Mets Are Missing Train In Subway Series New York-New York Battle Has Been All Yankees So Far
Thanks to a train wreck of a subway series, those who have only recently arrived in town at least now know which team represents the straphangers of New York City baseball.
Take, for instance, Mike Piazza, the subject of recent speculation that he might consider a return next year to Los Angeles, the coastal expanse where freeways reign. If Piazza didn’t understand the local pedestrian status of the Mets, consecutive spankings by the Yankees at Shea Stadium have been as instructional as they’ve been humbling.
“They’re the most balanced club I’ve seen in a while,” Piazza said admiringly of George Steinbrenner’s team, without explaining if a while was inclusive of his years in Little League. “There’s no weakness I can see.”
On a strictly competitive level, every Mets player worth his millions should recognize following Saturday’s 7-2 defeat that anything less than near-perfect baseball isn’t good enough against the juggernaut from the Bronx. In the image-related contest of which team has better mastered the big-city strut, the series has been the equivalent of a steel cage wrestling match between Hulk Hogan and Mr. Met.
It doesn’t take Catcher Cam or Piazza’s good seat behind the plate to plainly see how the Yankees have been willing to let the Mets take their best shots, before leveling them with a single, incisive blow. In Game 1, the Mets’ Lost Weekend on a Friday Night, the Yankees eradicated a third deficit of the night in an opposing ballpark when Paul O’Neill put the Mets away with a three-run home run off Mel Rojas.
Saturday, after the Mets had emptied their pop guns on Andy Pettitte in the first three innings, they were floored by Tino Martinez’s three-run blast off Bobby Jones in the fourth, which unleashed a torrent of pro-Yankee noise so loud it drowned out the airport next door.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, a lot of Yankee fans came over here,” Piazza said. “I don’t want to say that they’re the most popular team. Maybe the more publicized team. But I don’t think we have any inferiority complex at all.”
Maybe he doesn’t, but he is a virtual outsider, still familiarizing himself with the city’s contemporary sports culture, which ranks the Yankees at the top and the Mets firmly ahead of the WNBA’s New York Liberty. The resident Mets and especially their manager know better the frustrations of competing for attention with a team whose eighth-place hitter, Scott Brosius, checked in Saturday with more runs batted in than anyone in Bobby Valentine’s lineup, including Piazza.
The truth is, this series has been no well-timed distraction for the Mets from their ego-building exercise known as the wild-card race and their efforts to be taken seriously by the public, the politicians and Piazza. And not necessarily in that order.
“From a personal standpoint, it may have been beneficial for me to move on,” Piazza said on the eve of this series, referring to his departure from the Dodgers. “They’re going to have a lot of growing pains to get back to where they want to be. I’m very happy to be in a stable situation.”
Unfortunately for the Mets, these words were spoken before what had been the All-Star season of their best pitcher, Al Leiter, was imperiled by injury Friday night, before the sight of the best team in baseball knocked the Mets off their knack of playing tight defense and before the typical insecurities - like when the rich neighbor rolls the BMW into his driveway and you can’t get the old battered wagon to turn over - surfaced.
Exhibit A was Valentine’s response to mild news media and fan suggestions that he had erred in bringing in the slumping Rojas, a right-hander, to pitch to the left-handed O’Neill in Friday night’s decisive moment. In a 6-1 game Saturday in the seventh, Valentine did call for a southpaw, Bill Pulsipher, to face O’Neill, who promptly lined a run-scoring single. Valentine, on the top step of his dugout, gestured up at the press box, as if to say, “OK?”
“Live and learn,” the manager said with a smirk afterward.
Was he sticking it to reporters?
“So what if I was sticking it to them?” he said. “What’s wrong with that?”
Nothing, except that he is having enough problems trying to stick with the Yankees, players don’t appreciate being made examples of and, like it or not, Piazza is making his own evaluations as to where this team is going and if he’ll want to be part of it.