Ha!

Bailout Math

or, Ma and Pa Kettle on Wall Street

Where are the heroes?

Just as I'd come to grips with Brett Favre's retirement, Mike Piazza calls it quits. They owe me nothing, of course, but, man, these guys were my heroes. Who can possibly replace them?

Mike Piazza is retiring from baseball following a 16-season career in which he became one of the top-hitting catchers in history.

"After discussing my options with my wife, family and agent, I felt it was time to start a new chapter in my life," he said in a statement released Tuesday by his agent, Dan Lozano. "It has been an amazing journey ... So today, I walk away with no regrets.

"I knew this day was coming and over the last two years. I started to make my peace with it. I gave it my all and left everything on the field."

The 39-year-old Piazza batted .275 with eight homers and 44 RBIs as a designated hitter for Oakland last season, became a free agent and did not re-sign. He was not available to discuss his decision, according to Josh Goldberg, a spokesman for Lozano.

Taken by the Los Angeles Dodgers on the 62nd round of the 1988 amateur draft, Piazza became a 12-time All-Star, making the NL team 10 consecutive times starting in 1993.

"He was one of those hitters who could change the game with one swing. He was certainly the greatest-hitting catcher of our time, and arguably of all time," said Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine, Piazza's former teammate on the New York Mets.

Piazza finished with a .308 career average, 427 home runs and 1,335 RBIs for the Dodgers (1992-98), Florida (1998), Mets (1998-05), San Diego (2006) and Oakland (2007).

"It's the end of a Hall of Fame career," Mets manager Willie Randolph said. "It was a privilege to manage him for the short time that I did."

Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia was a teammate of Piazza's on the 1992 Los Angeles Dodgers and remembered back to Piazza's first season in the majors and what he accomplished.

"To put yourself in the same ballpark with what a guy like Roy Campanella did is saying something and Mike is definitely up there with what Roy did," Scioscia said.

Piazza's 396 homers are easily the most as a catcher, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Carlton Fisk is second with 351, followed by Johnny Bench (327) and Yogi Berra (306).

"If I'm half the hitter he was, I'll have a pretty successful career," said Atlanta's Brian McCann, one of the top-hitting catchers currently in the majors. "He did a lot of great things for the catching position."

Piazza never had a great throwing arm but was praised by pitchers for his game-calling.

"You'd have to really go back and see Mike from the early days of trying to catch to where he ended up, the hard work he put in, the dedication he had to get good enough on the defensive end to where he could get his at-bats," Scioscia said. "He made himself into a guy who could go out there and catch and do the job he needed behind the plate."

Piazza thanked his family, teams and managers, some of his teammates -- and even owners, general managers, minor league staffs and reporters.

"Within the eight years I spent in New York, I was able to take a different look at the game of baseball," Piazza said. "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."

He did not bring up two of the more memorable moments in his career: When the Yankees' Roger Clemens beaned him on July 8, 2000, and when Clemens threw the broken barrel of Piazza's bat in his direction in Game 2 of the World Series that October. Clemens denied intent both times.

"Last but certainly not least, I can't say goodbye without thanking the fans," Piazza said. "I can't recall a time in my career where I didn't feel embraced by all of you. Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland and Miami -- whether it was at home or on the road, you were all so supportive over the years.

"But I have to say that my time with the Mets wouldn't have been the same without the greatest fans in the world. One of the hardest moments of my career, was walking off the field at Shea Stadium and saying goodbye. My relationship with you made my time in New York the happiest of my career and for that, I will always be grateful."

Favre watch: this little piggy ran all the way home

Courtesy Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Bob Wolfley

Among the interviews Brett Favre did in the last few days was one with Steve Mariucci of the NFL Network.

That interview aired before the start of the NFL draft on Saturday.

Mariucci was Favre's position coach in Green Bay from 1992 to '95.

The interview touched on Favre's decision to retire, what he does at his Hattiesburg home and his relationship with his dad.

Mariucci asked what Favre plans to do in the immediate future as well as five years from now.

"No plans, really," Favre said. "I've had people say, 'You have to have a plan.' I have kind of gone through life without a plan, really."

According to an Associated Press report, when Favre and his wife Deanna were in New York last week they saw a Broadway play, "Jersey Boys," and, according to Matt Hasselbeck, Favre had his first facial and a pedicure.

Hasselbeck also was in New York and spent time with his former teammate.

"He'll probably kill me for this," said the Seattle quarterback, referring to sharing that information with the press. "It was something he and his wife Deanna did together," Hasselbeck said. "I feel sorry for the woman who did the pedicure."

flying

"You can't get there from here," was literally true last week, at least if one were relying on silver jets stamped with red and blues As. Given that is nearly the only choice from our nearly monopolized airport, I sighed with retroactive relief that my need to fly came a little sooner, that I wasn't stranded or abandoned and actually enjoyed my time in the air. A first class surprise in the back of the plane.

