New York Times Magazine Article
Joseph Richardson
By WILLIAM BERLIND
Inside the soundproof den of his Gramercy apartment, Mike Piazza shows off
his $70,000 Krell stereo. It's 2:30 p.m. on a midsummer Wednesday, almost
time to go to work. In the kitchen his girlfriend and the woman who doubles
as his personal assistant and housekeeper are absorbed in the World's
Strongest Man competition on ESPN.
The style of the apartment is sleek and modern. Except for two samurai
swords hanging in their sheaths next to the fireplace, the place could pass
for a business-class airport lounge. In the small, dimly lighted den I am
sitting in a deep plush tan chair; Piazza is in another. He commands the
entire setup on a touch-sensitive computer screen alongside his chair. The
110-inch projection TV lights up and George C. Scott is standing in front of
a huge American flag. It's ''Patton,'' Piazza's favorite movie in the whole
world.
He scrolls through the scenes on the DVD. Suddenly we're in the German
bunkers. ''Captain Steiger, follow me,'' the subtitle reads. ''Kommen Sie,
Steiger,'' Piazza says under his breath.
Patton moves on to a battlefield in Tunisia, where we find the general on a
bluff proudly surveying the obliteration of Rommel's 10th panzer division.
Piazza's subwoofers growl with artillery fire.
''Patton'' is Piazza's kind of movie -- straightforward, action-packed and
morally succinct -- and Patton is Piazza's kind of guy, a warrior with
intellectual panache. ''Patton's whole theory was roll up your sleeves, quit
whining and go get some work done,'' he says a little later in the
chauffeured S.U.V. that takes him to Shea Stadium. ''He symbolizes what I
think this country was built on.''
Piazza goes on in this vein. This is a subject he likes. ''After you're done
watching 'Patton,' you're moved, you're inspired,'' he says. ''How many
films give you that today? After that movie I feel so many things. I feel
patriotism. I feel nationalism. He was so focused and disciplined. He's a
true leader, and I would be proud to fight for him.''
Piazza wants baseball to be more than a game and to become for baseball what
Patton was for war. He wants the game to be noble, heroic and real. The
problem for the New York Mets, for whom he is the best player, is that
Piazza wants to be led by a Patton, not be a Patton.
Piazza, in fact, rarely displays the emotion that people want from him. His
intensity is vast but private. When Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens was due to
make his first plate appearance at Shea since he chucked a broken bat at
Piazza during the 2000 World Series, Piazza refused to share in the outrage.
When a New York Post item implied that he was gay, people expected a blowup.
Even his own father, Vince, was out for blood. (''I wanted to go after the
guy,'' Vince says.) But Piazza simply called a news conference, said he was
not gay and let it pass without visible anger.
''People seem to think that I'm this charismatic, flamboyant guy,'' he says.
''They want me to be more animated. But I don't feel comfortable getting
into it.''
For a brief time last season, Piazza found his element. This was when
baseball resumed after Sept. 11, and the Mets, who had been underperforming
all season, were in the middle of a tear. The pictures of Piazza's face
plastered onto the backs of the tabloids, his lips tightly pursed and his
eyes narrowed beneath the brim of an N.Y.P.D. cap, were symbols of
determination, persistence and humility. All the qualities that made him
seem somewhat remote in normal times suddenly became noble and dignified.
''People responded,'' he says, ''because it was genuine.''
Now the Mets find themselves back where they were before Sept. 11, and the
game itself is in even worse shape. The entire season has been played under
the dark cloud of a player strike. Longstanding suspicions about steroids
burst into headlines after startling admissions by two former players. Even
a hard-to-mess-up custom like the All-Star Game devolved into a farce when
the commissioner called a tie after the contest had drifted into extra
innings.
All this brings out another quality in Piazza that is rarely glimpsed -- a
defensiveness on behalf of his fellow players and on behalf of a game that
he says he believes is under siege. For most of the players, labor
negotiations are an abstraction, but for Piazza, the players' struggle to
earn what the free market will bear is personal, resonating with his own
struggle to gain acceptance as a baseball player, to withstand accusations
from scouts, coaches and even teammates that he only made it because he had
a rich father who knew the right people.
