Piazza Retires

[Guest AG/DC]

I have mostly no problem with that. Keep in mind that UniWatch was a column born in The Village Voice, and he still has gay readers.

Where he's wrong is the difference between what he demanded and what Piazza actually said isn't large at all.

What Lukas wanted: "But what if it was true? What if I was gay? So what? What if one of my teammates is gay? What if one of YOU is gay? It's no big deal. Listen, I'm straight, but this whole thing is really a nonissue."

What Piazza said: "I'm not gay. I'm heterosexual. I can't control what people think. I date women" But added, "In this day and age, it's irrelevant. I don't think it would be a problem at all."

Personally, I think this they both could have been stronger, but I don't think you could drive a bike between what Lukas said and what Piazza said, they're so close. One says "no big deal" and the other says "irrelevant." And what Piazza said came with risk, what Lukas said did not.

[MFS62]

Every one of the issues raised by Lucas has probably been discussed, even debated, on this board. (Well, maybe not the sliding thing)
But Lucas has taken the negative side each of those issues and sumarized them all in one place.

I don't think any of us have done that.
When he doesn't like somebody, he really doesn't like somebody.

Later

[metirish]

Tim Marchman on Piazza.

] Piazza Retires as Baseball's Greatest Catcher Baseball By TIM MARCHMAN Now that Mike Piazza has declined into the vale of years, having formally announced the end of his 16-year major league career yesterday, it's time to state as fact what's long been plainly true: With the possible exception of Negro League legend Josh Gibson, Piazza was the best catcher in baseball history. It was a privilege to watch him play in New York for so many years, and one can only hope that when he's immortalized in bronze at Cooperstown, a Mets cap will be perched atop his head, right there with his mullet and moustache. From his ruthless hammering of the Yankees to his apocalyptic hot streaks (he hit .430 AVG/.509 OBA/.790 SLG in his last 29 games in 1998 as the Mets chased a playoff spot), from his run-ins with Roger Clemens to his game-winning home run in the first sporting event in New York after September 11, 2001, from the press conference he announced to proclaim his heterosexuality to the image of perfect stillness and balance he left with the fans as he launched warheads to right field, Piazza seared his mark on New York baseball. Still, I honestly don't feel that even rabid Mets partisans have a sense of just how monstrously good he was. The vast distance between Piazza's hitting and that of all other catchers ever is staggering, almost impossible to describe, and was remarkably unappreciated in his prime. In 1997 he hit .363/.431/.638 while playing his home games in Dodger Stadium, which damped offense by 7%, which would have been worthy of an MVP award if he'd been a first baseman. Somehow voters picked Colorado's Larry Walker, a right fielder who played his home games in Coors Field, which inflated offense by 22%. Rather than idiocy on the part of the writers who vote for the award, I've always thought this reflected disbelief. Piazza's numbers were so preposterous that baseball couldn't really absorb their meaning. From 1993 to 2002, which isn't an arbitrary selection � it's the decade from his debut to the beginning of his physical breakdown � Piazza's OPS+ was seventh-best in baseball, essentially tied with those of Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, Gary Sheffield, and Albert Belle. His hitting would have been Hall of Fame-class had it come from a first baseman or a left fielder; with the possible exception of Johnny Bench, he's the only major league catcher ever of which this is true. To say that he towered over the competition with the bat is a gross understatement, and his career home runs record for catchers (he's the only one ever to top 400) is the least of it. In that 1997 season, for instance, Piazza was credited with 150 runs created. No other catcher has ever topped 129, and only four others � Gabby Harnett, Roy Campanella, Bill Dickey, and Bench � ever topped 120. They all did it once; Piazza did it four times. Going by adjusted OPS+, which, like runs created, is available at baseball-reference.com, Campanella had three seasons that would have cracked Piazza's top seven, Mickey Cochrane had two, Bench and Dickey hadone apiece, and Yogi Berra had none. And while Piazza played in a hitter's era, he played in the worst hitter's parks of his day, against the toughest competition in the sport's history. This is the point where one is supposed to acknowledge that while all this may be so, defense is the most important part of a catcher's job, thus somehow making Piazza much the inferior of several other players. This involves hoodoo. Given levels of competition, Bench, a legendary defender, was probably the second-best-hitting catcher ever. He created 93 runs per 162 games � an astounding 23 less than Piazza, in a career of equal length. Was he really 23 runs better per year than Piazza with the glove? It's possible, but the burden of proof would be on the person making this extraordinary claim. Excepting the odd freak season, there's little reason to think that the best catchers are worth much more than 10 runs above average per year, or the worst much more than 10 below. Credit the two at these poles, and it still doesn't make up the difference in offense. What's more, Piazza, despite falling victim to the well-known fallacy by which a catcher's defensive reputation declines inverse to his offensive numbers, was a perfectly decent catcher. He was lousy at throwing out runners, but then he was playing in an era when the stolen base was more or less irrelevant, and he was solid or better at other aspects of the game before his body began to fall apart. Anyone arguing that he was uniquely bad has to explain why his teams routinely won 90 games and why he generally caught excellent pitching staffs. Of how many bad catchers are these things true? If Piazza was even merely a below-average defender in his prime � and I think that's a fair way to put it � he would be the best major league catcher ever; he was that good a hitter. That he brought so much more to the game, from cheerfully semi-competent heavy metal drumming to absurd facial hair to a Mets pennant to the wonderful (if moderately suspect) legend of how a 62nd-round draft pick turned himself into one of the best players of all time, just made him all the more beloved. No Met has worn no. 31 since his last game with the team, in October 2005; doubtless no Met will ever wear it again. tmarchman@nysun.com

