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Mets stare down Johnson
Posted: Wednesday October 06, 1999 10:44 AM
By Jeff Pearlman, Sports
Illustrated
PHOENIX -- Mike Piazza, who can occasionally be a scowling figure, was as
cheerful as a worm at an apple orchard. It was Tuesday night, an hour or so
before Game 1 of Diamondbacks-Mets. Minutes earlier, taking his sixth swing of
BP, Piazza pelted a ball to dead center. A fan, sitting on a folding chair,
tried to make the catch. Piazza saw what everyone else around home plate saw: a
falling chair. A collapsed man. A ball innocently skipping away. Piazza turned
to Mickey Brantley, the New York hitting coach. "You see
that?"
Brantley
nodded.
"Ya know," drawled Piazza, "baseball wants to be more
interactive,
right?"
When Bobby Valentine sat under the bright lights of the Bank One Ballpark
interview room Tuesday, the Mets skipper was asked whether Arizona starter
Randy Johnson was -- simply -- intimidating. "He certainly is
different," Valentine said, arms crossed. "But I don't think our guys
are intimidated by
anything."
The words came easily. Almost too easily, as if Bobby V had purchased them from
some Internet speechwriter. This was, after all, the scowling 6'10" tower
of terror; a man who struck out 364 batters this season; a man who had not
allowed a lefthanded homer in -- gulp -- two years. "His slider, if he's
getting it over, is devastating," Valentine added. "His fastball is
real, real
good."
Praise over, Bobby V and the suddenly dangerous Metropolitans went out and
practiced the art of not being intimidated. They did it very well. From the
second at-bat of the game, when New York second baseman Edgardo Alfonzo
deposited an 0-2 heater 422 feet into the deep purple leftfield, Johnson was
turned from Darth Vader (menacing, mysterious, dark) to Darth Maul
(Grade-D nothing). The Mets hit him lefthanded. The Mets hit him righthanded.
The Mets did not seem to care that this was Randy Johnson, Cy Young-in-waiting,
no more than they cared about the $4-an-hour buffoon paid by the D-Backs to
prance down the first base line and catch rings with his bat hat. (You had to
see it. Actually, be glad you didn't.) Johnson may have struck out 12, but he
also allowed seven runs and, if there is a Game 5, a reminder to the Mets that
the Big Unit is
human.
"You can be scared the first time you ever face Johnson," Mets
outfielder Benny Agbayani said after the game. "I mean, if you get
hit in the head by him, you're all dead. But, whatever. After the first at bat,
he's no big
deal."
This is what Valentine's critics love to hear -- cocky words from a cocky team.
But if the Mets and Valentine were, at some point, a tad too boastful, all that
stopped with the end-of-the-season collapse that nearly resulted in doom.
Nowadays, the team is simply confident. As Piazza said repeatedly after the
game, facing Johnson was no biggie because, well, "who would've thought
we'd be here anyway? It's all just fun. It's
baseball."
Big Unit? Big
whoop.
Sports Illustrated staff writer Jeff Pearlman is covering the Division Series
for the
magazine.
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