''I don't get it,'' he begins in typical Piazza fashion, a tone that
suggests that what he really doesn't get is how other people don't see
things his way. ''It's just amazing to me that people think we're striking
just to make more money. I appreciate the money and the lifestyle, but it's
not the reason why I play. If you take everything away from me I would be
able to put a roof over my head and food on my table. I'd do something. I
wouldn't sit around and moan about guys who are making money.''
He's on a roll: ''And then people will read this and say: 'Oh, how dare you,
your dad was rich. Blah. Blah. Blah.' I'm sick of that. There's a lot of
opportunity out there. Go and make it. I give 100 percent to what I'm doing.
I'm not going to apologize for what I make. That's not what this country is
about. As players, we're fighting to make what the market will bear. We're
centurions for the American way.''
Piazza's conservatism -- he describes himself as a ''a moderate libertarian
who likes to debate'' -- comes from the same place that his talent and drive
come from: his father, Vince. During Piazza's childhood, Vince, a
high-school dropout, was building what was to become a $100 million empire
of auto dealerships. So Piazza grew up in the kind of house that most
ballplayers live in after they make it.
It was Vince's all-consuming passion that his son Mike become a baseball
star. Piazza has four brothers, but Mike demonstrated the most athletic
potential, and so he got all the attention from Vince. ''I really started
focusing on Mike,'' Vince says. ''It got to where we'd be playing ball at
the local park, and Mike would keep on batting, and the other sons would be
in the outfield saying, 'Hey, what about us?' ''
When Piazza was 11, Vince constructed a batting cage in their backyard in
suburban Philadelphia. Piazza came home from school and hit hundreds of
balls every night. ''It became like an addiction to me,'' he said.
Because of baseball, Piazza rarely hung out with friends or went on dates.
He missed his high-school prom to play in a baseball game. Everything he did
was about making himself a better player. Watching the TV miniseries
''Shogun,'' he was taken with the intense discipline of the samurai warriors
and looked for ways to apply it to baseball.
Piazza was a star first baseman in high school, but pro scouts didn't think
he was strong enough. So he enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College and
played a season there. Then Vince placed a call to Tommy Lasorda, his old
Philadelphia buddy, who was also at that point deep into his tenure as
manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The team drafted Piazza in the 62nd
round, the 1,390th player taken in 1988.
The 62nd round is baseball oblivion, a spot for wild shots in the dark and
courtesy picks. You could be drafted in the 62nd round. But Piazza reported
to camp determined to be a major league player. He bulked up and switched to
catcher, a position he'd rarely played before but one where good hitters are
scarce.
Piazza thrived in the Dodger farm system and got called up in 1992. In his
first full season with the Dodgers he hit .318, drove in 112 runs, hit 35
homers and was named National League rookie of the year. Piazza played a
total of seven years for the Dodgers. He became Mr. L.A. He lived by the
beach, jammed with rock bands and used the word ''dude'' a lot. But he never
quite shook the label of ''Tommy's boy,'' and after Lasorda was eased out of
the Dodgers organization, it wasn't long before Piazza found himself
traded -- briefly to the Florida Marlins and then to the Mets.
Piazza's arrival in New York was supposed to mark a new era for the Mets,
one in which they might finally achieve equal footing with the Yankees. With
the help of his hitting, they reached the National League championship
series in 1999 and then the Subway Series a year later. But the team has
been in almost constant flux. Only four players -- Edgardo Alfonzo, Al
Leiter, Rey Ordonez, and John Franco -- remain from his first Mets team, in
1998. Piazza's personal life has been similarly unsettled. He has lived in
three different places since he has been with the Mets -- a five-bedroom
spread in New Jersey, an Upper East Side apartment and now a duplex in
Gramercy. He intends to move again soon.
He has dated a few different women but has never come close to settling
down. His previous girlfriend was a Playboy Playmate whom his agent
introduced him to at a nightclub. His agent also introduced him to his
current girlfriend. ''My agent is kind of like an icebreaker,'' Piazza says.
His unwavering passion, baseball aside, is hard rock. The mere mention of
Led Zeppelin or any metal act invariably sends Piazza into a frenzy of air
guitar. ''I started to listen to AC/DC when I was about 14, and it just hit
me in the face,'' he says. ''Power chords. Three-chord progressions. It was
good driving, aggressive, motivation music. Sabbath. Slayer. AC/DC. I just
totally bought it. I grew to love it. I still love it. It's like Beavis and
Butthead. I'm 34 years old but I love metal like the day when I first heard
it.''
