Many moons ago--the mid 1970s to be specific--I spent one month of the summer in Rockaway Park, New York with my brother and grandparents.  Rockaway is a peninsula--basically a glorified sand bar--that is connected to the western edge of Long Island but is technically part of the borough of  Queens.  My grandparents had been renting a place in various parts of Rockaway for the summer as far back as World War II and beginning in 1975 my mother thought that my brother and I would benefit by spending four weeks of the hottest part of the year at "the beach" rather than in suburban Chicago.  This continued for a period of three years.  I had just turned 11 when we flew to New York in '75 and was no more than a week past my 13th birthday when we made the same journey in 1977.

These trips were okay with me, particularly the first couple of times we took them, but by the third time we were starting to run into problems.  My brother was 15 in 1977 and this whole thing was getting a bit old to him by then.  Besides, the weather was no picnic in New York in August of 1977.  One thing about living at the beach--when the weather was sunny, it was fine.  Sunny weather meant, as my grandfather put it, a "beach day."  Cloudy weather meant you didn't go to the beach.  There wasn't much else to do all day if you didn't go to the beach and on something like 18 of the 28 days we were in New York that year it was overcast.  That meant, essentially, hanging around the house doing not much of anything, and we sure did a lot of nothing during that four week stretch.

On the other hand, my grandfather was an insatiable--if incredibly cynical--sports fan.  We spent a lot of time at Shea Stadium (and a bit at Yankee Stadium, after the refurbished park reopened in 1976; Yankee Stadium was much, much farther from Rockaway than Shea, however) during the months we were in New York.  On average, I'd guess we attended six or seven games each year during the month we spent in Gotham and if we weren't at a game, we were watching one on TV or listening to one on the radio.

Because of the relatively poor weather in August of 1977 there was an even greater premium on baseball than ever.  I'd guess we attended 10-odd games at Shea and Yankee Stadiums that month, probably seven at Shea and three at Yankee.  And it was in the month of August, 1977, that I first recognized, in a meaningful way, a ballplayer by the name of Lee Louis Mazzilli.

Some baseball background is necessary. 

The Mets of 1975-76 were quintessential clubs for the franchise:  poor offense and long on pitching, particularly starting pitching, as was characteristic of the pitching dominance always in vogue at Shea Stadium.  To this day Shea massively favors pitchers.  The Mets made the most of Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Jon Matlack while struggling to score runs.  The teams were slightly above the .500 mark and always competitive in a relatively balanced National League East.

But in 1977, the roof finally caved in.  The club got off to a horrible start and traded Tom Seaver roughly 1/3 of the way into the season, alienating a legion of fans.  Injuries, bad luck and subpar performances decimated the starting rotation.  The bullpen, never a strong suit, didn't pitch any better than usual and the offense went completely into the tank.  In a year marked by resurgent offenses, accompanying the two-team expansion that season, the Mets scored a pitiful 587 runs.  Steve Henderson, who was acquired in the Seaver deal from Cincinnati, led the team in RBIs with 65, despite playing only 99 games with the Mets.

1977 represented the first year of a dreadful stretch for the Mets, one in which they would finish below .500 for seven consecutive years and only avoid losing 90 games in 1981 (when they finished 41-62 in the strike-shortened season).  It also represented the first year that Lee Mazzilli was an everyday starting player.

Mazzilli made his major league debut on September 7, 1976 at the age of 21 and appeared in 24 games that year, looking mostly overmatched at the plate but showing enough of an eye to draw 14 walks in fewer than 100 plate appearances.  Center field had been something of a revolving door for the Mets in '76; Bruce Boisclair had played there more than anyone else and acquitted himself adequately, but the Mets wanted to make room for Maz.

Mazzilli was a switch hitter, a fast runner, had some pop, was regarded as an excellent defensive outfielder...and he was a home town guy, a Brooklyn native, and the star-starved Mets were inclined to market him as a sex symbol as well.  After years of relative sloth, the rival Yankees had shown that they'd come all the way back from the years of sluggishness under the ownership of CBS, riding the wave all the way to the World Series in 1976.  The Mets had been the city's darlings during the Yankees' blackout years, but new Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was demonstrating the will to buy every player under the sun under the terms of baseball's brand new free agency.  The Mets couldn't have picked a worse time to fall on their faces on the field and in the PR arena; the trade of Seaver was devastating in this regard and the Mets found themselves desperately in need of a marquee name.  They decided that Mazzilli--the young, dashing, local guy was that man and they sold him as a superstar.

