yagsy
08-08-2006, 04:13 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/padres/20060808-9999-1s8padres.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060808/images/sp_piazza.jpg
Plenty of memories for Piazza, Cameron in return to New York for the first time since they left the Mets. My notes: Yikes, that's a "pleasant" picture!
By Chris Jenkins
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 8, 2006
JIM BAIRD / Union-Tribune
Padres catcher Mike Piazza had more home runs and RBI in seven-plus seasons in New York than he did in six-plus seasons in L.A., but he hit for a higher batting average with the Dodgers.
NEW YORK – The air-conditioned subway car offers temporary relief from the heat wave that has taken the lives of 20 people in New York, but even in the underground escape, strangers still do not speak to strangers on the No. 7 train.
One man is moved to try, however. His dialect sounds Southeast Asian, best guess, and he appears to understand little English. As someone seated next to him turns the sports page on one of the New York tabloids, the man excitedly points to the picture of a baseball slugger. Then he points at his own feet, adorned with flip-flop sandals bearing the New York Mets logo. In the silver ink of a Sharpie, he has written “31.”
“Mike! Mike! Mike!” the man says, thrusting both fists in the air like Rocky Balboa. “Let's go, Mike!”
In any language, yes, Michael Joseph Piazza is missed.
Piazza's powerful performance with the Mets and relationship with New York – the Mets half of it, anyway – makes his return with the Padres tonight a special occasion in what has become a special season in Queens. Fans by the thousands continue to wear Piazza's old jersey to the ballpark and on the streets.
Since the Mets are running away with the National League's best record and folks here seldom give much mind to anything happening out west, far less attention is being paid to the matchup of division leaders than the chance to show Piazza some of the love the Mets ultimately denied him after last season.
“The only player I ever saw cheered when he returned to play against the Mets was Edgardo Alfonzo,” said Padres center fielder Mike Cameron, referring to the former infielder. “I have a feeling Mike will hear even more cheers than Fonzie.”
Cameron is the other Mike who was with the Mets last year, and his Big Apple comeback is expected to be more bittersweet. He asked out of New York after losing his center-field job, then nearly lost his eyesight in that harrowing collision with Carlos Beltran at Petco Park.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060808/images/sp_padres2.jpg
SEAN M. HAFFEY / Union-Tribune
Mike Cameron
Cameron, though, turned out to be one of those players who came and went with the Mets in a couple of years' time. Much as people in Southern California and the NL West might continue to think of Piazza as an ex-Dodger, he spent almost eight full seasons with the Mets, hitting the kind of homers at sweltering Shea Stadium that you thought might someday bring down one of those airliners on approach to LaGuardia.
“Oh, is he making the trip?” joked All-Star third baseman David Wright. “It'll be great to see him again. That's the greatest-hitting catcher of all-time. He did so much for this franchise. For a lot of years, he was the face of the New York Mets.”
The face sort of got slapped near the end. Clearly, after a couple disturbing tries at making a first baseman of Piazza, the Mets didn't want him back once his $15 million-a-year contract expired. When almost no one else expressed interest in him, either, he fell into the Padres' price range and signed for $1.5 million.
“One door opens, one door closes,” Piazza said. “Things change. We move on. The really positive part about this is that they're doing well and I'm doing well.”
In truth, Piazza is doing far better than anyone in New York imagined possible. For the first time since 2001, he has his average back up in the neighborhood of .300 and his 16 homers are the most by an NL catcher. Not bad for a broken-down slugger who plays half his games at spacious Petco Park. Really not bad for a part-time player, which is probably the key to his resurgence, the fact that manager Bruce Bochy is giving Piazza lots of rest both during and between starts.
“You can see a difference,” Wright said, “but there's nobody in this clubhouse who's shocked by what Mike's doing.”
“It's good to see,” said veteran pitcher Tom Glavine. “The unfair part is that he's always judged against himself, Mike Piazza in his prime, and that Mike Piazza was the best ever. It's only natural that there's a slip in the numbers, but look at him now. He's still there.”
You can't mention Piazza's name without the “sure-fire Hall of Fame” qualifier, but Mets management also saw the 12-time All-Star as a 37-year-old who had spent most of his career in a knee-stretching crouch behind the plate. Piazza refuses to offer injuries as an excuse, but admits his productivity slipped mightily over the past three years.
“There were times when I tried to hit the throttle,” Piazza said, “and it wasn't there.”