On the way East I scored an aisle to myself and an old fashioned pilot who told us which earthen crisscrosses were which cities as viewed from thirty thousand feet. Two hours of nothing; a beautiful break. I smiled as the Indian couple across the aisle lit up with excitement upon our descent, but you know I only saw them because I was comparing that window to mine. A skyline, a statue, even the sporting highlights of Queens--Flushing Meadows, the old and new homes of the baseball pond scum--and the globe from the 1964 World's Fair. A tourist before I even stepped off of the plane.

The journey west offered neither view nor solitude, but in the end it was my favorite, maybe of any trip on any aircraft. My neighbor was going to sleep or write some music, and I was going to watch some trashy Showtime on the pretty iPod, but since we never stopped talking, none of that happened. I don't recall how we started.

I do admit that somewhere in there the classic St. Louis question, “Where did you go to high school?” did get asked. That verbal tic, that habit, that regional compulsion is supposed to be an easy way to peg who someone is, what they’re about. And to me it does seem natural, though obviously it’s imperfect and backwards, meaningless except when it’s not. I am not, after all, a Wood River girl, except that, somewhere in there, I am. It informs how I think of things, what I appreciate, what I know is out there. Despite the fact that I do not now, have not ever, and will not in the future perm my hair, drink Busch beer, or go to the tractor pull. I know the flaws in the system.

But what other possible follow-up is there to a mention of graduating both from an exclusive college and in the bottom half of his high school class? When he sheepishly answered with an expensive acronym, he expected me to know it, and I did. "That explains it," I said, both a conclusion and a tease. When he insisted I give up my high school alma mater in exchange, I was slow to answer because I knew he wouldn't know it, and he didn't, specifically, though he congratulated me for having all my teeth. The other side of the river, after all, remains just a set of assumptions for the privileged and otherwise well-traveled in my part of the world. And yet somehow we had ended up on the same wavelength and the disparity in where we came from and are didn't seem to matter much at all. Interesting.

Or maybe not so interesting, in the scheme of things, that a 24 year-old kid and someone nearly old enough to have been his teen mother had a conversation both compelling and fun from take-off to landing. The Venn diagram of politics and social attitudes we created would have nothing larger to say than a hot shot software architect and a suburban teacher had more in common than the demographers would presume. Smart people become liberal and interested in the world. Some boys are ahead of the curve. Underestimating my age by eight years is charming. Save all the details I'll randomly remember, that's probably the sum of it, though by any calculation a far a better answer than a silent flip through the Sky Mall and a half-hearted gaze at some TV on a tiny little screen.

coincidence

Today a teacher dragged into school, barely remembering her role or function. Appearing at the appointed hour seemed accomplishment enough, given the jet lag and the time change. But, she'd been gone for more than a week and a new semester was starting; no time for easing in or for sleeping. And there was a fact that she'd persuaded her director to send her across the ocean to be rejuvenated and recharged. Slacking upon return would be untoward, especially now that she's a supervisor. Or so Tatiana from Latvia explained to me, during the one evening of our lives that we'd share.

We met in the Canal St. subway station, trying to determine why the street-level sign promised R and W trains while the platform only indicated a 6. Ah! there's the passageway! Ah! there are friendly but erroneous New Yorkers who promised that we couldn't get there from here! So from there we shared a mission, a walk back through Little Italy to another station with a W train which stopped right back where we were (sometimes tourists with maps know more than the locals), a circle on the Staten Island Ferry. And then more walking, her introduction to the Village, dinner, and her first margarita in six years.

Turns out that one of things that Tatiana and I have in common is that we both spent a year living in Wisconsin. Tatiana, the EFL teacher from Riga, Latvia, whom I met on the Chinatown/Canal Street subway platform in New York City, once lived for a year in Wausau, Wisconsin. Sometimes I love the world. And good conversation and serendipitous meetings and knowing that thousands of miles from here the thoughts and memories of an educator in a former Soviet republic have been the tiniest bit informed by running into Allison, the teacher from near St. Louis, not San Antonio, who just happened to be standing there.

Live from New York

Technically, I had been to New York before. I had crossed the George Washington Bridge, driven through the Lincoln Tunnel, skirted the edges of Harlem with three other midwesterners in a Vega. No, it was not some transportation-themed wild goose chase, though that would have made just as much sense: we were on our way to Connecticut. It's not a very good story, and, well, now it just doesn't matter. Because now I am here. And just as the t-shirt says, I love it.