STILL PRINCE
A day after his no-hitter,
Everywhere you turned at Citi Field on Saturday, someone else wanted to tell you where they had been on Friday night, or why their voice sounded a bit hoarse. Security guards, elevator operators, fans in the parking lot four hours before game time Saturday, they all wanted to bask in the glow of Johan Santana’s no-hitter.
So even if you knew how crazy 50 years without a no-no had made the Mets’ family and their fans, the sense of giddiness at the ballpark made you step back and consider the enormity of what Santana had done for the franchise.
“Even I’m a little bit overwhelmed by the reaction,” Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ long-time PR man, said on Saturday. “It’s almost that ‘Now I can die in peace’ type of thing.’’
By comparison to someone such as Horwitz, a Met lifer, Santana has been around here for about five minutes. But it was clear he understood the significance of his achievement immediately, dedicating it to the fans during his interview on the field.
And then on Saturday, he compared the no-hitter to the feeling in 2004 when he felt he had won his first Cy Young Award with the Twins, not just for himself but for all of Venezuela as well.
“That was very special,” he said, “because it meant a lot to my whole country. And throwing this nohitter was very special because I know Mets fans were waiting for it. It is theirs, too.’’
Yes, if ever there was a communal no-hitter, this was it. The circumstances just made it all the more dramatic, with Terry Collins agonizing over the decision to allow Santana to throw 134 pitches to complete the feat.
A day later, Santana seemed very much at peace over it. He said he felt fine physically, even if he’d celebrated deep into the night.
“I’ll sleep tonight,’’ he said with a laugh.
He said he never considered that pushing his post-surgical shoulder to 134 pitches might be