After giving up a walk-off homer Sunday to Russell Martin at Yankee Stadium, Mets reliever Jon Rauch re-tweeted more than a dozen profanity-laced messages sent to his @jrauch60 Twitter account. Here’s his reasoning:

“It’s entertainment to me,” Rauch said. “But it’s funny to me that people think they can take it that far with no consequences. I think it’s interesting for me to be approached with that kind of language. If you’re going to be bold enough to say that kind of stuff and stand behind it, then I’m going to let everybody see it. I think it gives people a lot more insight into what we go through as players and as people that are in the public eye.

“You go through these things, and we want to be available to the fans. That’s why we get on Twitter. That’s why the Mets encouraged a couple guys in Spring Training to be more open and kind of give people the insight into our daily lives. But personal attacks like that are very uncalled for.

“If you want to ridicule me, if you want to knock me down because I pitched poorly, that’s fine. I’ll take that, and I should, and I’ll be the first one to say that I screwed up. I’m going to put a lot more pressure on myself to go out there and perform than any fan ever will. But at the same time, I think they need to respect us. We’re not out there trying to fail. We’re out there trying to do the best that we can. You’re going to go through stretches where things don’t go your way. And you’re going to go through stretches where it doesn’t matter what you do out there, it seems like things go your way and you get the breaks that you need.

“I think it’s unfair for the people that are truly behind the players and truly avid fans of the game to have people like this out there who are going to ruin it. I know there are kids that follow the boards, there’s kids, young adults that are learning this game and want to be a part of it, love the team, and to see stuff like that, maybe it wasn’t the best decision for me to put up some of the stuff. But you know what? It’s good to see that there are people that are really behind this team and behind the players that are on it.”

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