Amazin’ icons Bobby Valentine and Lee Mazzilli were Mets teammates in the late 1970s. Ahead of their Mets Hall of Fame inductions next week, the former roommates step to the plate for some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.
Q: Lee, describe the first time you met Bobby.
MAZZILLI: We just connected.
VALENTINE: Let’s get this right. Lee was more than a star, OK? He was “that dude” in 1977. I was a turd at the end of the bench …
MAZZILLI: (laugh).
VALENTINE: … trying to figure out how to run without falling down after my broken leg. Joe [Torre] introduced us. I believe Joe had me walk over and I met Lee, and I knew of him, he had no idea who I was … rightfully so … but there was a bonding right from the beginning.
MAZZILLI: And when Joe introduced us, Joe said: “Bobby, take care of him, please.”
VALENTINE: (smile) Yes, he did. He had the wrong idea about all that, didn’t he (laugh)?
Q: Why do you think you two bonded?
VALENTINE: We were the same dudes!
MAZZILLI: Yeah, same dudes. You got that Italian heritage, blood. … I don’t know how to say this being politically correct, but Italians look after Italians. That’s special to me.
VALENTINE: Well, yeah. It wasn’t because Lee was Italian, it was because I was Italian. It really just was an instant bond.
Q: You guys lived on the beach?
VALENTINE: At one time.
MAZZILLI: Can I tell the story about that time?
VALENTINE: I don’t think you can! (Laugh)
MAZZILLI: The day [April 1, 1982] we were on the beach, I got traded from the Mets. Jay [Horwitz] called me up and said to me, “Maz, [GM] Frank Cashen wanted to speak to you.” Frank gets on the phone, he says, “We just traded you to Texas.” And then I told him. Then Roomie said, “All right, we gotta go out.” And then the next thing I know it was 6 a.m. in the morning I came back home.
VALENTINE: When you talk about dealing with shock therapy, I mean, we were having such a good time, it was all happening and then all of a sudden the world stopped with Lee getting traded. I think it was good we were out until 6 in the morning.
MAZZILLI: I just think the initial trade in your life is always the hardest, because you always think that the team that you signed with and played with, you’re gonna end with your whole career. And it just doesn’t work out that way. I’m sure Bobby thought he’d be a Dodger forever. I thought I was gonna be a Met forever. But the business side of it is the dirty hand of life in baseball, and it happens, and I think the initial one is a shocker.
VALENTINE: The American League was the other league, and the Yankees were in it, and that’s all that anybody knew about the other league. Texas was the unknown of the unknown. I played in the American League and I didn’t think that they were a major league team ’cause they played in that minor league stadium.
Q: Describe Joe Torre as Mets player-manager in 1977.
MAZZILLI: It was a little strange for a couple of weeks when he was player-manager. I guess it was real hard for him to realize when he had to pinch hit himself or whatever.
VALENTINE: I remember running up into the clubhouse and getting Krane [Ed Kranepool] out of Joe’s office one night when Joe wanted him to pinch hit. I don’t know if Joe was playing then or just managing (laugh). Joe’s figuring it out, that was tough for Joe, are you kidding me?
MAZZILLI: Hey, Roomie, do you remember the day that we didn’t have a first baseman? Was that when you went to get Kranepool? We went on the field and we only had eight players on the field!
VALENTINE: That might have been it, as a matter of fact.
MAZZILLI: No one realized, “Hey guys, you only got eight guys on the field.” I think that’s when you had to go up and get Kranepool.
VALENTINE: I remember sprinting up that stupid runway, and when I got into the office, Krane was watching TV in Joe’s office with his feet on his desk, and I said, “Krane, they need you out there.” I think that might have been it.
Q: Bobby, what do you remember about Lee in the 1979 All-Star Game?
VALENTINE: I somehow got hooked up with the Seattle Mariners after Joe released me, which was a real good move on his part ’cause I stunk at the time. But I fooled the Mariners for a second and made their team, and then when the All-Star Game is coming to Seattle and Lee is on the [NL] All-Star team, I felt like a proud father. I can’t even tell you how excited I was to be at the game. And then when he hits the home run, and I’m with Tom Paciorek, who was another roommate of mine, we were in the stands hugging and jumping up and down, and then saying that he should be the MVP … and they gave it to Dave Parker, and I didn’t think that that was the right thing at the time.
