Gabe Lacques, and Jesse Yomtov

USA TODAY

After three years of waiting, Mike Piazza earned 83% of the vote, finally earning his spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Piazza’s induction brings up a subject of much consternation since he retired: Will the cap on his plaque bear the logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Mets?

The decision on a player’s cap logo is the Hall of Fame’s decision, but the wishes of a player are considered – as we saw in 2014 when Greg Maddux chose to go without a logo.

Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Piazza elected to baseball Hall of Fame



Piazza’s statistics show his best seasons came with the Dodgers – but his total stat line was stronger than with the Mets:

Dodgers: 726 G, 896 H, 177 HR, 563 RBI, .331 BA, .394 OBP, .572 OBP, 160 OPS+

726 G, 896 H, 177 HR, 563 RBI, .331 BA, .394 OBP, .572 OBP, 160 OPS+ Mets: 972 G, 1028 H, 220 HR, 655 RBI, .296 BA, .373 OBP, .542 SLG, 136 OPS+

But the Hall of Fame is about more than just numbers. The museum says its criteria for choosing a logo is based on “where that player makes his most indelible mark.”

Since that’s open for interpretation, USA TODAY Sports’ Gabe Lacques and Jesse Yomtov make a case for both coasts when it comes to the definitive Piazza.

The Walkoff podcast: Griffey Jr. and Piazza are in the Hall, but who's next?

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Yomtov: I’m immediately invoking the “most indelible mark” argument, which definitely tips the scale in favor of the Mets. His impact on the franchise can’t be understated.

When the Mets landed Piazza in May 1998, the team hadn’t reached the playoffs in 10 years and was in danger of completely losing the city to the Yankees.

The Mets had become a laughingstock over the past decade, from the downfall of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry to the “Worst Team Money Could Buy” era to the ill-fated “Generation K.”

When Piazza became a Met, he instantly made the club relevant again in New York and more importantly, gave the Mets national credibility.

"Mike Piazza reinvigorated our franchise when we acquired him in May 1998," Mets owner Jeff Wilpon said 15 years later. “Mike is one of the greatest players in our history.”

After the 1998 season, Piazza didn’t even bother filing for free agency. He signed what was at the time the biggest contract in baseball history, a seven-year, $91 million deal that kept him in Flushing through 2005.

"The Mets showed incredible commitment to me," Piazza said after signing the contract. "If I'm so fortunate as to go into the Hall of Fame someday, it definitely will be in a Mets uniform."

That was obviously premature, but Piazza led the Mets to the postseason in 1999 and 2000, a National League pennant and the team’s first World Series appearance since 1986. He was the team’s best player during one of the most successful stretches in franchise history.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers failed to win a single playoff game during Piazza’s tenure.

His Subway Series run-ins with Rogers Clemens are part of baseball lore and nobody will forget the home run he hit in baseball’s return to New York following 9/11.

Piazza’s overall slash lines were better in Los Angeles, but he posted a .979 OPS from the time he joined the Mets in 1998 through the 2001 season, before a lifetime of catching began to take its toll.

If you really want to talk about an “indelible mark,” Piazza was featured catching Tom Seaver in the closing ceremony at Shea Stadium and the opening ceremony for Citi Field.

Further strengthening the argument (against the Dodgers) is that Piazza had a fairly bitter breakup with the club and engaged in a very public spat with Vin Scully in recent years.

This shouldn’t even be up a debate. Piazza’s most memorable moments, (literal) rock-star status in New York and lasting impact on the Mets organization far outweigh the early part of his career in Los Angeles.

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Lacques: It’s true: Piazza’s transfer from Los Angeles to New York – with an unforgettable nine days of purgatory as a Florida Marlin – invigorated a flagging franchise.

That’s fine. But before he was a Met, Piazza represented something even greater – an era of Dodger exceptionalism that ended the moment his 1998 trade out of L.A. was finalized.

