The Mets’ tantalizing Juan Soto expectations come with a different kind of pressure

This was Port St. Lucie, right in the middle of March 2004. Tom Seaver was in town for a few days, and whenever he appeared on a field in those years, everyone paid attention. Everyone took notice, even though he’d last thrown a pitch in anger in a major league game 18 years earlier.

Seaver walked over to where Mike Piazza was having a catch with Jason Phillips, the man who would replace Piazza as the Mets’ primary everyday catcher now that Piazza had started taking ground balls at first. Piazza’s face lit up.

“Franchise!” he said.

“Not so fast,” Seaver said. He joked about Piazza wearing a cap — “like all the rest of us layabouts” — instead of a helmet for the first time that he could remember. Then he told Piazza something that, afterward, he admitted choked him up a little bit.