MAZZILLI: You came down like as a fan, and there I am in the dugout, you came down, you were screaming! It was neat.
Q: If you hadn’t broken your leg, how many All-Star Games do you think you would have appeared in?
VALENTINE: Oh, I don’t know. That’s a weird thing to say. When I was young and I played with guys and against guys, and I held my own against guys who played for 20 years and were in All-Star Games, I think I probably would have played for a long time and been in a few of ’em.
Q: Describe the ’86 Mets.
VALENTINE: I think of the years that I was there in the minor leagues and watching a lot of those guys and kind of helping them a little, and then being at third base and working with Davey [Johnson]. Davey allowed me into his inner sanctum, which was a blessing for me, that Davey put his ego aside when the big-mouth third base coach was there. He let me run the running game. He allowed me a lot of freedoms that no other coaches had. … I got to scout Howard Johnson and come back with a scouting report. That group was in my formative years of being a major league coach.
Q: Game 6.
MAZZILLI: There was no way, no how anyone could have said that we would have won that game with two outs, no one on, two strikes on the hitter, and say you’re gonna come back and win the game. Impossible. If anyone said that, they’re lying, they’re full of it. … And uh-oh — base hit. Uh-oh — broken-bat hit. And then, the rest is history.
VALENTINE: The first baseman [Billy Buckner] on the other team was my first roommate in the major leagues, the guy that I went to college with, the guy that I went through the minor leagues with. I’m watching my last roommate that I had and my first roommate that I had battling against each other, and we know what happened with Billy Buck at first base … that [Mookie Wilson] ball going though his legs kept me from enjoying the victory as much as I really wanted to.
MAZZILLI: People just don’t realize how good a player Buckner was. He lived through a tough time after that. It was good to see him be welcomed back in Boston after all those years because they were unfair to him.
Q: The parade?
MAZZILLI: So we go down the Canyon of Heroes, right? And there’s millions of people in there, right? I’m in a car with my wife, and we’re looking up at all these people, and as I’m looking up, I look up to these tall office buildings, and who do I see? I see my mom and dad! On top of the building! Cheering! I said to my wife: “There’s Pop! What is he doin’ up there? How did he get up there?” Coolest thing. Saw my mom and dad at a parade. I don’t know how I ever spotted ’em. If every athlete, any individual, could experience the Canyon of Heroes … it’s breathtaking. I got to experience it twice, with two New York teams. How special is that? Or, how lucky am I?
Q: Describe the young Doc Gooden and the young Darryl Strawberry.
VALENTINE: In Lynchburg, it was a joy watching them. They stood out amongst the rest, obviously. And when Doc came up, not even when he got out to the mound, it was a must-see event. I was there when they first came up. Everything was so amplified, and rightfully so.
Q: Bobby’s fake mustache.
MAZZILLI: I thought it was great. I may come out in the Hall of Fame, my speech, with glasses and a mustache on.
VALENTINE: (laugh)
Q: Bobby, what enabled your 2000 Mets to get to the World Series against the Yankees?
VALENTINE: Just the will. We didn’t have the half-dozen Hall of Famers like Atlanta and the Yankees, but we had Hall of Fame will on that team. They enjoyed each other’s success. It was a pleasure to be with those guys, that’s for sure.
MAZZILLI: Don’t let anyone fool you, they were good.
Q: Lee, what was it like coaching first base during the Subway Series?
VALENTINE: I hated him.
MAZZILLI: He hated me. I was looking over to try to steal his signs from first base.
Q: Roger Clemens hurling the jagged bat in Mike Piazza’s direction.
MAZZILLI: When it happened initially, I was sitting next to Joe. And at the same time it happened, we looked at each other, like Joe and Zim [Don Zimmer], like what the F just happened? There’s only one person that knows the truth what happened, or what he thought about what happened.
