by Mike Piazza
So, while Tommy was having visions of me behind the plate at Dodger Stadium—not right away, because Mike Scioscia was the most respected player on the team, but soon enough, because Scioscia was thirty-three years old—the front office had me ticketed for the Double-A team in San Antonio, with a guy named Bryan Baar scheduled to be the catcher in Albuquerque. My dad, of course, grumbled to Tommy that I should be the one in Triple-A because I’d outplayed Baar the year before. (Baar, however, had spent the season a level higher.) Tommy told him not to worry about it because if something happened and he needed a catcher, I’d be the one coming up to Los Angeles. I wasn’t complaining, anyway, because Baar had pretty decent credentials, for one thing—good arm, good power—and for another, Greg Hansell was also going to San Antonio, which meant I’d have a first-rate roommate and an apartment all tidied up by his mother. Besides, being a history buff, I was happy to find myself in the city of the Alamo—and possessed, no less, of a fresh affinity for the Mexican influence, since I could now hit breaking pitches.
The effects of my newly acquired aptitude showed up, big-time, in the Texas League. When the season got cranking, I was hitting about a hundred points higher than I ever had before. Meanwhile, I found that, in baseball, nothing acts in a vacuum: I carried a greater sense of confidence to the plate, and that confidence served to raise not only my batting average but also my expectations—which, in turn, wound me a little tighter still.
Once he was able to do in the Texas League what he had done in the California League, people recognized that he was legitimate. But he still had something to prove. His anger was probably directed toward management. He wanted to prove to a lot of people that he was there because of his own merits, not because of anything given to him. I think that escalated his intensity to a level where he literally couldn’t hold it in. He was kind of a red-ass, frankly.
Of course, his favorite word was the f-word. He would go three for four and that fourth at-bat, if he struck out, it would probably weigh on him a little harder than it should have. It wasn’t a nice, soft, to-yourself kind of curse. It was people in the cheap seats hearing the f-bomb. It’s not fair to say that Mike wasn’t a team player, but when you do those things, that’s what people are going to think. It makes you look a little selfish. But the fact is, he never gave an at-bat away. He just had that drive. He took it to the next level. Even after games that most people would celebrate with a beer, he’d go back to the gym and have a protein shake while the other guys were out in the bars.
—Greg Hansell
In San Antonio, thankfully, I was able to loosen up at a nice apartment. Instead of staying at the nondescript complex where the players usually lived, Greg and I found a place with a pool, mixers, and a date night. The lady in the office kind of liked me, and she gave us the furnished model, complete with potted plants. I’d never had plants before. It was a great setup until Hansell was called to Albuquerque.
Then, about thirty games into the season, with my average at .377, the manager, Jerry Royster, summoned me into his office to tell me that Bryan Baar was coming down and I was moving up. I said, “Oh, shit.” Not that I didn’t want to go to Albuquerque. It was just that Hansell usually took care of the bill-paying and utilities and whatnot, and with him already gone, it meant that I had a lot to do before I could leave the next morning.
My flight took me from San Antonio to Dallas to Salt Lake City to Seattle, and I grabbed a cab to Tacoma, where we were playing. I pulled up to the ballpark on two hours of sleep. To borrow a phrase from Tommy Lasorda, I looked like I’d been welding all night without a helmet. Bill Russell was the Albuquerque manager, and when I saw him I said, “Man, I hope I’m not playing tonight. I’m exhausted.”
He said, “You’re playing. We’ve got a doubleheader and nobody else to catch.”
I dragged myself out for infield practice and one of the coaches hit me a high pop-up. I looked up, got dizzy, saw two or three balls in the air, and collapsed. Everybody had a good laugh, the first game started, and I went three for four. Had three more hits in the second game. After one of them, I was standing at first and the Tacoma first baseman, Dann Howitt, said, “Hmm, I see you’re really having a hard time making that adjustment to Triple-A.”