When Piazza wakes up, typically around 11:30 in the morning, there's barely
enough time to eat lunch or run an errand before he must be at the stadium,
three and a half hours before the start of each night game. At 2:45 Piazza's
driver pulls up outside his apartment in a large black Chevrolet Suburban.
They take the Midtown Tunnel toward Shea, making it through just before rush
hour.
It's an unbearably hot weekday afternoon in Flushing as the Mets begin
preparing to play the Philadelphia Phillies. The Mets are way back in the
standings, a dozen games behind the surging Braves. Their play has been
erratic and at times unprofessional: popped-up bunts, missed signs, bats
flying into the stands, apathetic trots to first, dropped balls, missed
cut-off men and base-running blunders that would get a little leaguer
benched.
During the off-season the team's bickering owners, Fred Wilpon and Nelson
Doubleday, retrofitted their lineup with pricey stars. In came Mo Vaughn,
Jeromy Burnitz and Roberto Alomar, gifted players with dubious reputations.
They, along with a slew of lesser acquisitions, have made for a team of
strangers, one that, more than most, could use a clubhouse leader to pull
together.
Piazza gets to his locker around 3:30. He's in sunglasses, shorts and a gray
Quiksilver T-shirt. He takes a seat on a white folding chair and begins to
change into his practice uniform. A few of the guys are already there, but
Piazza keeps to himself, and they do the same. Burnitz is slumped at his
locker leafing through a Newsday. Utility outfielder Tony Tarasco, moody and
dreadlocked, is sprawled on a black leather couch, engrossed in ''Planet of
the Apes'' on a big-screen TV suspended from the ceiling.
Next to Piazza, Alomar is also getting changed, but they don't say anything
to each other, not even hello. Alomar has been a perennial All-Star second
baseman, and the Mets expected him to become a significant part of the team,
another star to pair with Piazza. Alomar lives alone in a Long Island City
condo, and whenever he gets a chance, he flies back to his home in
Cleveland, which is crammed with posters and paintings of himself. Earlier
in the season, outfielder Roger Cedeno tracked down a picture of Alomar's
rookie baseball card and taped it up in his locker. When he saw it, Alomar
flipped, and they nearly came to blows in the dugout before the game.
Piazza gets up and walks back into the training rooms to receive his daily
massage. The players stay at Shea for eight hours every game day but only
three or four of those are spent actually playing baseball. The rest of the
time is spent warming up on the field or hanging out in and around the
clubhouse. The clubhouse is designed to help the players relax and bond -- a
cross between a frat house rumpus room and a Chuck E. Cheese's. But in the
weeks I spent around the Mets, I witnessed little bonding amid the tubs of
Bazooka bubble gum, packets of sunflower seeds, boxes of doughnuts, bags of
chips, bottles of soda, beer, Gatorade, M&M's, Hershey bars, Power Bars, ice
cream, pizza, pasta, ribs and macaroni and cheese.
In the windowless rooms, in which the air-conditioning is always on
full-blast, the flickering blue lights give the players a pasty, somewhat
sickly aspect as they watch TV, play John Madden's video football on
Nintendo 64, read tabloids, get massages and eat -- the narcotizing rituals
that prime them for the game of baseball.
Timo Perez saunters by Piazza on his way to the training room.
''Timo,'' Piazza says as they high five. ''Mike,'' Perez says.
Perez is a merengue nut from a small town in the Dominican Republic, and
after playing four seasons for the Hiroshima Carp, his Japanese is much
better than his English. But even if he and Piazza spoke the same language,
they might have a hard time holding a conversation. There are 25 Mets; 8 are
from outside the United States. Of the Latin players, only Alfonzo, Alomar
and Cedeno know enough English to be comfortable speaking to the media.
There are other divisions, too -- between guys like Al Leiter, Steve
Trachsel and Piazza, who grew up in the suburbs, and Grant Roberts, Burnitz
and David (Stormy) Weathers, country boys through and through. Satoru
Komiyama, a relief pitcher from Japan, seems to speak only to his full-time
translator.
