THE amazing thing to see was how genuinely surprised Mike Piazza seemed to be, and how genuinely touched. Piazza had just spent a few minutes chatting in the third-base dugout at Shea Stadium, joking about the crowd of notebooks and cameras, asking, “Isn’t there anything else going on?” But then he took a slow, cautious step, and then another, and soon his head popped out of the dugout, and that was all the early-arriving crowd needed to see. There were a couple of hundred people gathered there – maybe a thousand, tops – but as soon as they saw Piazza it might well have been the summer of 1965, and Piazza might well have been a Beatle.
“Mike Pee-at-zah!” they chanted, borrowing the singsong roll call that the bleacher creatures across town bestow upon their fair-haired sons.
“Mike Pee-at-zah!” It wasn’t as loud as what was to come later, when his name was officially announced in the San Diego Padres’ batting order, when the video tribute to him was played on the Shea scoreboard, when he came to bat for the first time. It sure wasn’t as loud as any of a dozen random moments any Mets fan can summon from Piazza’s 71/2year tenure as a Met.
But in some ways, this was the best noise, because this was the first noise, the first reconnection between erstwhile franchise player and the fans he helped bring back to the ballpark all those years ago. They started cheering, and chanting, and calling his name.
And they didn’t stop, not as he started to stretch, not as he took his swings in the batting cage, not for the whole night.
“Being a Met and playing in this city,” Piazza had said, “is something I’ll cherish until the day I die.” It’s something Mets fans will cherish, too. In the past week, the Mets had gone about the business of spinning their success forward, locking up a couple of franchise players named Jose Reyes and David Wright, and even last night there were far more No. 7 Reyes jerseys and No. 5 Wright jerseys scattered throughout the ballpark than faded No. 31s. So much about the Mets is rooted in their tomorrows, which look perfectly fabulous.
But last night, for a few minutes, the Mets fans got a chance to savor some wonderful yesterdays, too.
They’ll do that a lot in the next few weeks, with the coming salute to the 1986 world champions (even if it looks like the celebration will be lacking Davey Johnson, Ray Knight and Darryl Strawberry – which would be like holding a “Welcome Back Kotter” reunion without Horshack and Vinny Barbarino). Yesterday was about the Mets renaissance of the late 1990s, the one that proved the Mets really could be relevant again, if entrusted to the proper hands.
“So many great games,” Piazza said. “So many great memories.” It was more than that, though. The love-fest bestowed on Piazza is a reminder that things don’t always have to be the way they are, that even New York sports fans are capable of evolving.
That’s something that should hearten Alex Rodriguez, for as difficult as his summer has been, he’s been receiving love songs compared to the endless string of scorn that was heaped upon Piazza in his first summer here, 1998, when Mets fans refused to give their hearts over to Piazza.
“Some interesting times, at first,” is how Piazza put it.
And some interesting times later on, too. As much buzz as l’affaire Lo Duca might have generated the past few days, it’s hardly a place unfamiliar with Piazza, who logged some significant and unforgettable time in the front of the newspapers while he was here, too.
Piazza wound up back on the back pages thanks to his bat eventually, which is exactly how Lo Duca will get back there, too.
Still, yesterday wasn’t about the current Mets catcher and whatever proclivities may have landed him where he’s landed.
It was about a former Mets catcher, who once upon a time made Shea seem a little less a ghost town than it had before he showed up. And last night turned it one last time into his own personal backyard field of dreams.