But my odyssey wasn’t over yet. We bused back to Seattle, flew overnight—Seattle to Salt Lake to Phoenix to Albuquerque—and landed around noon. I was staying at the Howard Johnson’s (most of the players already had their own places, of course), and when I got there they said my room wasn’t ready yet; all they had available was one suite. I said, I’ll take the suite. They said that wasn’t authorized. I said, it’s authorized, give me the suite. When I got to the ballpark that night, Pat McKernan’s assistant said something like “Oh, you’re going to take the suite, huh?” I’m sure they thought I was being a rich-boy prima donna. Around that time, my dad was in the news a lot because he was bidding to buy the San Francisco Giants. People knew my story. What they didn’t know was how desperate I was for a few good hours of sleep.
In just under four hundred at-bats for Albuquerque, I hit .341, with a twenty-five-game hitting streak and sixteen home runs on top of the seven I had for San Antonio. Defensively, my progress was apparent in one sequence when I blocked a curveball in the dirt, called for another, and blocked that one, too, which impressed one of our scouts so much that he phoned Fred Claire to tell him about it. I was smelling the big leagues at that point—so close, so focused, so locked in that I could think of nothing else, other than the chords and lyrics pounding in my headphones. I had no idea, however, that the Dodgers had been kicking around the idea of bringing me up since midseason. In the Hardball Times article, Craig Wright provided a firsthand account of the internal debate:
Shortly after the 1992 All-Star break, just a half-season further in Piazza’s development, Fred Claire asked me to review the team and make recommendations as to what we should do with the rest of our season. I wrote: . . . We have been given a golden opportunity to gamble on a catcher with exactly what this team is crying for, power. I know when I have asked about Piazza, you have shown little interest in making him part of the mix, but I’d be doing you a grave disservice if I didn’t fight and fight hard on this point . . . . My absolute #1 recommendation is that we promote Piazza and play him.
We weren’t ready to do that—or at least it was explained to me that the field staff wasn’t ready to do that. Tommy Lasorda genuinely loved Mike as a person and was plenty willing to help him along up to a point, but contrary to legend, Lasorda was far from fighting to pave the way for Piazza to be a big league regular . . . . Lasorda was [sixty-four] years old, and he had already shown signs of a common affliction that creeps up on older managers, a tendency to overplay veterans at the expense of young players. Scioscia was a Dodger institution and very popular with the field staff who had already demonstrated . . . that they were willing to play him as a #1 catcher even though he had nothing left.
. . . A further sign of my faith in Piazza came a month later when in mid-August the Pittsburgh Pirates sought to make a trade with us that would include Mike Scioscia, and as part of the deal the Dodgers would get catcher Mike LaValliere, whose contract had gotten too expensive for the small-market Pirates. On the surface it was a very good deal, but when asked to analyze it I concluded: [At this stage of their careers] I personally consider LaValliere a . . . better catcher than Scioscia. Yet I can see refusing to make this deal if we have to take on LaValliere. We don’t need what LaValliere can offer us as a catcher; what we need is what Mike Piazza can offer us as a catcher. And if Piazza were a bust—which would surprise the hell out of me—Carlos Hernandez [a highly rated prospect who was in his rookie year with the Dodgers] has a better chance of giving us what we need from our catcher . . . . I am in favor of anything that will clear the deck for Piazza, and I find I can’t endorse any move that will make it harder for him to establish himself in the majors.
Fred Claire was steadily becoming more enamored with Pi
azza as he continued to play well, and he declined the Pittsburgh deal.
All the while, my mission was to hit the ball hard enough that the decisions would make themselves. I was named the organization’s Minor League Player of the Year, and the call-up came on the first day of September.
• • •
There was a little bit of buzz over my arrival in Los Angeles. Tommy took care of that, of course; and, of course, he also reminded my dad of what he’d said in the spring—don’t worry, it’ll happen. But it wasn’t just Tommy anymore. By proving that my Bakersfield season hadn’t been a fluke, I had become the Dodgers’ top prospect. The prevailing school of thought was that, if I made a good account of myself in September, I’d take over for Scioscia as the starting catcher in 1993.