Piazza changes into his practice uniform and heads out to the field to
stretch, a low-impact affair, about what you'd expect just before nap time
at the sanitarium. For all the talk of steroids, strength training and even
basic fitness are alien to many of the players. Vaughn doesn't seem to have
hit the treadmill in years, and Alfonzo is quite possibly the world's
oldest-looking 28-year-old.
On the field, Bobby Valentine, the Mets' manager, watches intently as Piazza
takes batting practice. The manager and his star have at least one powerful
thing in common -- they are both Lasorda guys -- but this doesn't seem to
have made them particularly close. Valentine is a complex character, a
twitchy, troubled Goofus to Joe Torre's impassive Gallant. Valentine prides
himself on his baseball knowledge and likes to make sure nobody ever forgets
that he's managing. In years past, it was speculated that his constant
interventions made it hard for a team leader to emerge and take on the role
that Keith Hernandez played for the great Mets teams of the 1980's.
This season, however, perhaps as a reflection of big-league managers'
increasing difficulty of motivating and directing their players, Valentine
has taken a step back. He has been quieter and more deferential, defending
his slumping players to the media. But no leader has stepped forward. On
that subject, Valentine offers only a rote endorsement of Piazza. ''Mike
carries this team, without a doubt,'' he says. ''Players look up to him.
They can count on him playing well.''
Stretching and batting practice are over. Piazza returns to the clubhouse
and changes into the uniform that he will wear during the game. He casually
chucks his dirty uniform, his pants, shirt and jock into a large hamper
being wheeled around by one of four clubhouse attendants.
As game time approaches, the 20-odd beat reporters begin to migrate upstairs
to the press box, leaving the players in their own private universes of junk
food and mass entertainment. Vaughn and Tarasco put on headphones. Burnitz,
looking sad, takes a seat back on the couch and stares blankly at the
day-old loop of highlights on ESPN.
There is virtually no conversation, no evident camaraderie, no locker that
everyone gathers around, just 25 guys slowly putting on matching shirts and
pants. Piazza, alone with his great spread of gear, is lost in his own
thoughts, listening to the Zeppelin riffs in his head.
tarting some time around the All-Star break, the Mets' season began to turn
around a bit. Though the National League East title had already been
conceded to Atlanta, the offense was perking up and a wild card seemed like
a realistic possibility. The worrisome thing now was the impending strike.
Or at least worrisome to fans. The Mets themselves seem entirely unfazed.
I meet Piazza at Pete's Tavern, a bar near his apartment. Piazza arrives in
surfer shorts, a blue T-shirt, sandals, sunglasses and a gray cap. He sits
down in a booth with one leg up on the bench and orders a pizza burger and a
Diet Coke.
Piazza is proud of his ability and his hard work, and he enjoys the money he
gets for them. He likes to eat well, and he likes his high-end audio
equipment, but he also wants to be taken seriously as a regular guy.
''I enjoy being laid back,'' he says, as if being laid back were an
activity. ''People will ask me, friends of friends, 'Can you go out to
lunch?' 'Can you go out to a mall?' 'How do you know if people like you for
you?' It's like this vision repeating in my mind, people asking me these
things. 'It must be hard for you.' '' He gives me a sharp look. ''What's
hard for me?''
As a baseball player, Piazza has an almost superhuman ability to focus, to
be single-minded, to not get distracted. It is what makes him so good. But
it also makes it hard for him to understand other people -- it bothers him
that everyone else is so easily distracted, that the world is not rising to
the level of rigor and discipline that he and his father set out.
He told the following story as an example of standing by your team and being
a real fan. Two years ago, when the Mets were trying to sign Alex Rodriguez,
the brilliant shortstop, Piazza quipped to a reporter: ''We should send the
guy some flowers. Does 1-800-Flowers deliver on weekends?''
Sure enough, a 1-800-Flowers employee read the remark in the tabloids the
next day and eventually got in touch with Piazza through the team.
Most players would have blown her off, but Piazza called her back. Not only
that, he gave the woman his cellphone number and encouraged her to call,
which, of course, she did. It turned out that both the woman and her mother
were huge Mets fans.
