Jay Bruce: “Happy to Be Here”

Jay Bruce says he is happy to be with the Mets, despite a report in a newspaper in Ohio to the contrary.

Over the weekend, some guy from the Dayton Daily News wrote rather cryptically:

I was told when he knew he would be traded he went to the Reds and asked them to trade him anywhere but to New York.

Bruce says that is not entirely accurate. He told our Daily News, “The Reds came to me very early in the process and asked me where I wanted to go and I gave them three places I wanted to go and New York wasn’t one of them.

“But that has nothing to do with the Mets or New York or anything like that. I had personal ties with places I wanted to go (San Francisco, Texas and sunny Los Angeles). It ended up not working out.

“But New York not being on the list had nothing to do with me not wanting to be here.”

Indeed, Bruce did have a no-trade clause in his contract to eight teams, and the Mets were not among them. So he obviously has nothing against the team in Flushing. However, he did apparently have an aversion to The Bronx, as MLB Trade Rumors points out the Yankees were on that list.

Bruce said he’s glad with the way things worked out.

“I got a chance to come play in a playoff race and I’m so happy to be here. Things get misconstrued. Yes, New York was not on my list initially, that’s really all there is to it. Definitely wasn’t as comfortable with New York as I was the other places, but I’m happy to be here and we’re doing exactly what I hoped to do when I got here.”

So Jay Bruce is here and he’s happy, despite what some anti-New York yokel from Dayton “was told” by some unnamed source. Good reporting skills there.