Q & A with Tom Glavine

Here is a great Q & A from Adam Rubin at the Daily News - He gets to spend a little time with former met Tom Glavine:

Say what you want about Tom Glavine’s last performance as a Met, but he’s a first-class guy who never wanted to leave Atlanta in the first place. The Braves’ last-minute, final offer to Glavine before he left for the Mets was for roughly $10 million a year for three years. But that’s misleading, because the entire third-year salary was deferred without interest, making the average annual value much less.

What was it like putting on a Braves uniform again?

“It was an adjustment, just like when I put on the Mets jersey for the first time. It obviously wasn’t as severe because I have a familiarity here, with this ballpark and Bobby (Cox) and John (Smoltz) and Chipper (Jones). But it still felt different. I think in my mind, I knew, ‘All right, you’re making a change.’ And there’s a little bit of uneasiness that comes with that. Obviously it’s a little bit easier to settle in because I do have history here and I have familiarity here.”

Had you been looking ahead to Saturday’s start against the Mets?

“Yeah, I have. … It will be different pitching against those guys, just like pitching against Atlanta was always different than any other team I pitched against when I was with New York. Pitching against the Mets is going to be the same way.”

Really, the same way? You can’t have the same emotional attachment to New York.

“It’s probably not as much, simply because I spent 16 years here. But I think it’s more than people give it credit for. Even though I was only there for five years, I made some good friends there. And those five years had a good impact on me as a person and on me as a player. The emotional ties that I had there are much greater, I think, than people give it credit for. Because of that, it’s going to be different, but it’s not going to be like that first time I faced the Braves after being here for 16 years and felt like everybody on the team and in the ballpark knew everything I was doing. It won’t be that extreme, but it’ll be close.”

What about the treatment from Atlanta fans, many of whom were upset with you?

“Like I’ve said, I’m not naïve enough to sit here and say everybody in Atlanta is going to be thrilled that I’m back. I know that there are some people that aren’t, and will continue to not be. Those people that are set in their ways like that, you can’t change their minds. But I think that the overwhelming majority of people will feel good and feel positive about me being back, especially if I pitch well and help this team get back to the postseason.”

Did former GM John Schuerholz’s book, where he revealed that you met with him on the eve of the press conference in Flushing because of reservations, make you a sympathetic figure to some extent to Atlantans?

“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know why people needed to hear that from John or read it in a book, because I made no bones about that fact that when I was facing free agency, my goal was to stay in Atlanta. It just didn’t work. Maybe his explanation in the book gives people different insight on it, more so than, ‘Oh, he’s just a greedy player and it was all about the money.’ I still think there are people that feel that way, but maybe there are people who were on the fence who are a little bit more understanding. I don’t know.”

If Frank Wren hadn’t replaced Schuerholz as GM, would you be here?

“I think so. I think at the end of the day, regardless of what happened between me and John, I don’t think it remained or continued to be a personal thing. I think in the end me coming here obviously made sense for me personally, and I think it makes sense for them business-wise. I don’t see that that would have been too hard to overcome.”

How good can the Braves be?

“I like our team. I think offensively we’ve got a really good lineup. We obviously have some questions with our pitching with John (Smoltz) being a little bit banged up now. Obviously with Mike (Hampton) being hurt the last couple of years, people are keeping their fingers crossed with him. There’s some uncertainty, maybe a little bit, in the bullpen. But I think most teams are the same way. Most teams probably have their fingers crossed with one or two of their starting pitchers and have some uncertainty in the bullpen, so I don’t think we’re any different in that regard. But I like our team. We’ve got a nice mix of young superstars like (Brian) McCann and (Jeff) Francoeur and some veteran guys like myself, and Chipper and (Mark) Teixeira and John. It’s a good mix. Obviously everybody is talking about Philly and New York, and rightfully so. The Phillies are the defending champs and the Mets added the best pitcher in baseball, so they deserve the talk that they’re getting. But I think our division is going to be extremely competitive and it’s going to come down to the same thing it seems to come down to for the last 130 years - whoever stays healthy and pitches the best is going to win.”

You feel slighted not being part of a self-proclaimed team to beat?

“No, that’s okay. They can declare that and we can lay in the weeds. That’ll be fine.”

So what about that word?

“The ‘devastation’ word?”

Yeah. Do you think you were trying to be too intellectual with your answer at a moment when fans were emotional?

“Perhaps. The easy thing to do would be say, ‘Oh, gee, of course I’m devastated.’ I guess that’s not where I’m at in my life, you know, whether it’s maturity or being a dad or just everyday life where you see tragic things happen. It bothered me more than any other game I’ve ever pitched. Look, I’m pretty good about leaving things at the ballpark. But I didn’t leave that at the ballpark. That got on the plane with me and went home with me and was with me for a good week after the season. There aren’t too many games that I lose sleep over three or four nights later. I might lose sleep that night, but that bothered me. It bothered me because of what it meant to that team. It bothered me because of what it meant to me individually. It bothered me knowing that was going to be the last image of the end of that season. It was all of those things. It couldn’t have bothered me any more than it did. It’s just that word, the way I look at it, you get a phone call that tells you, ‘Hey, your son is terminally ill.’ That’s a heck of a lot different feeling than I’m going to have over a baseball game. That’s just where I was trying to come from.”

Was your time in New York a success? After all, there was only one postseason appearance in five years, and your coming to Flushing was supposed to be when the Mets passed the Braves.

“It depends on what you judge success by. Obviously we didn’t win a World Series, so from that standpoint it wasn’t as successful as I would have liked. It’s like so many things in life that you take on. You want to leave something better than it was than when you got there. And there’s no question in my mind the Mets organization is a better organization than when I got there. Was I a part of that? Absolutely. How much of a part? Well, people can argue that. But it was a change of regime over there and they were doing a change in direction. Much like this organization here, when they turned things around, they started by bringing in guys who were winners, who were good character guys, to try to change the image of the organization. I was a part of the start of that. And then a lot of guys followed and made us a better team while I was there. Now they’re one of the premier organizations in baseball. I view it a success in that regard. It’s a much better organization than it was five years ago.”