Baseball players often say New York is the best place to be when you're winning, the worst place when you're losing. Traded from the Florida Marlins in early 1998, Piazza was the big gun who elevated the Mets from a decade-long postseason absence to wild-card status in '99, then to the pennant and a Subway Series against the Yankees the following season.
Over the next four years, the Mets were mediocre or worse. Much worse. Piazza, with the missed games and the diminishing power, became the easy target.
“The dynamics are different,” Piazza said. “Here, I'm a role player. I've been under the radar. People imagine you at a certain point in your career, when you were dominant, and it makes it tough when you're getting old.
“In New York, I wanted to carry the team, because that was my job. When you're younger, I think maybe your armor is thicker. When you get older, you get a little more sensitive.”
Mets General Manager Omar Minaya's sense was that the number of years, particularly 2003 and '04, had taken even more of a toll on Piazza's psyche than his body. He said the Mets had not completely shut the door to Piazza's return, but that both he and the catcher felt it was time for a change of scenery.
“Mike's a Met, and he'll always be a Met, but it's a tough town to spend a long time in for any player,” Minaya said. “It's not that we ever said no to him. I think Mike was resigned to leaving. At first he was talking about maybe going to the American League to be a DH, but then it was down to Philadelphia and San Diego.
“I talked to KT (Kevin Towers, Minaya's counterpart with the Padres). I said, 'He's fine. He'd be a good signing for you.' He's got a manager there in (Bruce Bochy) who knows how to get the most out of players. I've seen some Padres games on TV. You can just tell how much happier Mike is. He looks so much more comfortable.”
To be sure, he can breathe easier in San Diego, not to harp on the ravenous media monster in New York, because Piazza generally handled the daily crush of camera crews and reporters pretty well. While comfortable in Manhattan, he never lost the mellowness of his early years in Southern California.
He was not one to cause a scene and not the gung-ho leader behind the plate the Mets have found in Paul Lo Duca – who followed up Piazza from L.A. to Florida to the Mets – and not the fellow who dominated the locker room by personality.
New York's the big stage. New York likes its stars to project.
Piazza actually got ripped for not charging the mound and pounding Roger Clemens when the latter tossed the broken-off barrel of a bat at Piazza in the World Series, the most pointed criticism coming from then-teammate Mike Hampton. Forced to enter the off-Broadway theater of the absurd, Piazza felt prompted by a tabloid gossip item to call a press conference to say he wasn't gay. Similarly, Lo Duca cut off communication with the New York press after the same tabloid reported marital problems.
Back on the West Coast, Piazza can go back to saying “Dude” without everyone in the room snickering. Married now, he's due to become a first-time father in February. At the ballpark, at the plate, he has had a major attitude adjustment for the better.
“I don't know if I'm less serious about the game or more serious about the game, but whatever it is, it's good,” Piazza said. “I feel like an underdog again. I haven't had that feeling since I was a rookie.”
Also playing like a new man – or a man given a new lease on his baseball life – is Cameron. He has produced 15 homers, 48 RBI, a career-high .471 slugging percentage and more of the great defense that has been the hallmark of his career.
New York, however, taught him that nothing is ever quite enough in the majors. As soon as the Mets landed Carlos Beltran as the prized free agent of 2005, he was handed center field while Cameron was abruptly transferred to right. So unhappy was Cameron about the move that he eventually urged the Mets to trade him.
“I wanted to finish my big league career the way I started it,” Cameron said. “That was as a center fielder.”
Cameron thought his career was finished on the outfield grass of Petco Park almost a year ago. He and Beltran both were going full-tilt and each dived after a looping fly by Davis Ross. Their collision was among the scariest in memory, although neither remembered how their faces smashed into each other, knocking both out and leaving them in separate San Diego hospitals the night of Aug. 11.
“I was on the mound,” Glavine said. “I remember seeing those two coming together on the ball and cringing. You had two center fielders going after a ball like two center fielders. I just stayed on the mound. I didn't want to see.”
Cameron came away with severe facial injuries that required reconstructive surgery. He never played another game for the Mets.
“It'll just be nice to go back onto the field at Shea and not be wearing street clothes,” Cameron said. “I don't think my experience will be quite like Mike's, but I think I earned (New York's) respect and I learned a lot about myself. New York made me a better man.
“I'm looking forward to going back, seeing the guys, feeling the electricity and buzz back there.”