Which he wasn't.

Mazzilli was, actually, a fine ballplayer during most of his years with his Mets.  After a generally mediocre rookie season in 1977 at age 22, he showed himself to be a minor star.  Despite the horrible hitter's park he played in, Mazilli hit for a solid average, decent power and drew lots of walks from 1978-80.  He also flashed his speed (75 stolen bases in 102 attempts in 1979-80) and was a consistently strong outfielder, with a dash of pizazz.

There was a problem with this, however, and it was twofold.  First, while Mazzilli was a good ballplayer, and probably the best player on the team during most of his tenure, he wasn't a superstar.  He was essentially being asked to live up to a level of performance that he just wasn't capable of delivering.  The Mets' PR department, in  not so subtle a manner, compared Mazzilli to previous New York center fielders Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider.  Maz played to a .692 OWP in 1979 and a .641 level in 1980.  This is a good, solid level of performance, but it's not one to be equated with superstardom.  The second, and probably more salient, problem was that the Mets, as a whole during this period, were awful.  Mazzilli had no supporting cast to speak of.

Still, Maz was a pretty entertaining ballplayer.  In the field, he frequently used a basket catch, in the true Willie Mays mold.  I recall one game that we watched on the tube in August of 1977 when the Mets were playing the Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium.  Someone on the Bucs blasted a ball to straight away center field.  Mazzilli broke straight back turned, and was in the process of making a basket catch on the warning track when he slammed into the wall with his head hitting first.  Somehow he held onto the ball, but he was pretty woozy.  I remember him later, in the same inning, trying to run in to catch a shallow fly and weaving all over the place.  The Mets just left him out there even though he might have suffered a mild concussion.

At the plate, Maz proved a tough out.  He had an excellent batting eye and walked more than he struck out during his career.  He had a kind of cocky-looking little bat twirl as he waited for the pitcher to deliver the ball, not quite the exaggerated spin of Willie Stargell, but kind of a mini-version of Pops' affectation.  He also seemed to have the uncanny knack of coming up with a big hit.  I recall him clearing the bases with a line shot double into the right field corner in the ninth inning of a game at Shea against the Phillies, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat for the Mets.

The really odd thing about Mazilli was that his best years were before he hit his prime age.  The Mets moved him to first base in 1980, for reasons I've never really understood.  He was moved back to left field in 1980, when the Mets called up Mookie Wilson to play center and reaquired Dave Kingman to play first base, but Mazzilli slumped badly that year, at the age of 26, and was dealt to Texas for Ron Darling and Walt Terrell shortly before the start of the 1982 season.  He suffered shoulder and wrist injuries with the Rangers and spent six-odd weeks on the disabled list that year and, remarkably, was never a regular player again despite being only 27 years of age.  He kicked around for seven more seasons as a spare part and pinch hitter, and had a big role in the Mets' 1986 postseason run after the club picked him up following his release by Pittsburgh that season with five pinch hits against the Astros in the NLCS and huge pinch singles in the game-winning rallies of both Game 6 and 7 of the World Series against Boston.

Still, it had to be bittersweet.  Back in 1977, he seemed to have the world at his feet, as a 22-year-old starting centerfielder for his hometown team.  Five years later he was just another ballplayer, trying to keep a job.

I have to wonder, however, if all that time spent fighting for a roster spot and sitting on the pine observing won't serve Maz well as he begins his new career as a big league manager.  Mazzilli had the opportunity to experience professional baseball from a wide variety of positions when he was still playing, from hyped star to the 24th or 25th man on a big league roster all well before reaching the age of 30.  Maz demonstrated sufficient perseverance to play a significant role as a bench player on a World Series champion after spending a string of years as an everyday player on a terrible club.  He has seen it all and that should allow him to identify with every player on his team, from Miguel Tejada to B.J. Surhoff to Jay Gibbons.

Let's see if, given a bit of luck, Lee Mazzilli doesn't turn into one of the better managers in Baltimore Orioles' history.

Return to Birds in the Belfry home page