Fans Already Running Wild on Piazza Deal

The recent signing of Mike Piazza caught my eye and amazed my baseball senses. For that kind of money, you’d think the Mets would have gotten a catcher capable of throwing out runners trying to steal second base. I guess $91 million doesn’t buy what it used to.

JOHN G. HERNANDEZ, Claremont

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When there is a labor problem in any sport and teams complain that salaries are out of hand, sportswriters routinely point out the owners are to blame because no one put a gun to their head and forces them to overpay the players.

On the other hand, Randy Harvey [Oct. 27] berates the Dodgers for failing to overpay Mike Piazza.

Piazza is a great player, but he is not the best in the game and the Dodgers made the correct decision not to pay him as such.

And where does Harvey get these inside figures that prove the Dodgers could have signed Piazza? From the same sources The Times used when printing that Felipe Alou was signed, sealed and delivered as the Dodger manager?

MITCH ENGEL, Los Angeles

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Was it mere happenstance or were you trying to inflict pain on those of us Angelenos who are longtime and long-suffering fans of the Rams and the Dodgers? Those of us who are 40-somethings, who began their love of L.A. sports with the great Ram teams of the 1960s, had to be pained as I was by Mike Penner’s excellent review of the Eric Dickerson fiasco and the mind-boggling miscalculations, bungling, and outright lunacy of the Rosenbloom-Frontiere years [Oct. 27].

Did this story have to appear on the very same front page with the equally dispiriting account of Chase Carey’s monumental blunder: losing one of baseball’s truly great players and getting essentially nothing in return except for a good defensive catcher? By the way, Chase Carey!? What is the world coming to? At least we still have a baseball team with which to start over.

DAVID M. WEBER, West Hollywood