After a tough extra-inning loss to the Phillies at Shea, Piazza got a call
on his cellphone from this woman, whom he had never met. ''She was at the
game, and she left me this message,'' he says. He remembers exactly what she
said, too. ''She was like: 'It was a great game. You guys really battled
hard. So don't be mad. We still love you. You're still our guys.' ''
The entire message is coming back to him. '' 'We still love you,' '' Piazza
says, continuing the woman's message. '' 'Don't be mad. You battled back. I
know it's frustrating, but we're still behind you no matter what. Real fans
love their team no matter what.' It was so innocent and so refreshing.''
This relationship seems to carry vivid symbolism for him. It's not one with
a teammate or his manager, but just one loyal, anonymous fan out there with
whom he has played phone tag.
Larry Stokes
my favorite line by the writer was this quote. "Alfonzo is quite
possibly the world's oldest-looking 28-year-old".
Hey Mandel! Did you read that?!! Go get em tiger!
Chris®
>where the author makes the same sort of
>racist assumptions about Latin ballplayers
>that you do. Even if he does, however, I'm
>pretty certain that you're the only one
>stupid enough to believe that you can
>definitively tell a player's age just by
>looking at him.
I'm the poster-boy for not-looking-his-age. I recently turned 30, but I
cannot buy alchohol without being carded. My wife is 36, yet when we
walk down the street, we look mother & son.
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what
I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me" -
Abraham Simpson
Pierre
players either intentionally lied about their age, or actually had faulty
birth certifs? No, I do not know for sure that Fonzie is 28, but he sure
don't look it!
What really burns my ass was when Sosa was shooting for 61 with McGuire.
All thru Washington Hts there were cars with Sammy sayings soaped on
windshields. The people saying how great it was for the community what Sosa
was doing. I had no prob with that. It's natural young hispanic kids would
identify more with Sosa. But if I said I was rooting for McGwire instead
because he's white and so am I, then I'm the bigot! What's good for the
goose obviously ain't good for the gander.
BTW, when is the next Miss White USA on the White Entertainment Television
(WET?) on? Or is that racist, too.
Or the time where i was reading an article on a black business lady saying
how on such and such a day all blacks should not patronize white stores -
only black owned stores. And the newspaper playing it up like it was a
great thing. I told a co-worker to substitute white for black in all the
quotes and tell me if the article would have made it in the paper then.
"Barry S. Mandel" wrote:
> I must have missed the part of the article where the author makes the
> same sort of racist assumptions about Latin ballplayers that you do.
> Even if he does, however, I'm pretty certain that you're the only one
> stupid enough to believe that you can definitively tell a player's age
> just by looking at him.
>
> -- BSM
>
> [To reply via e-mail, please remove "nospam" from address]
Larry Stokes
doesn't get it. I have absolutely NOTHING against latin ball players.
Yet, when I mention a story about a friend of mine who works in the NY
media and was told by two ex mets that Alfonzo and his brother were not
being honest about their age, I was deemed a raciest and a liar by
Mandel. Now a reporter from The New York Times (not the Dailey News or
The New York Post) but from one of the most well respected newspaper IN
THE WORLD, insinuates what I've been saying all along, he too is
labelled a raciest by Mandel.
Hey Mandel, I'm not a raciest and neither is that reporter from the
Times. But you my friend.......are a clueless imbecile!
Larry Stokes
David Marc Nieporent
stok...@webtv.net (Larry Stokes) wrote:
How about a moron who can't spell the word "racist?" Oh, that would be you.
---------------------------------------------
David M. Nieporent niep...@alumni.princeton.edu
Pierre
"Barry S. Mandel" wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Aug 2002 17:55:03 GMT, Pierre <vze2...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >cripes, what racism? Is it racist to point out the fact that a lot of latin
> >players either intentionally lied about their age, or actually had faulty
> >birth certifs?
>
> No, but I do believe that it's racist to _assume_ that a guy is lying
> about his age just because he happens to be Hispanic. StoKKKes
> didn't just suggest a possibility; he claimed it as fact (and
> predictably wussed out when asked to provide proof).
Hey moron, its a FACT that many hispanic players are not their stated age.
Notice I didnt say ALL or MOST. Just as it's a fact that the jails are fillled
with many blacks. If you consider it racist to point out facts, then continue to
stick your head in the sand. You're the type who would frisk a granny at the
airport and not a young Arab man because its not PC.