Bill Shaikin of the LA Times claims the Dodgers have never recorvered form trading Piazza.

] BILL SHAIKIN / ON BASEBALL Piazza: the blue-plate special He retires without a team, but it should have been as a Dodger The great ones should not bid farewell via e-mail. Mike Piazza deserved to tip his cap and bask in the applause, secure in his place as one of the Dodgers' brightest stars. His place would have been between Tom Lasorda and Sandy Koufax, on opening day, at the end of the Dodgers' stirring parade of players through the decades. Dodger Stadium went nuts when Koufax appeared, and the place would have gone only slightly less berserk with Piazza in the house. But he was not retired then, just unemployed. He never did find a job, and he retired Tuesday, at 39. No standing ovation, no public appearance, just a statement sent to media e-mailboxes. "I walk away with no regrets," Piazza said. "I knew this day was coming and, over the last two years, I started to make my peace with it." It is difficult, even to this day, to make peace with the idea that Piazza did not play out his career with the Dodgers, that they traded perhaps the greatest hitting catcher in history -- and Lasorda's godson, no less. The Dodger Way was no more. It is a decade later, and the Dodgers have yet to recover the tradition, the loyalty and the championships. Piazza was a homegrown superstar, with a story made for Hollywood. The way Lasorda starts to tell the story, five clubs scouted Piazza. "Every one of them said he couldn't play," Lasorda said. So, as a favor to Lasorda, the Dodgers drafted Piazza in 1988, in the 62nd round. Of the 1,433 players selected, he was No. 1,390. He made himself a decent catcher through hard work but, boy, could he hit. As a rookie, in 1993, he hit .318 with 35 home runs. In 1997, his last full season with the Dodgers, he hit .362 with 40 home runs. "He brought the offensive level of what a catcher can do to a level that I don't think can be matched," said Mike Scioscia, his predecessor as the Dodgers' catcher. Piazza loved L.A. -- the fans, the night life, the perennial promise of October -- and L.A. loved him back. But free agency loomed after the 1998 season, initial negotiations did not go well, and all of a sudden L.A. knew he wanted a record-setting contract. Fred Claire, the general manager, figured he had all season to make a deal. The new Fox ownership wanted to rid itself of Piazza and buddy up to the Florida Marlins for television rights purposes, so the corporate suits traded Piazza to the Marlins in May, then told Claire what they had done. "Mike couldn't have been any more shocked than I was," Claire said. "He never wanted to leave," Lasorda said. "He cried." Piazza did get his record contract. The Marlins flipped him to the New York Mets, and the Mets gave him $91 million. This wasn't supposed to happen. Peter O'Malley had told us a family could no longer afford to run a major league team. So he sold to a corporation with deep pockets, and Fox promptly sold off Piazza. But, a few months after portraying Piazza as greedy, Fox signed Kevin Brown for $105 million. Claire and Bill Russell, the manager, were fired one month after the trade. So were three coaches. The Dodgers are on their sixth general manager and fifth manager since then, with no pennants. "The trade changed the whole scope of the Dodgers in the way they had been operated," Claire said. In the various organizational purges, the Dodgers dumped Scioscia, Mickey Hatcher and Ron Roenicke from their minor league staff, Gary Sutherland and Eddie Bane from their scouting staff. They all work -- and win -- in Anaheim now. Piazza did not win a playoff game in L.A., but he got to the World Series with the Mets. He finished his career with the most home runs of any catcher in history, one of eight to hit .300 with 30 homers in a season. He did it six times. Roy Campanella did it three times. No one else did it more than once. "Just to put yourself in the same ballpark as Roy Campanella is saying something," Scioscia said, "and Mike belongs up there." In his statement, Piazza thanked all the teams, managers and fans for which he played, but he singled out the Mets' fans as "the greatest fans in the world." Lasorda, the Dodgers' chief salesman, said he was not offended. He said Piazza was stung by boos at Dodger Stadium, before and after the trade. He would try, he said, to persuade Piazza to wear a Dodgers cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. Persuasion should not have been necessary. The late, great Times columnist Jim Murray called it, two days after the trade: "The Dodgers always have adhered to the Branch Rickey theory of roster cutting that it's better to deal a player a year early than a year late. But in Piazza's case, 10 years early?" bill.shaikin@latimes.com

