When the Jets released Revis two weeks ago, the reasons were sound outside of the incident of February 12: The team was making a clear change of direction, purging age and salary. When coach Todd Bowles said at the Combine last week that the arrest was “not at all” part of the reason they cut him, he sounded sincere. The same goes for when he said he thought Revis was “a good character, a good guy.”
As legal analyst Michael McCann wrote at SI.com Wednesday, the league would have very scant reason to discipline Revis for an arrest in which all charges were later dropped — not pleaded out, not negotiated down, but totally dismissed. So that’s highly unlikely to be hanging over his head when teams start considering him.
What’s left is whether teams believe he can still play … and for a price he’ll accept. Neither is a small matter.
For Freese, winning with the Cardinals didn’t cure anything, it actually drove him into darker places.
“You win the World Series in your hometown, and you become this guy in a city that loves Cardinal baseball,’’ Freese said. “Sometimes it’s the last guy you want to be. So you start building this facade, trying to be something I was not.
“I always wanted to change, to get over all of my issues, but it was so hard. You get stuck in the mud. You just don’t know where to go.’’
The Cardinals didn’t turn a blind eye to Freese’s issues, they tried counseling and interventions, but it wasn’t until after the 2013 season when Mike Matheny told Freese he NHL Jerseys Cheap needed to leave St. Louis for his own good did Freese see a change.
“I think it was the best thing that could have happened to him,’’ Cardinals first baseman Matt Carpenter said. “Being the hometown hero may seem great, but it’s usually not a fun thing. Someone is always asking for something. You constantly have people hanging around. That can be stressful, and really challenging.’’