Well-said, blog brother. (If you just got here and want to know what I'm going on about, skip down a bit.)
I'll go a step further and say that while I'll always have an extra-large spot in my heart reserved for Mike Piazza, this team is better off with Paul Lo Duca. And it's not just a factor of timing, of Piazza's inevitable decline allowing someone else to take the stage. It's more than that.
Don't get me wrong: As you noted, Mike Piazza lifted this franchise out of the doldrums essentially by his lonesome and became a New York icon. He'll be back soon and the fans better be on their feet. (And to think he ended his first year receiving A-Rod-level boos. The shame!) But while obviously a smart, thoughtful guy, Piazza never seemed comfortable in the spotlight. There was a very revealing quote about him in one of those periodic devastating stories about the Mets, one that appeared in the New York Times Magazine during the wretched Alomar years.
Piazza said his favorite movie was “Patton,” and noted that he'd love to work for a guy like that. Work for a guy like that, not be a guy like that. He didn't want to be a leader, he wanted to be led.
But while there may be born leaders, more often that not leadership is something that's thrust upon people — if you want to stick with your military history, look at Grant, a man transformed by leadership's call from a drunken shopkeeper to the savior of the Republic. It was a call Piazza never chose to hear — he wanted to be an ensemble guy, letting leadership settle on players on the decline and players who didn't deserve the mantle and pitchers with the front office's ear and even relievers.
Lo Duca isn't going to the Hall of Fame. He's not the kind of player that makes you put off the trip to the men's room if he's due up this inning. But in one important respect, he's far more than Piazza was: He leads, and he's not the least bit shy about doing it. There's the clubhouse leadership so ably captured by Tom Verducci in SI last week, and there's the on-field variety, too. Even before the Mets starting reeling off victories and collecting clutch hits and running wild and playing pinch-me baseball, there was something different about them, something new. And it didn't take long to find the source: When the game was in the balance, there was Lo Duca coming out to the mound to bark at a pitcher losing focus, or making sure the infielders knew their assignments. The crackle and sizzle of this team begins behind the plate, with Captain Red Ass. And it's an energy, an edge, that I never saw with Piazza.
I love Mike Piazza. He defined an era with this team and carried us up from nothing to some of the happiest years of my life as a baseball fan. And I want to see his 31 up on the wall with 14, 37, 41 and 42. But this is a better team with Lo Duca. It's not so quantifiable through OPS or VORP or RCAA, but you can absolutely see it in the most important stat of all: W-L. There's a reason Lo Duca is still beloved in Los Angeles and Florida, a reason his old manager chose to wear his number. This year, it's been our great good fortune to appreciate why [1].