[bmfc1]

Disturbing observation from Buster Olney:

� A quick thought about Piazza: If Roger Clemens doesn't play again, and he and Piazza were to be elected into the Hall of Fame, it's possible that these two stars, who share the dubious history of the 2000 beaning and bat-throwing incident, could be inducted in the same year. But that would seem to be unlikely at this point: The climate among Hall of Fame voters seems to be working against Clemens.

[metirish]

] Lasorda, the Dodgers' chief salesman, said he was not offended. He said Piazza was stung by boos at Dodger Stadium, before and after the trade. He would try, he said, to persuade Piazza to wear a Dodgers cap on his Hall of Fame plaque.

Doesn't Tommy not know that it's not Mikes choice.

[Fman99]

Paul Lukas and Richard Grossinger are dumb fucking ****s.

I'd like to see them simultaneously killed in a staged gay ritual double suicide, a la the football players in "Heathers."

[Guest AG/DC]

The player's opinion is solicited. In a close decision (like this one is), that could swing a choice.

On edit: Fman, I'm calling uncle.

[batmagadanleadoff]

metirish wrote: Doesn't Tommy not know that it's not Mikes choice.

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the HOF has the ultimate say. However, the HOF will consider the inductee's request, and in a very close case, might even allow the inductee to decide for himself. This would be the case, where there are more than one acceptable choices.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Fman99 wrote: Paul Lukas and Richard Grossinger are dumb fucking ****s.

Punch them in the necks!

[Guest AG/DC]

Same time-stamp also.

[Fman99]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: ="Fman99"]Paul Lukas and Richard Grossinger are dumb fucking ****s. Punch them in the necks!

I thought of that too... a simultaneous double-neck-punch a la the ending of Rocky III with Apollo and Rocky hitting each other and then the picture turning into a painting as a backdrop for the credits.

[seawolf17]

I want to listen in on a debate between fman and Val. That'd be great entertainment.

[G-Fafif]

Fman99 wrote: Paul Lukas and Richard Grossinger are dumb fucking ****s. I'd like to see them simultaneously killed in a staged gay ritual double suicide, a la the football players in "Heathers."

Any argument that invokes "Heathers" makes sense to me.

[Benjamin Grimm]

seawolf17 wrote: I want to listen in on a debate between fman and Val. That'd be great entertainment.

Val: FUCK!
Fman: ****!
Val: FUCK!
Fman: ****!

and so on...

[Fman99]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: ="seawolf17"]I want to listen in on a debate between fman and Val. That'd be great entertainment. Val: FUCK! Fman: ****! Val: FUCK! Fman: ****! and so on...

Hey - that's not the only club in my bag, don't you fret.

[Frayed Knot]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Now the talk will heat up again about caps on Cooperstown plaques and retired numbers. As for the cap, Keith says Mets, Gary and Ron say Dodgers.

I've long been pretty much indifferent to the cap question, but Gary, in particular, immediately jumped on the "better years as a Dodger" argument, one that gets treated as if fact much of the time but really isn't all that cut-n-dried.
The only stat that stands out for Piazza the Dodger is Batting Avg - and even that is somewhat skewed by the one monster year he had in '97 (.363). The rest comes out to be about the same, Piazza the Met walked a bit more and hit for slightly more power essentially reducing the BA difference to approx an extra 3 singles per month while in LA.

Then you factor in the length of time plus only WS appearence and ...


