SEE YOU IN COOPERSTOWN AUGUST 2013

The news that Mike Piazza is retiring comes 1 day of short of the 10 year anniversary of the trade that brought Mike Piazza to Shea. I will have nothing but good memories of Mike Piazza as a met, and he will go down as one of the best players we ever had.

Not only did he hit, and drive in runs, and make the Mets lineup stronger, he came to this town when the Yankees were the KINGS and made us matter again.

Piazza hit 40 home runs in a season with a whole franchise on his back. He would go on Howard Stern, he was on page 6, and of course he was on the back pages and the talk of sports radio.

"Within the eight years I spent in New York, I was able to take a different look at the game of baseball," he said in a statement yesterday. "I wasn't just a young kid that was wet behind the ears anymore. I was learning from other veteran guys like Johnny Franco, who taught me how to deal with the pressures of playing in New York, and Al Leiter who knew what it took to win a world championship."

Unfortunately the Mets never did win a world championship with Piazza, mostly because in the 2000 World Series they faced a baseball dynasty and Armando Benitez couldn’t strike out Paul O’Neil in game 1.

There was all the Piazza-Clemens stuff, and while I wish Piazza would have gone after Clemens and shoved that bat up his steroid inflamed ass, Mike had to much class to stoop to the level of the time and time again proven classless Roger Clemens.

Unless somebody digs up a boatload of dirt on Piazza in the next 5 years, guess which one of the two is going directly to the Hall of Fame and which one is going to spend all his time in the courts and disappearing ala Mark McGwire.

"He's a first-ballot Hall of Famer and certainly the best hitting catcher of our era and arguably the best hitting catcher of all time," Tom Glavine said.

David Wright said, "He was The Man in New York. He helped mold me into the baseball player I want to be and helped mold me into being a leader on the team."

Piazza was just what Mets fans needed, and he produced one of the epic New York moments with that home run against the Braves in the first game in New York after Sept 11.

The Mets didn’t always handle Piazza like the superstar he was, they screwed up the move to first base, they really didn't defend him when Clemens threw at him and they never surrounded him with the type of talent to put them over the top.

"Mike electrified New York City," Fred Wilpon said in a statement. "We wish Mike, his wife, Alicia, and daughter Nicoletta all health and happiness as he begins a new chapter in his life."

We wish there was somebody who got the whole experience here enough to say, as Piazza once did, "New York without Johnny Franco is like a pastrami sandwich without rye."

Well Wally Matthews put it even better, when he said the Mets without Piazza were like a pastrami sandwich without the pastrami.

HIGHLIGHTS OF PIAZZA'S FIRST BALLOT HALL OF FAME CAREER


1993: Wins NL Rookie of the Year award as member of Dodgers.

1997: Comes in second in MVP voting.
1999: Hits in 24 straight games, tying Mets' franchise record.

Oct. 19, 1999: Hits home run to tie score at 7 in losing effort against Braves in Game 6 of NLCS.

2000: Has 15-game RBI streak, second-longest in MLB history.

Sept. 21, 2001: Hits two-run home run against Braves in first New York sporting event since 9/11.
May 4, 2004: Sets record for most home runs by a catcher.

April 26, 2006: Hits 400th career home run, while with Padres.