VALENTINE: Everyone knew about the one-on-one rivalry, we knew about the beaning. Mike was as great a hitter as I had ever seen, with one little vulnerable spot — and the vulnerable spot was when he would swing at a pitch that was off the plate inside. He couldn’t get to that pitch, and that was the pitch that Roger always tried to throw him and never could get there. Mike would throw his arms up and take it, and then force Roger to throw the ball out over the plate and Mike would kill him. When he threw that and broke his bat in half like he did, I didn’t watch the bat, I watched the little bloop of the ball, ’cause I was wondering if the ball was gonna land fair or not and if Mike was going to start running or not. When the bat bounced, it clicked on me that he just threw the bat (laugh) in the direction of Mike, and I went, “Oh s–t, what’s going to happen?” And nothing happened. And a lot of people think something shoulda happened. Well, it was so bizarre, it was so unworldly. … Mike was bewildered. He was pissed off that he got jammed for sure. By the time I got on the field, Mike was more kind of confused with his reaction than he was angry. The umpires didn’t know what to do, and they obviously shoulda thrown Roger out of the game, understanding what happened in the past. Like, if Roger hit him in the back, they would have thrown him out of the game.
Q: When you think of the ’69 Mets, what do you think of?
MAZZILLI: What I think of is: Don’t give up, there’s always a chance … that the underdog could always be champions.
Q: What do you remember about Tom Seaver?
MAZZILLI: I miss talking to him about baseball. … I learned a lot about hitting from Tom Seaver, and Jerry Koosman … how they were pitching hitters and how they would set people up.
VALENTINE: I played my first game against them, and I was at third base, and I was told that I could steal home. It was a tie game, it’s September at the end of the season, and I said, “Well, let me just time him.” And I went to time the pitcher, and I think it was Willie Davis flew out to left field. So I didn’t get to steal home, and if I did and we beat ’em, it mighta kept them from winning the championship — how crazy is that?
Q: What do you remember about the ’62 Mets?
VALENTINE: I had a teammate who was kind of the class clown, a great guy, he was doing the Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy imitation, and would announce our team as though it was a lineup. I grew up a Yankee fan when I was collecting baseball cards and things and figuring out who to root for.
Q: Did you ever meet Casey Stengel?
VALENTINE: I met Casey on a recruiting trip to USC — he was best friends with the coach there, Rod Dedeaux. He had a barbecue at his house for all the guys who were being recruited. I actually have a ball signed by him, it says: “To Bob, become a Trojan — Casey Stengel.” That was the only time I met Casey.
Q: Lee, you don’t remember the ’62 Mets, do you?
MAZZILLI: A little bit. I went to a couple of games in the Polo Grounds.
Q: Do you remember going to Shea for the first time?
MAZZILLI: Yeah, sure, my dad took me to the game that Jim Bunning pitched the no-hitter [in 1964], that was on [Father’s] Day.
Q: Bobby, do you remember the first time you were at Shea?
VALENTINE: Yeah … I never was there as a fan, I went there as a Dodger in ’71, and got the game-winning hit against Tom Seaver, and Kiner’s Korner was the biggest day of my life for most people in Stamford, Connecticut, to just be on Kiner’s Korner and to be in their living rooms for my family and friends.
Q: Wait a minute, Seaver didn’t intentionally walk you?
VALENTINE: (laugh). What was kind of cool is I pulled the fastball down the left field line, and Ralph [Kiner] thought that that was remarkable. … Black and white TV in one of my relatives’ house, took a photo of me on Kiner’s Korner. It’s a great photo in my memory books.
MAZZILLI: 1969, I was 14, and I remember sleeping over at the stadium to buy tickets for the playoff game against the Braves, and around 2, 3 in the morning, me and my buddies snuck in over the right field fence, over the parking lot, we jumped over the fence, ran into the bullpen, ran on the field and there we were at 3 a.m., standing in the batter’s box and visualizing, saying, “Man, this is where Willie Mays … Willie Mays is in this batter’s box.”