The exact sort of buzz that Mike Piazza used to generate.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060808/images/sp_piazza.jpg
Plenty of memories for Piazza, Cameron in return to New York for the first time since they left the Mets. My notes: Yikes, that's a "pleasant" picture!
By Chris Jenkins
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 8, 2006
JIM BAIRD / Union-Tribune
Padres catcher Mike Piazza had more home runs and RBI in seven-plus seasons in New York than he did in six-plus seasons in L.A., but he hit for a higher batting average with the Dodgers.
NEW YORK – The air-conditioned subway car offers temporary relief from the heat wave that has taken the lives of 20 people in New York, but even in the underground escape, strangers still do not speak to strangers on the No. 7 train.
One man is moved to try, however. His dialect sounds Southeast Asian, best guess, and he appears to understand little English. As someone seated next to him turns the sports page on one of the New York tabloids, the man excitedly points to the picture of a baseball slugger. Then he points at his own feet, adorned with flip-flop sandals bearing the New York Mets logo. In the silver ink of a Sharpie, he has written “31.”
“Mike! Mike! Mike!” the man says, thrusting both fists in the air like Rocky Balboa. “Let's go, Mike!”
In any language, yes, Michael Joseph Piazza is missed.
Piazza's powerful performance with the Mets and relationship with New York – the Mets half of it, anyway – makes his return with the Padres tonight a special occasion in what has become a special season in Queens. Fans by the thousands continue to wear Piazza's old jersey to the ballpark and on the streets.
Since the Mets are running away with the National League's best record and folks here seldom give much mind to anything happening out west, far less attention is being paid to the matchup of division leaders than the chance to show Piazza some of the love the Mets ultimately denied him after last season.
“The only player I ever saw cheered when he returned to play against the Mets was Edgardo Alfonzo,” said Padres center fielder Mike Cameron, referring to the former infielder. “I have a feeling Mike will hear even more cheers than Fonzie.”
Cameron is the other Mike who was with the Mets last year, and his Big Apple comeback is expected to be more bittersweet. He asked out of New York after losing his center-field job, then nearly lost his eyesight in that harrowing collision with Carlos Beltran at Petco Park.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060808/images/sp_padres2.jpg
SEAN M. HAFFEY / Union-Tribune
Mike Cameron
Cameron, though, turned out to be one of those players who came and went with the Mets in a couple of years' time. Much as people in Southern California and the NL West might continue to think of Piazza as an ex-Dodger, he spent almost eight full seasons with the Mets, hitting the kind of homers at sweltering Shea Stadium that you thought might someday bring down one of those airliners on approach to LaGuardia.
“Oh, is he making the trip?” joked All-Star third baseman David Wright. “It'll be great to see him again. That's the greatest-hitting catcher of all-time. He did so much for this franchise. For a lot of years, he was the face of the New York Mets.”
The face sort of got slapped near the end. Clearly, after a couple disturbing tries at making a first baseman of Piazza, the Mets didn't want him back once his $15 million-a-year contract expired. When almost no one else expressed interest in him, either, he fell into the Padres' price range and signed for $1.5 million.
“One door opens, one door closes,” Piazza said. “Things change. We move on. The really positive part about this is that they're doing well and I'm doing well.”
In truth, Piazza is doing far better than anyone in New York imagined possible. For the first time since 2001, he has his average back up in the neighborhood of .300 and his 16 homers are the most by an NL catcher. Not bad for a broken-down slugger who plays half his games at spacious Petco Park. Really not bad for a part-time player, which is probably the key to his resurgence, the fact that manager Bruce Bochy is giving Piazza lots of rest both during and between starts.
“You can see a difference,” Wright said, “but there's nobody in this clubhouse who's shocked by what Mike's doing.”
“It's good to see,” said veteran pitcher Tom Glavine. “The unfair part is that he's always judged against himself, Mike Piazza in his prime, and that Mike Piazza was the best ever. It's only natural that there's a slip in the numbers, but look at him now. He's still there.”
You can't mention Piazza's name without the “sure-fire Hall of Fame” qualifier, but Mets management also saw the 12-time All-Star as a 37-year-old who had spent most of his career in a knee-stretching crouch behind the plate. Piazza refuses to offer injuries as an excuse, but admits his productivity slipped mightily over the past three years.
“There were times when I tried to hit the throttle,” Piazza said, “and it wasn't there.”
