Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  My dad always tried to do something cool for us on Christmas. One year, first thing Christmas morning, he and Mom led us through the kitchen for the big surprise, opened the door to the backyard . . . and the son of a bitch was gone! Our big surprise had escaped before we even got a glimpse of him. They jumped into their respective cars and combed the neighborhood, covering all the back roads, knocking on everybody’s door. You’d think he’d have been roaming around in the big cornfield behind the house. Uh-uh. Finally, about two miles away, a lady told my mom that a pony had been strolling up her driveway and she’d put him in the barn with her horse. My dad walked it home, with Mom driving behind with her flashers on.

  I mean, I give credit to my father. It was a great idea. We were plenty excited to see that pony clopping down the road. But I think we rode him one time. Whenever we’d try to get on, he’d buck us off. Tanker the pony. Shit. We supplied Tanker with a little shed and an electric fence, and there he stood.

  There were plenty of things to ride, anyway, and a dopey pony could hardly compete with the likes of a snowmobile. I can still feel the exhilaration of firing up the Arctic Cat and racing across the open fields in ten inches of snow. Beyond our street, it was all farmland back then. And the reservoir. We built forts back there. Had some big-time snowball fights. Played hockey when the ponds froze. I’d speed-skate and pretend I was Eric Heiden. I really wanted to be Eric Heiden.

  In the fall, we could always get up football games, neighborhood against neighborhood. Spring Lane would play Ferry Lane or Forge Manor. We’d steal tomatoes from the neighbor’s garden. There’s a dam nearby, and guys would dare each other to walk across the top of it. Danny did it. The area sounds rural, and to a large degree it was, back then, but the main drag, Route 23, ran by right at the top of our street. There’s an old restaurant and truck stop on the other side of 23—the G Lodge, where I picked up candy bars and grape Bubble Yum. They used the G Lodge for a scene in the movie The Happening and called it the Filbert Restaurant. Dad still eats breakfast there.

  The neighborhood had everything we needed. We could walk to the golf course. Before extreme sports had caught on, I had a BMX bike that I’d pump as fast as I could down the driveway and across the street to a ramp set up on the far curb, which would send me flying into a vacant field. Vince and his friends had their skateboards, hacky sacks, and jacked-up cars. We got cream soda from the gas station next to the G Lodge. Phoenixville, I’d say, was practically a perfect place to grow up.

  It was where my mom grew up, too, except that we were raised in the suburban end of it and she came from right in the town. There was a big difference. Downtown Phoenixville, if you could call it that, had an old-school, industrial, European feel to it—mostly Italian and Slovakian—and still does. The townies tended to be the tough guys.

  We experienced the town side of Phoenixville when we visited our grandmother’s house. My grandfather Horenci—Mom’s dad—died when I was seven, and Grandma lived alone in the left side of a narrow two-story, two-family house just across the street from the big shirt factory and around the corner from the Slovak Club. Phoenixville is primarily a steel town, and Grandpa Horenci was a welder raised in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. He was a big guy, and my grandmother was tall, too; my mother has two tall sisters. I obviously got my size from that side of the family—the Slovak side. They came from the portion of Czechoslovakia that is now Slovakia. Grandma Horenci spoke fluent Slovak. The fact is, I’m just as Slovakian as I am Italian.

  Grandpa Horenci drove a ’72 Monte Carlo, turquoise with a black top and black seat covers. From him I inherited my neat-freak streak when it comes to cars. He had towels on the seats, and floor mats protecting his floor mats. He’d tell us, “Don’t touch the windows. Don’t touch the doors.” My kind of guy. I believe that, of all the relatives in our family—not counting my dad, of course—he’s the one who would have gotten the biggest kick out of watching me play big-league baseball. I recall my mother being very upset when she woke us up to tell us that Grandpa had died. His funeral was my first brush with death. I remember how cold his hand felt when I touched it.