Q: Bobby, when did you first think about managing?
VALENTINE: When I wasn’t playing, I was a big mouth. Like, when I was playing, I was very quick to second-guess the managers I was playing for. And I played for all the Hall of Fame managers, ya know, including Joe and Dick Williams and Tommy Lasorda. … I don’t know that I second-guessed Tommy so much, maybe I did (laugh). But after I broke my leg, for sure I did, because those who can’t play decide to coach, and I was kind of coaching as I was playing.
Q: How disappointed were you that you didn’t get to manage Alex Rodriguez with the Mets?
VALENTINE: Well, I was disappointed. You remember that road show that he had, I kind of got involved with it, I was behind it, it was exactly what we needed. The really only two disappointments on player transaction things — not having the chance to have a guy like A-Rod with Mike in the same lineup, and not having Ichiro [Suzuki]. I was really disappointed when we didn’t just go all in for Ichiro.
Q: Lee, when did you first think about managing?
MAZZILLI: I took some time off after I played … managed three years in the minor leagues with the Yankees. They kind of tested me, I guess, to see if I really wanted to do it. It was a tough decision, I wanted to do it, my wife was the one that really pushed me out the door and said that, “If this is in your blood, you gotta see if you can get it out of your system because: 1) you’re driving me nuts being home, and [2], you gotta go out and see if you want to do this.” She said, “Don’t worry about the kids, I got this.”
VALENTINE: There are guys who play baseball and then they hunt during the wintertime, and then there’s guys that play baseball and they play golf during the wintertime. Lee and I were like 24/7, 12-months-a-year baseball guys. He was destined to be a coach and destined to be a manager.
Q: I don’t know anybody who had a bigger bucket list than you.
VALENTINE: I just tried to do s–t, yeah (smile).
Q: What was it like managing against Joe Torre for the first time?
MAZZILLI: I wanted to beat him so bad. When I was with Baltimore, the Yankees were the beasts of the East, and you always want to beat the best. … I would have liked to manage against Bobby. Managing to me is the closest thing you’re gonna ever get to playing again.
Q: Bobby, describe winning the Matsutaro Shoriki Award in Japan in 2005.
VALENTINE: Since I was the only non-Japanese to win it, it’s as big an award as you can get — it’s for the guy who contributes the most to Japanese professional baseball. I learned doing it the right way from Lasorda and the Dodgers, then Fred Wilpon saying you have to do it 24/7, 365, and I went over there with that same kind of commitment and it was acknowledged.
Q: Being the face of the Mets franchise at such a young age, how much pressure was that for you?
MAZZILLI: I wasn’t comfortable with it. That wasn’t who I was. That was put upon me, it wasn’t me doing it, Bobby knows that.
VALENTINE: He was put in a situation, not only being the face … but he had to be the face after the face [Seaver] left. That’s really hard. I think the New York fans are seeing with [Anthony Volpe] how hard it is that he tried to step into those shoes. Tom Seaver left this organization, and left Lee Mazzilli holding the bag.
Q: What are your favorite Stamford memories growing up?
VALENTINE: I was really lucky to grow up in that community. It was bound together by the youth sports that people played. I was fortunate enough to get up with a Little League city championship and play on a Babe Ruth League team that went to a World Series, and got to be in a dance class and danced with a spectacular group of people, and played football. … I was lucky enough to get a lot of accolades there. … I remember when I was 12, I threw a no-hitter in the Little League — I think it was even the championship game — and there was a headline in the Stamford Advocate with my name: Valentine throws no-hitter. And we would always have the Sunday dinners at my grandmother’s house and the whole family was there. And my grandmother didn’t speak much English, but she saw the headline, a Valentine in the newspaper, and through my aunt, my grandmother said to her how proud she was to see the Valentine name in the newspaper, and it wasn’t associated with crime.
Q: Lee, what were your favorite Brooklyn memories growing up?