Baseball players often say New York is the best place to be when you're winning, the worst place when you're losing. Traded from the Florida Marlins in early 1998, Piazza was the big gun who elevated the Mets from a decade-long postseason absence to wild-card status in '99, then to the pennant and a Subway Series against the Yankees the following season.
Over the next four years, the Mets were mediocre or worse. Much worse. Piazza, with the missed games and the diminishing power, became the easy target.
“The dynamics are different,” Piazza said. “Here, I'm a role player. I've been under the radar. People imagine you at a certain point in your career, when you were dominant, and it makes it tough when you're getting old.
“In New York, I wanted to carry the team, because that was my job. When you're younger, I think maybe your armor is thicker. When you get older, you get a little more sensitive.”
Mets General Manager Omar Minaya's sense was that the number of years, particularly 2003 and '04, had taken even more of a toll on Piazza's psyche than his body. He said the Mets had not completely shut the door to Piazza's return, but that both he and the catcher felt it was time for a change of scenery.
“Mike's a Met, and he'll always be a Met, but it's a tough town to spend a long time in for any player,” Minaya said. “It's not that we ever said no to him. I think Mike was resigned to leaving. At first he was talking about maybe going to the American League to be a DH, but then it was down to Philadelphia and San Diego.
“I talked to KT (Kevin Towers, Minaya's counterpart with the Padres). I said, 'He's fine. He'd be a good signing for you.' He's got a manager there in (Bruce Bochy) who knows how to get the most out of players. I've seen some Padres games on TV. You can just tell how much happier Mike is. He looks so much more comfortable.”
To be sure, he can breathe easier in San Diego, not to harp on the ravenous media monster in New York, because Piazza generally handled the daily crush of camera crews and reporters pretty well. While comfortable in Manhattan, he never lost the mellowness of his early years in Southern California.
He was not one to cause a scene and not the gung-ho leader behind the plate the Mets have found in Paul Lo Duca – who followed up Piazza from L.A. to Florida to the Mets – and not the fellow who dominated the locker room by personality.
New York's the big stage. New York likes its stars to project.
Piazza actually got ripped for not charging the mound and pounding Roger Clemens when the latter tossed the broken-off barrel of a bat at Piazza in the World Series, the most pointed criticism coming from then-teammate Mike Hampton. Forced to enter the off-Broadway theater of the absurd, Piazza felt prompted by a tabloid gossip item to call a press conference to say he wasn't gay. Similarly, Lo Duca cut off communication with the New York press after the same tabloid reported marital problems.
Back on the West Coast, Piazza can go back to saying “Dude” without everyone in the room snickering. Married now, he's due to become a first-time father in February. At the ballpark, at the plate, he has had a major attitude adjustment for the better.
“I don't know if I'm less serious about the game or more serious about the game, but whatever it is, it's good,” Piazza said. “I feel like an underdog again. I haven't had that feeling since I was a rookie.”
Also playing like a new man – or a man given a new lease on his baseball life – is Cameron. He has produced 15 homers, 48 RBI, a career-high .471 slugging percentage and more of the great defense that has been the hallmark of his career.
New York, however, taught him that nothing is ever quite enough in the majors. As soon as the Mets landed Carlos Beltran as the prized free agent of 2005, he was handed center field while Cameron was abruptly transferred to right. So unhappy was Cameron about the move that he eventually urged the Mets to trade him.
“I wanted to finish my big league career the way I started it,” Cameron said. “That was as a center fielder.”
Cameron thought his career was finished on the outfield grass of Petco Park almost a year ago. He and Beltran both were going full-tilt and each dived after a looping fly by Davis Ross. Their collision was among the scariest in memory, although neither remembered how their faces smashed into each other, knocking both out and leaving them in separate San Diego hospitals the night of Aug. 11.
“I was on the mound,” Glavine said. “I remember seeing those two coming together on the ball and cringing. You had two center fielders going after a ball like two center fielders. I just stayed on the mound. I didn't want to see.”
Cameron came away with severe facial injuries that required reconstructive surgery. He never played another game for the Mets.
“It'll just be nice to go back onto the field at Shea and not be wearing street clothes,” Cameron said. “I don't think my experience will be quite like Mike's, but I think I earned (New York's) respect and I learned a lot about myself. New York made me a better man.
“I'm looking forward to going back, seeing the guys, feeling the electricity and buzz back there.”
The exact sort of buzz that Mike Piazza used to generate.