Mo Vaughn and Rey Ordonez and a few other Mets were milling around the clubhouse at Shea Stadium when Vinny Greco, the assistant clubhouse manager, burst into the room. “Darryl Kile is dead,” he said. “It’s on television.”
Everyone in the room stared at Greco, waiting for a punch line to a terrible joke, but he and Jay Payton fiddled with the channels on the television; Kile’s face immediately filled the screen.
Mets pitcher Bobby Jones, once a teammate of Kile with the Colorado Rockies, was in the trainer’s room and overheard Armando Benitez say something about Kile. Jones jumped off the table and found a television, seeing the horrible news for himself.
Jones was devastated and remained stone-faced through batting practice. The Mets completed the workout and Jones immediately returned to the clubhouse to seek out Pedro Astacio, last night’s scheduled pitcher, who had also befriended Kile while with the Rockies. “I just wanted to feel him out,” Jones said. “He’s hurt; you can tell.”
Astacio sat teary-eyed in a room in the back of the Mets’ clubhouse, and briefly, there was a question about whether he would pitch. But Astacio talked with the pitching coach Charlie Hough, then began his pregame routine. It would be tough to pitch, Jones said. “But Petey knows Darryl was first and foremost a pitcher, and he would want him to go out there and compete.”
The third base coach Matt Galante was a coach with the Houston Astros when Kile broke into the majors. Most of the players who played against Kile remember him for his curveball, a pitch that broke sharply downward; Kile’s curve was generally considered to be among the best in baseball. But Galante remembered Kile – who would go to dinner with Galante when the two friends were in the same town – as being shy, extremely modest and somewhat insecure about his own ability. After Kile threw his no-hitter against the Mets in 1993, Galante said, Kile mentioned that he had gotten away with a lot of bad pitches.
Tarasco, a reserve outfielder, also must have a deep affection for a sport that has tested his patience. He played six seasons in the minor leagues before being called up by the Atlanta Braves in 1993, and he subsequently bounced from the Braves to the Expos to the Baltimore Orioles to the Cincinnati Reds and then to the Yankees, in 1999. Tarasco had just 5 hits in 31 at-bats for the Yankees that year, but will forever be a part of that team’s lore. When he was with the Orioles, Tarasco was playing right field in Game 1 of the 1996 American League Championship Series and stood underneath the glove of Jeffrey Maier as the boy pulled Derek Jeter’s deep fly ball into the stands.
During his seven seasons in the majors, Tarasco accumulated 910 at-bats, 28 homers, 103 runs batted in and a .238 batting average, and he spent the 2000 season in Japan. Tarasco joined the Mets’ farm system in 2001 and has finally gotten a chance to return to the majors this year. He hit a two-run homer last Wednesday off Minnesota’s Mike Jackson, his first major league homer since 1998, and on Friday, Tarasco scored the winning run against Kansas City, sprinting from second base as Mo Vaughn hit a grounder to third and beating the throw home from Royals first baseman Mike Sweeney.
I’ve been fine-tuning, to get back to the majors,” said Tarasco, who was part of the starting lineup last night, playing left field.
Piazza Doesn’t Start
Catcher Mike Piazza was scratched from the starting lineup of last night’s game.
Piazza was going to sit out either last night’s game or today’s game, and after talking with Mets Manager Bobby Valentine, Piazza decided to play in today’s game.