MAZZILLI: We didn’t have much. We had five of us in a three-room apartment. We didn’t have a bathroom inside the house, it was in a hallway. I remember my dad shaving with his winter jacket on in the hallway, and I’d say, “Hey Pop, what are you doing?” He said, “Close the door, you’re letting the heat out.” I said, “Pop, we ain’t got no heat here.” I remember growing up in the schoolyard — that was my babysitter, the schoolyard — from morning to night, that was the safe haven where my mom and dad always knew where I was. I was very lucky and fortunate to play in a city that I grew up in. I could have been drafted by anyone at that time. Listen, there were tough times growing up, but I never felt that from a materialistic point, ’cause I know we didn’t have it, but we were rich in family and neighborhood.
Q: Lee, where were you on 9/11?
MAZZILLI: We had a game that night at Yankee Stadium. My wife woke me up. As a matter of fact, I went over Joe’s house to see him to find out what was going on ’cause Joe lived in Westchester. For us, we still feel that. I don’t think the rest of the country feels it as New Yorkers feel it ’cause we live it every day, we live it every day for 25 years.
Q: Bobby, how proud are you of what you did in the 9/11 aftermath?
VALENTINE: I always think that I should have been able to do more. I delivered the groceries, but Jay made out the grocery lists. He was the one who would say, “Hey, there’s a memorial service at Saint Pat’s, maybe we should represent it, the family in Westchester, let’s do whatever it is.” The Yankees allowed me to do things with kids and families during their run that goes kind of unnoticed, too. … I think I did OK …
MAZZILLI: You did more than OK, Roomie, ’cause I remember like yesterday what you did, and read about it.
JAY HORWITZ (longtime Mets media relations rep): I don’t know when the guy slept. From the moment we left Pittsburgh, he really had two jobs, to manage a team and Shea Stadium was a recovery area, 24/7, we would practice in the morning, go out and load trucks in the afternoon. He should go in the Hall of Fame twice, once as a manager, and once what he did off the field. … When I die, on my tombstone, proud to be part of working with Bobby and the 2001 Mets, that’s my legacy.
MAZZILLI: My biggest regret in baseball was losing the 2001 World Series to the Diamondbacks. Because of everything that we went through, my biggest regret, I felt that the city needed the Yankees to win and have a Canyon of Heroes parade for New York, and we couldn’t bring it back.
Q: Why will your Mets Hall of Fame ceremony induction be so emotional for you?
MAZZILLI: There’s 1,000 reasons why. … I couldn’t have picked a more special person to go into or be inducted into the Hall of Fame than Bobby, that’s special to me. … Family … going in with my granddaughter [Sophia, 2 in July], I don’t even know how to describe that. I guess 50 years later, it all came to fruition and it just came at the right time and she’s gonna be there. It’s gonna be very emotional, I think for Bobby and myself. Bobby and I, we both lost our brothers, they’re not gonna be there with us, that were big hearts, the mainstays of our lives, but they’re gonna be there with us in spirit, I know. And Jay being there, Jay was like the big brother to every player out there. I was the first player Jay ever met when he came to work for the New York Mets. The question is who’s gonna cry first, Bobby or me?
VALENTINE: It’s gonna be emotional. … Lee’s a humble guy. He was Mr. Met, and I don’t know if everyone remembers that, they’re not old enough to remember. But when I got to the Mets in ’77, on that dark June 15, Lee was “The Man.” He was the reason that people would come to the stadium when Tom Seaver was gone. To see him being inducted into the Met Hall of Fame, it just makes me feel so proud and happy for him. As far as me being emotional, hell, I gave the better part of three decades to the Mets organization as a lousy player, a pretty good third base coach and a …
MAZZILLI: Real good manager.
VALENTINE: Yeah (laugh). It’ll bring back such fond memories and wonderful accomplishments as well as other things that will go through my mind that day for sure.
Q: What are you most proud of?
VALENTINE: Most everything that I’ve done in my life, I’ve gotten to share with family and friends, and fans.
MAZZILLI: You’re most proud of being my roommate.
VALENTINE: Sometimes. I’m not gonna say how often you were there.
MAZZILLI: You know if we weren’t roommates, I woulda played another five years.
VALENTINE: (laugh).
