentin told reporters that Franco was less than eager to participate in the team's pre-game stretching routine. Some of the team's younger guys didn't appreciate Franco giving them advice when he sucked in his own right. To me, that sounds like a Clubhouse Cancer and a guy that didn't get along with most of his team. We're not even asking for an apology, just for our names to be cleared and to not be known as the "Blog that made up those Franco stories". If Cerrone, the Metsblog commentors and or any other blogger does want to apologize though, that's O.K too.