  My mother has done a commendable job of respecting our family’s Italian heritage—you can’t beat the meatballs she makes, the size of baseballs—and, thankfully, she has also kept us in touch with our Slovakian side. Christmas Eve was always spent at Grandma’s house, with our cousins and a Slovakian dinner of pierogi (kind of like dumplings, with fillings), kielbasas, and sauerkraut mushroom soup. When the family got too big for Grandma’s little house, Christmas Eve was moved to ours. Vince would cut open an apple and each family member would eat a piece of the apple, a piece of a tangerine, and then a little piece of the same walnut. The philosophy is that the family that shares from the same piece of fruit will stay together. Then, on Christmas Day, it was church and turkey. Our ethnic blend was Italian, Slovakian, and all-American.

  We were also down by Grandma’s every Friday night, when Mom would take us into town for Nardi’s Pizza. The big controversy was Nardi’s versus Sal’s Pizza Box on Route 23. We were Nardi’s people—and I don’t doubt that the location had something to do with it. Mom was partial to that neighborhood, which meant that, just before school started every year, she bought our gym shoes at Fazzini’s on Main Street: Chuck Taylor high-tops—not to be confused with the wacky orange and red sneakers she picked up at Kmart, which we referred to as our bobo shoes. Downtown Phoenixville was, in effect, our shopping center. To some people, though, it might be best known as the little town that gets terrorized in the science-fiction movie The Blob, which was not Steve McQueen’s finest hour. In one classic scene, the blob oozes into the Colonial Theatre and eats the projectionist before the moviegoers run screaming out into the street to warn everybody. That last part is now reenacted every year during Phoenixville’s annual Blobfest. To my knowledge, it’s the world’s only annual Blobfest.

  In town, everything was walking distance. My grandmother used to pin the mortgage to the inside of Mom’s sweater—nineteen dollars in cash—so she could walk it safely to the bank. Grandma always worked in a factory she could walk to. However, when my mother was in high school, Grandma, who was, of course, deeply Catholic, sent her on two buses every morning to get to Bishop Kenrick (now Kennedy-Kenrick) in Norristown, where she’s alleged to be the only girl ever crowned both Prom Queen and May Queen in the same year.

  I have to say, my mom was very glamorous, with a Jackie O., Audrey Hepburn kind of look. Even so, while Dad could strike fear into any of the kids—me, in particular—it was Mom who was mostly responsible for the discipline in our family. She meted it out with a wooden spoon. Seemed like Danny was the one who was always catching it on the ass.

  I can recall only one time when my dad got angry enough at me to work me over pretty good. I was a huge professional wrestling fan; watched the WWF twice every Saturday. Their theme song, “Gemini Dream” by the Moody Blues, got me fired up every time. I was into all of those guys: Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, the first one to jump off the top ropes; Bob Backlund, the people’s champ; Jesse “the Body” Ventura, later the governor of Minnesota; Tony Atlas, the black guy, a big weightlifter who would raise people over his head and slam them to the mat; Ivan Putski, the Polish Hammer; Blackjack Mulligan, with the iron claw; and of course his archenemy, André the Giant. Then there were the cream-puff guys, the tin cans who would wrestle the stars. Tony and Tommy were still real young, so Danny was my tin can, the lucky recipient of all my holds and moves. I had some of those, let me tell you. When I did the iron claw, as strong as my hands were, I could really do it.

  When I was about thirteen—which would have made Danny eleven—I put him in head scissors one day and got kind of carried away. I didn’t really choke him, I don’t think, but I went a little too far and he started freaking out. Then I heard my dad coming. I ran outside and tried to take cover by the woodpile, but Dad walked up and just slugged me in the face. I rolled clear over the woodpile. He yanked me
up and said, “Boy, don’t you ever fight with your brothers. You’ve got to fight with them, not against them. If there’s ever a problem, you better step up and help them because you’re the guy who can get it done.”

  Not long afterward, there was an incident on the school bus when some kid hit Vince in the stomach as we were walking down the aisle. Instinctively, I reached back and clobbered the guy. That time, Dad wasn’t even upset with me. I had done as he’d said. A day or two later, the kid’s father approached my dad and started to make an issue of it. My dad said, “You don’t want to go there, do you?”

  • • •

  Dad would occasionally take me to Flyers and 76ers games. Doctor J, to me, was bigger than life. You know the famous rock-a-bye dunk he made against the Lakers? It was right in front of me.