The worst team in Major League Baseball was waiting for me in Chicago. I could have, should have, arrived in style. Actually, four of us were promoted at the same time, the others being Billy Ashley, Rafael Bournigal, and Kip Gross, a long-haired pitcher who had been up and down and knew the drill—or at least convinced me and Ashley that he did. We all had first-class tickets, but Gross advised us that if we downgraded to coach, the Dodgers would reimburse us in cash for the difference in price. Apparently, Bournigal was not quite the dumbass that Billy and I were. (You might know Ashley from the Fox reality show he starred in, Househusbands of Hollywood.) To us, Gross’s scheme sounded like a shrewd move. That is, until we got to the Hyatt on Wacker Drive, asked for our reimbursements, and Bill DeLury, the Dodgers’ traveling secretary, shook his head and said, “No, no, no, no . . .”
I made a better account of myself the next day at Wrigley Field, batting sixth in the lineup between Karros and Dave Hansen, catching Tim Crews, and facing a big right-hander, Mike Harkey. Wrigley, of course, is a gorgeous, resonating ballpark that strikes a chord with anyone who loves the game, but the awe factor didn’t hit me too hard. I’d been taking BP with big leaguers since I was barely a teenager, and my spikes had already dug into the grass of the Vet, Shea, and Dodger Stadium. Plus, you know, I was committed to not giving a shit. Like they say, you gotta dance with the one that brung you.
Determined not to make an out on the first pitch I ever saw in the major leagues—which came with one out in the second inning and Karros on first base with a single—I took strike one right down the middle. Ended up walking, anyway. The next time up, I did swing at the first pitch, and stroked a double to right-center. I followed that with two singles; I was three for three altogether, until Eric Young pinch-ran for me in the eighth. Before Eric got out there, Mark Grace, the Cubs’ first baseman, leaned toward me and said, “Hey, it ain’t that fuckin’ easy.”
I must have looked like I knew what I was doing behind the plate, because only one guy, Dwight Smith, tried to steal against me. My throw bounced to second base but got there in time. Ryne Sandberg hit two home runs for the Cubs, Karros tied the game with a homer in the ninth, and we won in thirteen. And my father was there to catch it all, snapping pictures and crying into his glasses.
My next at-bat came three days later in Pittsburgh, a single against Randy Tomlin to make me four for four in the major leagues. That would have been great for my confidence if I’d been lacking in that department; but I knew I could hit. And so did Tommy. From the start, he was telling people that, if I stayed healthy, I would hit more home runs than any catcher ever had.
Another encouraging endorsement was thrown my way when I caught Bob Ojeda, a veteran lefty who was the kind of pitcher a catcher enjoys working with, a guy who could dot an i and knew what he was doing. Afterward, Ojeda was downright lavish with his praise of my receiving. That was where I needed confidence. It gave me a lift. I was feeling it. Between Tommy and Ojeda, I figured I was right on track for the Hall of Fame.
My high lasted for exactly two days—until I got the assignment for Orel Hershiser’s next start. I’d actually caught Hershiser once before, when he was rehabbing at Bakersfield after shoulder surgery. He had been very complimentary of me at the time, but the pleasure was all mine: Hershiser had that good sinker, could spot the ball anywhere he wanted, brought a plan to the mound, and was an incredible athlete. Orel could pull back on the bunt and slash the ball through the hole better than anybody I’ve ever seen. Once, in Montreal, he said, real casually, “Hey, Mike, can I use your bat? I need one with some power in it.” I flipped him my Mizuno and he cracked a double off the wall. You couldn’t help but admire the guy.
This time, the opponent was San Diego, and it was 1–1 in the top of the seventh. Jerald Clark was on third base for the Padres, and I needed to talk to my pitcher. So I glanced back at the umpire, Joe West, said, “Time,” and ambled out toward the mound.
Before I got there, Orel was screaming at me and pointing furiously at home plate. I turned around just in time to see Jerald Clark stepping on it with what turned out to be the winning run.
