A Farewell to Mike Piazza

After Writing His Own Legend With the Dodgers,
He Made the Mets Respectable Once Again
By JASON FRY

In the spring of 1998, when rumors began circulating that the New York Mets were close to acquiring Mike Piazza from the Florida Marlins, I didn't want him. To anybody who asked, I stormed that the Mets already had a catcher in Todd Hundley, soon to return from a bum elbow, and what did the Mets need with another one?

This was utterly insane, of course, and 10 years later I still remind myself of it when my self-esteem is reaching flood stage and I need to recall that I am often profoundly stupid. In 1998 Mr. Piazza was 29 and coming off a season in which he'd hit .362, slugged 40 home runs and driven in 124 runs -- an awesome season by any measure, and of historic greatness for a catcher in a pitcher's park. The Mets, meanwhile, were an 88-win team -- not bad, but no lock for the postseason. They needed Mr. Piazza like wanderers in the desert needed water, and there was a seismic shift in their fortunes even before he took the field.

Mr. Piazza arrived at Shea Stadium on May 23, 1998, a Saturday matinee against the Milwaukee Brewers. My wife and I showed up early, to find a buzz in the stands -- a constant murmur of excited conversation, punctuated by seemingly spontaneous eruptions of cheering. The waves of Met fans streaming in from the subway told us a huge walk-up crowd was building, and Shea's Diamondvision retraced Mr. Piazza's progress from LaGuardia Airport -- he'd arrived that afternoon after an airport snafu -- like his plane was Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve.

After a standing ovation, Mr. Piazza grounded out in his first at-bat; he was called out on strikes in his second. In the fifth he came to the plate with a runner on first and two outs, Mets up 1-0, and smacked a Jeff Juden fastball into the gap in right-center. The ball touched down accompanied by a puff of dust and injured grass blades, then seemed to speed up on its way to the wall. I'd seen my share of doubles, but I'd never seen a ball do that.

It was a great start to eight seasons with the Mets, but then Mr. Piazza arrived with his legend ready-made. Ignored by high-school and college scouts, he was drafted in the 62nd round in 1988 by the Dodgers, a vanity pick made as a grudging favor to Tommy Lasorda, who was a boyhood friend of Mr. Piazza's father. The 62nd round is for players who won't actually be signed, but Mr. Lasorda cajoled the Dodgers into giving Mr. Piazza a $15,000 bonus. That did little to help him with managers in the low minors, who resented his ties to Mr. Lasorda and his silver-spoon upbringing: As a teenager, Mr. Piazza had his own batting cage, and he'd been tutored by none other than Ted Williams.

What Mr. Piazza's detractors ignored was that the rich kid had a work ethic that would have done Horatio Alger proud. Changed on the spot into a catcher by Mr. Lasorda, Mr. Piazza worked to learn the position in the Dodgers' Dominican Republic baseball academy, where he was the only player who spoke English, and played winter ball in Mexico. Eventually all that work -- and his ferocious hitting -- convinced even the naysayers. Mr. Piazza earned a call-up in 1992, and was 1993's National League Rookie of the Year, hitting .318 with 35 home runs. After being so roundly ignored and discouraged, reaching the majors would have been accomplishment enough. For the story to end, as it will, in the Hall of Fame is a script too implausible even for Hollywood.

And truth be told, Mr. Piazza always looked slightly awkward as a player, like he was the product of immense hard work rather than sublime natural ability. (This is, of course, speaking on a relative scale: The difference between his natural ability and most any fan's was an unimaginable chasm.) At the plate he stood stock-still, his face completely blank, his swing a violent eruption, and he ran the bases the way kids imagine dinosaurs chasing their prey, arms and legs thundering like impressive but not particularly efficient pistons.

But that awkwardness was endearing -- it made Mr. Piazza an approachable icon. He always seemed tickled that his sports celebrity let him consort with the musicians he idolized, and watching him try out his metal moves in onstage cameos was like seeing yourself air-guitaring in your room when you think no one's watching. He had a goofy weakness for terrible hair ideas -- after one horrifying summertime loss to the Cubs, he cut his hair short and had it dyed platinum, prompting a huge cheer from Wrigley Field the next day when he shed his helmet chasing an errant ball. Once, he wound up holding the ball after being hit by a pitch and disdainfully tossed it aside. "Did it look cool?" he eagerly asked reporters later. (It did.)

Lots of other times, he didn't need to ask. There was the blast he struck off the Yankees' Ramiro Mendoza in the summer of 1999, bringing gasps from a packed house as the ball bounced off a tent 482 feet away. The shot off the Braves' John Smoltz -- which he hit despite having only one working thumb -- in the epic Game 6 of the 1999 National League Championship Series, tying the game 7-7. Or the first-pitch line drive he struck against the Braves in the summer of 2000, capping a 10-run inning against the Mets' hated rivals. I was there for that one, thought briefly that I was having a heart attack, and decided I was so happy I didn't care.

And then there was Sept. 21, 2001, the first baseball game in New York City after 9/11. I was one of more than 41,000 who came to Shea that night wondering if I really wanted to see a game, or if I was just there to huddle with other New Yorkers, all of us still undone by shock and grief and struggling to muster whatever defiance we could.

After long security lines, a 21-gun salute, and cheers for cops, firefighters, emergency responders, soldiers and even the visiting Braves, who left the third-base line to offer the Mets handshakes and hugs, there was baseball to be played -- and the Mets and Braves turned in a taut thriller, which we at first watched almost grudgingly, distracted and wondering if it was right to invest so much emotion in something that had been revealed as just a game.

It was Liza Minnelli, of all people, who broke the ice, assembling a seventh-inning-stretch kick line of police and firefighters and singing the heck out of "New York, New York," giving the old chestnut a feeling of hard-earned triumph. But it was Mr. Piazza at the plate in the bottom of the eighth, with the Mets down 2-1, one out and a runner on first. He connected with an 0-1 pitch, one of those drives that even a neophyte fan knows instantly is gone. Before it cleared the fence, the entire ballpark was up, screaming with the euphoric release brought by a big moment in an unbearably tense game.

That one swing didn't bring back anyone who had been lost, or shed any light on the long, difficult road we were to tread. But while no one was going to forget about bigger things, that homer made it OK for us to get lost again in the anxiety and drama and glee of a little thing like who won or lost a baseball game. And that's far from nothing.

Officially, Mike Piazza left the Mets on Oct. 2, 2005, grounding to the Rockies' Clint Barmes late in an 11-3 Met loss. He'd go on to play a season with the San Diego Padres and one with the Oakland A's before his formal retirement Tuesday. Soon enough, I assume, his 31 will be unveiled on the wall of Shea Stadium or Citi Field, never to be worn by another New York Met. And in 2013, I hope, he'll wear a Met cap in bronze in Cooperstown.

But whether or not he does, whatever uniform he wore in 2006 and 2007, he's never really left the Mets -- at least not in the way fans think of things. He's still here -- in the team record books, in video clips, and, well, in our hearts. It's a cheesy thing to say, I know. But there's no other way to say it, not when you reflexively remember years as Before Mike, Mike, or After Mike. And there's no other way to reckon it, not when a Met rockets a ball into the gap, or hammers one over the wall, and as you cheer you're turning to your friend in the seat next to you, both of you thinking of Mike Piazza, and either you or he is already saying, "Remember when…"