The following shows his LA and NY stats, both in total and then normalized down to a 500 AB 'average' season:

	AB	PA	H	2B	HR	TB	BB	K	BA	OBA	SLG	Wk Rate	IsoP
LAD	2,707	2,990	896	115	177	1,548	283	440	.331	.394	.572	.063	.241
NYM	3,478	3,902	1,028	193	220	1,885	424	546	.296	.372	.542	.077	.246
LAD/500	500	552	165	21	33	286	52	81	.331	.394	.572	.063	.241
NYM/500	500	561	148	28	32	271	61	78	.296	.372	.542	.077	.246

[nymr83]

he had 5 full season as a dodger plus a cup of coffee in '92 and the partial year in '98. he had 6 full seasons as a met plus the trade in '98 and 68 games in 2003. here are the OPS+ numbers for the full years only sorted highest to lowest not chrnologically:
LAD- 185, 172, 166, 152, 140
NYM- 155, 147, 137, 134, 108, 104

[metirish]

From the Juno Soundtrack.

Piazza , New York Catcher.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

There are many Dodgers in the Hall of Fame, and only one Met. I think that comes into play with the people who make these decisions. At least it seemed to with Carter and Les Expos.

[Elster88]

Did Lukas really bash Piazza for not standing up for gay pride? He ought to stick to witty observations on uniform colors.

[Elster88]

="Benjamin Grimm"] ="soupcan"]For the Red Sox to retire a number the player has to be a Hall of Famer and has to have spent at least 10 years with the team. That's the way to do it. Yeah. I like that policy.

It's time to unretire Casey and Hodges then. Putting a restriction on it like this is entirely the wrong way to go about it, even putting aside the point that ten years is a completely arbitrary number.

What if a player hits 60 home runs each year for the first nine years of his career, wins five World Series MVPs and wins two of those series hitting home runs in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7? Then he gets hit by a bus in the spring before his tenth year and is paralyzed from the waist down? Sorry buddy, you didn't get the ten years of service.

Or how about this slightly more likely scenario: A pitcher joins the franchise as his career is peaking. While on the team, he wins 2 Cy Young Awards, and finishes second twice, third once, and fourth once in Cy Young voting (his only other year on the team he was hurt too much to factor in CYA voting). He is loved by the fans and has the ballpark rocking every time he starts. Oh and throw in that he's the second best pitcher on the team that wins the organization's first title in 76 years. (If you don't think Boston should retire Pedro's number than I don't know how to talk to you. Seems crystal clear to me.)

Piazza didn't dominate the way Pedro did but he came in and was immediately great. Best player on the team that went back to the WS for the first time in 14 years. Countless big home runs. He made baseball at Shea fun again. Any Met fan who doesn't think Piazza should have his number retired AND be elected president this November has no soul.

[Elster88]

Valadius wrote: You know how close I was to being able to experience a Mets World Championship? About four months. I was born in February 1987. My number one goal in life, besides my own personal goals, is to be able to witness a Mets championship.

Just imagine how excited you would have been for Game 6 if you had been born four months earlier!! You might have tipped your bassinette over.

[Elster88]

Valadius wrote: I'll never forget when I heard that Mike Piazza had been traded to the Mets. I was playing in Little League when one of my teammates who I couldn't stand told me. I refused to believe him until I got home. Sure enough, Piazza was a Met. I remember thinking it was an awesome trade especially because I thought that nobody named Geoff Goetz could be any good. Sure enough, I was right. Many of you grew up with Tom Seaver as your Met hero. Well, I'm the lone poster of the generation that grew up with Mike Piazza as their Met hero. He was the Mets superstar, the sure-fire All-Star pick every year and sure-fire Hall-of-Famer. Hell, he was good enough that there was a Nintendo 64 game called Mike Piazza's Strike Zone. Out of all the players in baseball, they chose Mike Piazza. He was one of the best players in the game, and the player Mets fans of my generation had a poster of in their bedroom. He will be the second player to go into the Hall of Fame as a Met, and as such, his number should be retired. You guys had Seaver. His number's retired. Let my generation have Piazza's number on the wall.

Ugh. I take it all back. Don't retire Piazza's number.

[G-Fafif]

Weird "tribute" to Mike in current SI print edition, by Michael Bamberger.

]He could never be the Philly Italian Guy from central casting, and he despised it when fans or writers tried to goad him into that role. [...] Roger Clemens once beaned him with a fastball and on another memorable occasion threw a broken bat at him. Piazza did not forgive and forget. That part of the Sicilian thing he had down cold.

I'm sure Mike would appreciate being linked to one aspect of the Italian stereotype three sentences after it was said he didn't care to be linked to another aspect of the Italian stereotype.

I've never forgiven or forgotten Clemens for those incidents. I had no idea I was Sicilian.

[Centerfield]

Elster88 wrote: Any Met fan who doesn't think Piazza should have his number retired AND be elected president this November has no soul.

I so totally agree.

="G-Fafif"] I've never forgiven or forgotten Clemens for those incidents. I had no idea I was Sicilian.

I so totally agree.