> >No, I do not know for sure that Fonzie is 28, but he sure don't look it!
>
> Who cares? There's a big difference between saying someone doesn't
> look 28 and saying that someone _isn't_ 28
>
> >What really burns my ass was when Sosa was shooting for 61 with McGuire.
> >All thru Washington Hts there were cars with Sammy sayings soaped on
> >windshields. The people saying how great it was for the community what Sosa
> >was doing. I had no prob with that. It's natural young hispanic kids would
> >identify more with Sosa. But if I said I was rooting for McGwire instead
>
> Instead? I wasn't aware that you had to choose one over the
> other. I don't recall hearing a lot of anti-McGwire sentiment from
> the Hispanic community.
True - the silence was deafening. Sammy this, Sammy that. Why did Rudy hold a
parade for Sosa? Since when does the guy who finishes 2nd in HR's playing in
Chicago get a parade in NY? Gee, could it be to appease the hispanic community?
>
> >because he's white and so am I, then I'm the bigot!
>
> If someone were to tell me that he was rooting for McGwire over Sosa
> just because he wanted the record to be held by a white player, then
> yes, I'd call that person a bigot. That was the same kind of
> thinking that had Hank Aaron fending off death threats.
Another crybaby, "I'm the victim".
>
> >What's good for the goose obviously ain't good for the gander.
>
> Not when the goose was systematically excluded from the game
> for 60 years, no.
Then why didnt the Negro Leagues overtake MLB? Could it be because MLB was run
more professional? It's common knowledge, and you just proved it, that the Negro
Leagues were an inferior brand of baseball. Plain and simple. If not, why didn't
the white MLB players bitch that they couldn't get into the Negro Leagues, but
the black players wanted in MLB?
>
> >BTW, when is the next Miss White USA on the White Entertainment Television
> >(WET?) on? Or is that racist, too.
>
> No, just not necessary. We've had White Entertainment Television
> in this country for more than 50 years -- just tune into any of the
> major networks.
Oh yea I forgot. Blame whitey. Why didn't a group of blacks start their own
black station then? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that for the
most part, blacks were uneducated then could it? And dont give me the schools in
black neighborhoods are inferior nonsense. It's not the building that makes them
bad schools. Why are test scores for white kids dramatically superior to black
kids? Oh yea, it's the white man's fault.
> You started it, a-hole. But I'm a racist for stating facts.
George Z. Bush
>
> I'm the poster-boy for not-looking-his-age. I recently turned 30, but
> I cannot buy alchohol without being carded. My wife is 36, yet when we
> walk down the street, we look mother & son.
You keep talking like that in public, and you won't ever be getting any
after you get home. [bseg]
George Z.
dj
"George Z. Bush" wrote:
What I found the most telling about the article is the total lack of
chemistry and camradarie on the team. They are a bunch of strangers.
That's NOT a winning team.
I hope they've learned. I hope they just let these contracts run their
coarse (that means NO "re-tooling" for next season by taking on even MORE
bad contracts) and start building from inside. There are 2 open spots in
the rotation for next season. Bring up the AAA kids, stick them in there
and let them fly. That's what they did in 1984. IIRC the only total bust
on that staff was Mike Torrez, the only vet in the bunch. Granted, it
helped that the kids they brought up were named "Darling", "Gooden",
"Terrell" & "Fernandez".
dj
Joseph Richardson
"dj" <djlake...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3D57C82D...@hotmail.com...
>
>
> "George Z. Bush" wrote:
>
> > ChrisŽ wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm the poster-boy for not-looking-his-age. I recently turned 30, but
> > > I cannot buy alchohol without being carded. My wife is 36, yet when we
> > > walk down the street, we look mother & son.
> >
> > You keep talking like that in public, and you won't ever be getting any
> > after you get home. [bseg]
> >
> > George Z.
>
> What I found the most telling about the article is the total lack of
> chemistry and camradarie on the team. They are a bunch of strangers.
> That's NOT a winning team.
I thought the most telling thing was that Piazza wants to play for a
Patton-like leader. Read between the lines and see what he's saying about
the current leadership.
George Z. Bush
I was really talking about Chris' sex life with my tongue in my cheek,
but it is nice to know that someone around here cares more about
baseball than about sex!
