Mets' Reed an unlikely All-Star

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Posted: Tuesday July 07, 1998 08:26 PM

Reed's 2.72 ERA ranks sixth in the National League (David Seelig/Allsport)

DENVER (CNN/SI) – Each player in the All-Star Game wears a team logo, but Rick Reed wears a label of a different sort. He’s the only replacement player from the 1995 players strike to make it to an All-Star Game.

"You know, it's always gonna be my title, but I can live with that,” says the New York Mets’ ace, who owns a 9-5 record and 2.72 earned run average at midseason. “It's an unfortunate thing we had to go through, but we can't jump in a time machine and go back and change things."

Reed became a strikebreaker for one simple reason: His family needed the money. His mother was a diabetic and had no health insurance, so he made a tough decision -- to cross the picket line into what he knew would be hostile territory.

"I think that he has stepped up in a very big way amongst his peers and paid the proper price of sitting in the back of the bus, if you will, for as long as he had to until he got his opportunity,” says Mets manager Bobby Valentine. “And now he's fine."

Reed got his first taste of the big leagues in 1988 but did little to distinguish himself, piecing together a 9-15 record in stints with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals, Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds.

But the right-hander did make an impression with Valentine and pitching coach Bob Apodaca in 1996 when all three spent the year with the Mets’ Class AAA club in Norfolk, Virginia, even though few players are less assuming.

"Unless the PA announcer makes sure that you hear it, he's just going to be camouflaged and he's just going to go out there very, uh -- there's no personality,” Apodaca says. “He just goes about his job and it'll be a very quick inning."

When Valentine and Apodaca were promoted to the Mets for the '97 season, they took Reed with them. He responded with a 13-9 record and 2.89 ERA in 208 1-3 innings.

Now he’s on the N.L. All-Star team, a development not without irony. Much of the revenue generated by the All-Star Game goes to the players’ pension fund, which Reed is ineligible for because he’s not a member of the union.

Nevertheless, after years of living with the “replacement player” label, Rick Reed finally has a new tag: major league All-Star. It’s a label that fits him very nicely.

"You know, you sit and watch all those All-Star games on TV as a kid, and say, ‘Wouldn't it be great to be involved?’ And all of a sudden here I am."

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