I was stunned. I ran to West and said, “Joe, didn’t I call time?”
He said, “Yeah, but I didn’t give it to you.”
Naturally, Hershiser was upset with me, and so was everybody else—except Tommy. He told the media that, before it was over, I was going to win a hundred more games for the Dodgers than I would ever lose. It was nice of him, but not much consolation at the time. I was so distraught that I actually chain-smoked a few cigarettes after the game. Leave it to Lenny Harris to turn my misery into a great impression: me sitting in front of my locker, dragging on a cigarette, moaning, “Man, I fucked up . . . I fucked up . . .”
• • •
That was a bad day for the Piazzas all-around. While I was fucking up at Dodger Stadium, the major-league owners were meeting in St. Louis to discuss my father’s bid to buy the Giants. During one of the breaks, Fred Kuhlmann of the Cardinals, who was chairman of the ownership committee, blurted to the media that the sale was being rejected because my dad had not passed a background check.
The entire situation, to me, was bizarre on several levels. I’d been striving my whole life—with the intense, complete, sometimes controversial support of my father—to reach the major leagues, had navigated through the peaks and valleys of a very stressful minor-league experience, had worked my way from Phoenixville to Miami to the Dominican Republic to Mexico and finally to Los Angeles, with all the organizational stops in between . . . and the moment I arrive, reporters are asking me if my father’s in the Mafia. They’re asking me if he’s ever been involved in “unscrupulous activities.” There was a writer from the Los Angeles Times, Ken Daley, who might have been the first to question me about it straight-out. I didn’t tell him to go fuck himself, but that was the general idea that he picked up on.
My dad had put the deal together pretty much on his own. The Giants were languishing at Candlestick Park, and their owner at the time, Bob Lurie, was looking for a buyer. No locals were coming forward, so Lurie received permission from Major League Baseball to entertain offers from parties outside San Francisco. The ownership group my father mustered up started with his partner in the computer service business, Vince Tirendi, and other investors were based in the Tampa Bay area. They made no secret of their intention to move the franchise there. Dad negotiated with the pertinent government officials, found minority ownership, worked out a stadium deal, left ’em laughing, everything. It all came together around midseason, 1992.
He was visiting me in Albuquerque at the time, and at one point received a phone call, finished it, and told me, “I gotta go, I gotta go. This thing is happening.” A couple of months later, here I was on the Dodgers and our owner, Peter O’Malley, stood prominent among the opponents of the sale because it would take away his biggest rival. Los Angeles hates San Francisco and San Francisco hates Los Angeles, and they need each other. Other owners objected to putting the Giants in Tampa Bay, specifically. A lot of dynamics were working against my dad—and then they come out and say that he has been turned down for reasons of “background.”
We had a hell of a deal, a hundred and te
n million dollars. We had the stadium for a dollar a year. Little did I realize that Baseball didn’t want to move the team because they had Tampa Bay earmarked for expansion. So they’d do anything to stop me from putting this deal together. That was embarrassing, when they made that comment about my background. Mike was just coming up, and it embarrassed the hell out of him.
What happened was an unfortunate situation. Through a very prominent attorney in Philadelphia who was doing a lot of work for me in acquisitions with dealerships and all that, and his son, who was also an attorney, I got involved with this guy who said, “I own this company down here, Vince, and it’s doing well, and if you’ve got some money, I’d like to invest it for you and get you a good return on your money.”
I said, “All right, I’ll give you around ten thousand bucks.”
So I gave him ten thousand in cash that I had over the years, that I’d just saved. I gave him some money, too, out of the business. They come to find out that this guy was embezzling money out of the company, so they grabbed him and threw him in jail for embezzlement. At the time this is all occurring, he probably read in the paper that I was applying to buy the baseball team. He thought he’d found a way to get out of jail. So he calls Baseball and tells security that the one individual who’s investing in that team, he was laundering money. He told them he had this business and I put a lot of cash in there, overstating what I gave him.
