Matt Harvey Responds to Twitter Nonsense

Matt Harvey responded Tuesday afternoon to the uproar over a Twitter photo that resulted in Harvey deleting his account. He stopped well short of an apology.

To update, in the morning Harvey posted a picture of himself to mark the six-month anniversary of his Tommy John surgery. The problem was that the picture was of him in his hospital bed giving the camera the finger.

Jay Horowitz confirmed the Mets did not think the photo was appropriate and asked him to take it down. Harvey took down his entire account instead.

“When you can’t really have fun anymore on a social media account, I think it comes time to get rid of it,” Harvey told reporters in the dugout before the game with the Cardinals, according to ESPN New York. “To stop the controversy, deleting the Twitter was an easy out of not worrying about it anymore.”

Harvey explained why he chose that particular photo.

“I went back and looked at some of the pictures that my mother was taking before surgery, and kind of got a good chuckle at that one. That was how I felt going into surgery, realizing it was going to be a pretty long process ahead of me. It was all fun and games. It was me showing a little bit of my personality before surgery.”

He said he really does not know what the fuss is all about.

“I didn’t think there was anything officially wrong with it. You listen to the radio and you hear a lot of rap music and things that are a lot worse than what I was showing — a genuine excitement and a little bit of laughter toward a picture that I was looking at this morning… I’m not going to apologize for being myself and having a good laugh at a funny little picture.”

Then took what could be considered a swipe at the Mets front office.

“I’ll have my fun with my friends and teammates, who do know me for who I am.”

By the time Matt Harvey becomes a free agent, hopefully there will be new people in the front office who do know him. Perhaps that will keep him from exacting revenge and doing something like signing with the Yankees.

This is probably why the Mets wanted to exile Matt Harvey to Port St. Lucie this season.