Surely, Mets fans remember the Dodgers – that well-decorated franchise whose escape from Brooklyn paved the way for the Mets’ existence. Yeah, we know – many of you Brooklynites still haven’t gotten over it.

Indeed, the name Walter O’Malley was cursed plenty on both coasts, first by scorned fans in Brooklyn and later by families in Chavez Ravine bulldozed out to make room for a new stadium.

Eventually, a gorgeous playground would rise in the ravine, and a team too often stifled by the dreaded Yankees back east blossomed, christening Dodger Stadium with two World Series championships in its first four seasons.

By 1988, the Los Angeles Dodgers had five World Series titles, nine National League pennants and perhaps more important, an ethos. The stream of charismatic, homegrown players - from Brooklyn holdovers Koufax and Drysdale to the Garvey-Lopes-Russell-Cey infield quartet, Sutton, Fernando and Orel – stretched for decades. The O’Malleys, from Walter to Peter, had long shed their carpetbagging, home-wrecking reputation, playing their games in a beautiful cathedral, famously rewarding employees with ice cream every day the club was in first place, all of it narrated by Vin Scully.

Come 1993, the luster was fading, and not just at Dodger Stadium. The ’92 Dodgers lost 99 games - the franchise’s most single-season losses since 1908 - and were forced to play a string of four July doubleheaders after riots ravaged Los Angeles the previous April. The Lakers were in their own purgatory, losing Magic Johnson two years earlier after his HIV diagnosis, and the Rams and Raiders would skip town two years later.

Into this void stepped Piazza, mostly a curiosity after he banged his way to the major leagues at the end of ’92, more famous for his family connection to manager Tommy Lasorda than the prodigious power he showed in the minors.

It was immediately evident that was no fluke.

Why Mike Piazza's Hall of Fame election matters

This 62nd-round draft pick – 62nd round! – banged 35 home runs and drove in 112 runs, back when RBI were cool. No two home runs endeared him more to Angelenos than the last two, classic Piazza opposite-field drives that came off San Francisco Giants pitchers on the final day of the season – and knocked their 103-win rivals to the north out of the playoffs.

Of course, Piazza was the 1993 NL Rookie of the Year, following Eric Karros a year before, and preceding Raul Mondesi, Hideo Nomo and Todd Hollandsworth.

That’s right – five consecutive rookies of the year, creating the impression the Dodger way was still a thing. And though he was at his core a Philly dude, Piazza was really made for L.A., sharing a Manhattan Beach bachelor pad with Karros and feeding his appetite for heavy metal at night. All the while, he averaged 33 homers and 105 RBI even though two of his five Dodger seasons were shortened by a work stoppage.

Yet as the Dodgers won consecutive division titles, the storm clouds gathered. They were swept out of the playoffs both years, with Piazza and Karros’ cool suddenly seen as a dearth of passion. And as Piazza steamed toward free agency, earning a second consecutive MVP runner-up in 1997, decades of stability were going out the window: Peter O’Malley was selling the club to Fox.

The sale closed in March 1998. By Opening Day, Piazza admitted he was befuddled by new ownership’s unwillingness to negotiate as his walk year began.

Come May, Piazza was gone, in a trade consummated not by baseball people but TV execs. A Fox suit named Chase Carey traded the greatest-hitting catcher of all time, all behind the back of GM Fred Claire.

Perhaps Fox’s ill-fated tenure as Dodgers owners was inevitable. Maybe the embarrassing Frank McCourt era that followed could not have been avoided.

But the Piazza deal accelerated it all. And nearly 20 years later, even with deep-pocketed owners and Magic himself in the fold, it feels like the Dodgers are still a lost franchise.

When Scully retires after this season, precious little will resemble their past.

So never mind the stats. And never mind that Piazza has staked his personal brand on being Mr. Met. Just put Piazza in a Dodgers cap in Cooperstown.

It will be small consolation for a trade that marked the end of a glorious era for a most important franchise.