ON SAYING GOODBYE
Mets fans do a less than wonderful job of saying
goodbye to their players, especially guys who
meant something. You could go down the list of
guys pushed out the door. The 1986 team got no
goodbye. We see Alfonzo, Ventura, Olerud, -- they
have their moments and then they’re gone. They
had their quick video.
Piazza was really the first guy to get a send-off
from the Mets. He got a true appreciative farewell.
Mets fans knew he wasn’t coming back. There was
no dispute that everyone had to move on so it was a
three-month love fest culminating on the final day.
It was a nice thing to have been a part of as a fan and
I tried to recreate that in the book. I go through the
tough times but it’s nice to see it being secondary to
what people remember. They remember the home
runs, the pennants.
ON THE LATE
NINETIES
TEAMS
It’s appropriate you have this
sort of dramatic sequence of
events leading to Piazza being here
because if anything, those years,
1998-2001, the Bobby Valentine
years, were probably, and I lived
through ‘69 and ‘86 and modern
times, to me those were the most
dramatic years to be a Mets fan. You
didn’t want to miss a game, a pitch.
It was riveting drama every night
with that team for four years and
Piazza was the leading man and he
had a great supporting cast and it
was such a fun time. I wanted in the
book to sort of build those days.
I’ve been a Mets fan since 1969
when I was a little kid. It was a hell
of a time to become a Mets fan and I
still think that whole period was my
favorite time.
THE SIGNIFICANT OF ‘THE
TRADE’
There’s a character in the book by the name of Todd
Hundley. If he doesn’t get injured, Piazza never happens
in New York. The 1997 Mets won 88 games and were
trying to build on that and were trying to get by with
Alberto Castillo, Tim Bogar, those sorts of guys, and you
couldn’t do that. The Yankees and the Braves were just a
cloud over the heads of the Mets during those years and
you have the Mets trying to hang in the wild card race,
already giving up the dream of chasing Atlanta in 1998.
Considering where they had been prior to 1997, you
had to be happy that they were above .500 and weren’t
out of the race in May, but they really needed something.
To have won 88 games, it was a private love affair
between the hardcore Mets fans and that season. They
weren’t getting much attention in the papers and the
attendance wasn’t all that hot. Going into ‘98 after
opening day, they weren’t drawing anyone.
While, to me, they were
relevant 162 games a year, I
could certainly understand
the concept of a superstar and a star attraction.
Fortunately Nelson Doubleday got that immediately
and Fred Wilpon was convinced of that and Steve
Phillips was prepared to act on that, the flukiness of the
whole thing, not only that they had an all-star catcher
that was unavailable to them in Hundley, but you had
the Dodgers who should’ve never traded this guy. It
was akin to the Mets trading Seaver 20 years before.
QNS.COM
SUMMER 2017 33