Lee Mazzilli has become a Met star – 07.23.79 – SI Vault

Awesome…vintage Lee Mazzilli article from 1979!   I’ve been trying to convey to you kids what a big deal Lee was…

One afternoon last week, about an hour after his 10th-inning run had given the New York Mets a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lee Mazzilli left Shea Stadium by a back entrance. From behind the 10-foot chain link fence that encloses the players’ parking lot, a cry—no, a shriek—came forth: “Lee! It’s Lee! Oh, Lee!” Mazzilli seemed flustered and walked shyly past his Cadillac Coupe de Ville toward a throng of girls. They thrust pens through the fence and twittered. Mazzilli is olive-skinned, dark-eyed, high-cheekboned—very Kiss-Me-I’m-Italian.


And surely they would have, but for the fence. Mazzilli has inaccurately been described as a John Travolta look-alike, though both have a vulnerability—perhaps in the eyes—that women seem to find agreeable. He really looks more like Bucky Dent, the reigning poster boy of the Yankees, except that Mazzilli has the advantages of being a bachelor and being able to hit. He signed some autographs, stopped a few hearts with a quiet “How you doin’ today?” (sounding rather like Rocky Balboa), then returned to his car. An 18-year-old girl, wiping tears—of what? ecstasy? fantasy?—from her eyes, snapped at her father as he tried to reclaim his pen, “No! He touched it! He touched it!”


“Believe me,” Mazzilli said, driving away, “that was nothing.”

Much more here:  Lee Mazzilli, Brooklyn’s very own, has become a Met star – 07.23.79 – SI Vault

I also enjoyed this nugget, I guess even back then the Mets liked to honor greats from other teams.

None of this is lost on the Mets, who held a Lee Mazzilli Poster Day last week. The only other Poster Day the team held was for Hank Aaron.