  We were sitting on the floor, on the same sideline where Doctor J raced Michael Cooper for the loose ball at midcourt, jabbed it in the right direction, then picked it up, took one humongous dribble, cradled it as he soared through the air, and swung it down right on top of Cooper. You can actually see me on the video of that play, right around the spot where Doctor J snatched the ball and took off. I’m wearing a red Alligator shirt, blue jeans, and Pony shoes. When I was with the Dodgers, Eric Davis was watching that video on the plane one night and I said, “Hey, that’s me, right there!” It was a fun time to be a sports fan in Philly.

  But I have to say, I sucked at basketball. I mean, it’s almost incomprehensible how bad I was at basketball—and still am. Mom signed us up for little-kid basketball at the YMCA, along with diving lessons, and I had maybe two baskets my whole career. One time I stole the ball and I was coming up the court with it and the coach was yelling at me, “Give the ball to the point guard!” I didn’t understand the concept. Naturally, I had it stolen back from me. I once fell down and cried about it, and the coach gave me a towel and said, “You get back in there and you get that fucking ball!” He actually cussed at me. My mom had a cow, as we used to say. The f-bomb wasn’t heard much around our house. With my dad, it was always “Jesus Christmas!”

  Golf was more up my alley. Dad would take me on Sundays to Woods Golf Center in Norristown and teach me the fundamentals. He thought I had some potential in golf, which I did. Mom and Dad became members of the Phoenixville Country Club so that I could practice there. The club had a one-armed pro, Joe Banyacskay, who was always smoking a cigar and cursing his head off. It was a hell of a walk from our house, carrying golf clubs, but for a few years I’d make that walk just about every day of the summer with my friend Marc Deye.

  There was a time when I thought I might want to pursue golf, but I didn’t have the mentality for it. One weekend I was playing with my dad, and playing like shit, and I had a bad attitude going on, which wasn’t particularly unusual. The thing was, he was allowing me to play golf while my brothers were working. So he lit me up. “You’re out here jerking off! You’re done! Get out of here! Jesus Christmas!”

  I made the Phoenixville High School golf team in the ninth grade, which was cool because I was able to catch rides from the older guys and no longer had to call my mom all the time to pick me up in the minivan. My golf game was long on power, but short on poise. That became obvious my junior year, when, after sixteen holes, I was leading the Ches-Mont League tournament at two over par. On the seventeenth hole, the guy I was playing with said, “Man, you’re gonna win this thing.” I woke up, saw where I was, and choked it away. Went from left trap to right trap to left trap to right trap. Put up an eight. I was devastated. A teammate, Mike Bland, ended up winning the tournament and went to North Carolina on a golf scholarship.

  By then, golf was starting to rub me the wrong way. Literally. Needless to say, I had to do a lot of walking with the golf bag over my shoulder. The trouble was, I’d started to develop serious acne. It showed up on my face, of course—Dad accused me of eating too much sugar and called me “pimple puss”—but one day I got home after stomping around for nine holes with that strap irritating me, and when I checked to see what the problem was I found nasty pimples all over my upper back. Before long, the pimples developed into that disgusting cystic acne and became keloids, almost like boils. I still have the scars around my shoulders.

  Years later, when I was playing professional baseball, I had the same sort of reaction when the strap of the chest protector rubbed against my shoulder and back. At that point, the team trainer offered to get me Accutane, but I declined because I’d read that it caused pain in the joints. I knew the ultimate solution was simply to outgrow the problem and cope with it in the meantime, which wasn’t encouraging: there are people in my family who’ve dealt with acne into their fifties. In high school, I took tetracycline, but that didn’t make it any less irritating when I carried my golf bag.

  Golf was a fall sport at my high school, and with the troubles it was giving me, I’d much rather have been playing football. Truthfully, I always wanted to play football. Never could. The coaches even wanted me to play, because I was big and had a good arm, but my dad simply wouldn’t let me. I had started pestering him about it long before high school. He told me, “The time you’d give to practicing football, you get in that goddamn cage and you hit!”

  As far as he was concerned, nothing was going to interfere with me playing baseball. He wouldn’t let me get my driver’s license until I was seventeen, because, of course, he didn’t want me straying too far from my pitching machine. Way back in grade school, he wouldn’t even let me play the trombone.