To get back to your comment, what happened to the Mets in 1984 happened
because the guys you mentioned all were fluent in English and were able
to fit into the team without needing a translator. A good part of the
current bunch brought up from AAA don't speak a word of English and how
do you create esprit de corps and an understanding of what to expect
from your teammates if you can't communicate with them? It's a real
problem.
Seriously, maybe part of spring training ought to include intensive
classes in the use of spoken English for those who need it. Maybe they
should have something like that right now, and that Timo and others like
him spend a lot of time learning to speak and understand the language
instead of playing computer games when they're not on the diamond.
George Z.
dj
"George Z. Bush" wrote:
Well, you know, Chris IS a very atractive man. Not that there's anything
wrong with that.
I lived in Port St Lucie for 5 years in the 90s...and they have a program
teaching the young kids from Latin America english. It's a shame the few
kids from A ball that DO make it are doing it for other teams.
Chris®
>hispanic players are not their stated age.
Bullshit. They are a minority, and are almost universally Dominican or
Mexican, whose governments don't require birth certificates to obtain
passports, or they're Cuban, where all ballplayers are considered
refugees, and therefore have no officially recognized documentation.
Fonzie is Venezuelan. A Venezuelan passport is as legitimate as an
American one. The only reason so many ballplayers are being caught lying
about their age is that INS here in the US isn't accepting visa
applications without a verifiable birth certificate post 9/11. Before,
the birthdate on the player's passport was sufficient to obtain a visa
into the U.S. And in many cases, these birthdates could easily be made
up.
You are a racist pig for lumping all Latin American ballplayers under
the same roof. Venezuelans do not like to be considered the same as
Mexicans, or Argentinians, or Panamanians, just as the Dutch wouldn't
want to be considered the same as the Portuguese, Swiss or Czechs. All
have distinct cultures, traditions, and national allegiences.
Feel free to print hundreds of copies of this post to pass out at your
next Klan meeting. If nothing else, the paper will make excellent
kindling for your cross.
Bruce W. Goldstein
>
> "George Z. Bush" wrote:
>
> > ChrisŽ wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm the poster-boy for not-looking-his-age. I recently turned 30, but
> > > I cannot buy alchohol without being carded. My wife is 36, yet when we
> > > walk down the street, we look mother & son.
> >
> > You keep talking like that in public, and you won't ever be getting any
> > after you get home. [bseg]
> >
> > George Z.
>
> What I found the most telling about the article is the total lack of
> chemistry and camradarie on the team. They are a bunch of strangers.
> That's NOT a winning team.
And this is the same organization that wouldn't sign A-Rod, because they
didn't want a 24 & 1 team. So now they've got 25, 1's.
BWG
BD
Good article, thanks. Sounds like the atmosphere in the Mets
clubhouse is very different than it is in the Braves clubhouse....
>
>
WarpedFrets
next Klan meeting. If nothing else, the paper will make excellent
kindling for your cross"
Did you make this up or borrow it from somewhere? That's REAL Wit! I laughed my
ass off, but I guess maybe it wasn't meant to be funny.
KCharmin
>the same roof. Venezuelans do not like to be considered the same as
>Mexicans, or Argentinians, or Panamanians,
I wouldn't call him racist...just geographically challenged. The fact is they
speak Spanish in a country where English is the main language. Most of their
teammates/manager/coaches/front office peeps speak English.
They should attempt to learn English like an entire generation of immigrants
had to do in order to assimilate into the US and become successful. If they
spoke English they actually might have a meaningful baseball conversation (or
any type of conversation for that matter) with American players, fostering a
spirit of camaraderie that is obviously lacking on The Mets.
Chris®
>geographically challenged. The fact is
>they speak Spanish in a country where
>English is the main language. Most of
>their teammates/manager/coaches/front
>office peeps speak English.
Many Latin ballplayers on other teams are English-challenged. The
Mariner's 2 best players (Ichiro and Suzuki) speak only Japanese. I fail
to see why this problem affects the Mets only.
Chemistry is a product of winning, not the catalyst. The 2000 Mets were
also loaded with Spanish-only speaking players on their roster, yet they
won a pennant. If Sheffield was hitting like Burnitz and Millwood was
pitching like D'Amico, the Braves would also be at or under .500.