  Schuylkill Elementary had a nice little band, and I’ve always been interested in music. The director was a cool guy named Alan Philo, who played the guitar and rode a motorcycle, and as soon as our class became eligible for the band I talked my mom into attending Mr. Philo’s parents meeting at the start of the school year. When she found out that a trombone cost two hundred dollars, she took that information straight to my dad, whose response was, “No, no, no!” I’m sure the two hundred dollars had something to do with it, but maybe, in his divine sort of wisdom, Dad knew I might stick with it and didn’t care to watch me grow into another musician out of work. I won’t say that I hold it against him; but I truly wanted to read music and learn music and play music, and he crushed all of that.

  (Having brought up the ban on the band, however, I’d be remiss not to add that my dad, as rigid as he was on occasion, was extremely sensitive and affectionate. I don’t feel like I was really deprived of anything growing up . . . other than the trombone, that is.)

  Eventually my fascination with music took a different form. I distinctly remember listening to my first AC/DC record in the seventh grade—it was T.N.T.—and something happened; a hole inside me filled up. Right away, I drew “AC/DC” on all my schoolbooks, which at least gave them a purpose. A ninth grader noticed what I’d doodled and said, “Dude! Cool!” He was an art guy, so he grabbed my book and sketched in a few other little designs. I thought, man, look at me, I’m being accepted by a ninth grader! Baseball had never done that for me.

  Shortly thereafter, I heard an AC/DC interview on the radio and taped it, along with some songs (“T.N.T.,” “Highway to Hell,” and a few others), on a little cassette tape recorder. There was no turning back. I must have had a hundred heavy-metal cassettes by the time I was in high school. I’d found the music that suited my personality—brought out my aggressive side. On the way to a game, I’d blast AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, and Twisted Sister, among others, and it would send me into a frenzy.

  A guy I played baseball with was one of the people who stoked my interest in heavy metal. Tony Roberts could really pick it—the baseball and guitar, both. (His sister, Kari, was on our varsity golf team and always played with a plug of Red Man in her mouth.) Tony later performed in a band with Peter Criss—the drummer for Kiss—which was ironic, because I was such a fan that I once had a friend paint my face like Peter Criss’s. We used my mom’s makeup.

  Besides Tony, there were a few kids at school who, during
lunchtime, would join me at the black-T-shirt table and discuss Black Sabbath. A hippie girl on my block had an electric guitar, and I’d go over there and fool with it. (Maybe it’s just an excuse, but I think my hands were too big for the guitar.) Then there was Uncle Joe, my mom’s younger brother. He lived with my grandma, had a nice stereo with big speakers, and loved his rock ’n’ roll. Uncle Joe was a Led Zeppelin guy. Also Boston. The Steve Miller Band. He’d stick in “Rockin’ Me,” put a funky hat on my head, and I’d play along with a tennis racquet in front of the mirror.

  I was all-in with the music but wouldn’t describe myself as a Hessian metalhead, per se; more like a combo metalhead/jock, with a tendency toward cut-rate bling. Before rap even came along, I was throwing so many gold chains around my neck that the kids in high school called me Mr. T. There’s actually a picture of me in the yearbook where I’ve got the poofy hair and I’m wearing a concert T-shirt and a pile of chains. And I didn’t stop there. From day to day, I’d put on an Italian horn, a crucifix, my dad’s dog tag, anything shiny. Strange as it sounds, I was kind of taking after my father in that respect. He was usually sporting a gold chain and a pinky ring, for starters.

  I guess my mom was softened by the fact that I shared my dad’s look and her brother’s interest. Somewhat surprisingly, she allowed me to take the train from Devon through Philly to the Spectrum to see all those eighties groups: Judas Priest, Ratt, Dio, Kiss, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi. That was both my release and my social life. I rejected a lot of the traditional social protocols at the time—wasn’t a prom and homecoming kind of guy, and definitely wasn’t into the high school hierarchy. On the other hand, I didn’t push the envelope, either. We partied in the Spectrum parking lot and I drank a few beers here and there, but I honestly never felt the need to smoke pot or get involved with any experimental drugs. One time at a Kiss concert, somebody passed me a joint and I took a drag. That was it. I’d been infused with a certain code of conduct, I suppose, that kept me from going too far.