Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  Meanwhile, from where I stood, the most significant cultural difference might have been the one in competitive spirit. I’ll admit that I took losing harder than most guys, American or otherwise, but it seemed to me that the overseas players weren’t as hell-bent on winning as I expected a good teammate to be.

  Those were the points I was trying to make in an interview with Ross Newhan of the Times in the last week of June. Newhan had come to me to write a fairly lengthy profile, but in the course of our discussion he asked if I thought the Dodgers’ unusual multinational makeup had an impact on our performance. I said, “Without a doubt, because you really don’t know what guys’ agendas are. You would like to think that everybody has that same common goal to win, but there may be guys just interested in staying here, guys just interested in putting certain numbers up.” That became the focus of the article, which was printed under the headline OPEN MIKE.

  It was a frank discussion—probably too frank, in retrospect—about the dynamics of diversity on a ball club. “The backgrounds are so different on this team,” I told Newhan. “I mean, you’ve got Nomo from Japan, Chan Ho from Korea, you’ve got guys from the Dominican Republic and Mexico . . . so what do people expect? That all of a sudden we’re going to be one big happy family? Of course not . . . Sure, I hang out with Mondesi once in a while, but for the most part, you’re going to gravitate to the guy you have most in common with . . . and I don’t think there’s anything anybody can do or say to change those cultural or background differences.

  “ . . . I have to say that’s where not only Peter (O’Malley) but the fans should realize that because of the (diversity) there’s going to be problems just as far as guys being able to relate to each other on a daily basis. It seems like that’s the way Peter’s direction has been the last couple years . . . .”

  There was a deluge of fallout from the “Open Mike” story—so much, so immediately, that I had to hold a press conference the next day to set some things straight. I was furious over the fact that my comments were being construed and discussed as racial. What I said in the interview was that the game was changing and we, as a team on the leading edge of that change, were having a little difficulty dealing with some of the very human issues that had come along with it. But what people heard was something on the order of, what are these guys doing here? I was only two generations removed from Sicily, the son of a high school dropout who had to fight his way through Norristown and was denied a chance to own a major-league ball club basically because he was Italian. Why would I, of all people, discriminate against somebody from a different kind of background? (Hell, at the time I was dating an actress named Lisa Barbuscia—she went by Lisa B—who was an Irish–Italian–Puerto Rican from Brooklyn who considered herself British.) How could my meaning get so distorted? I had simply addressed the challenges of trying to win baseball games in the National League when the catcher has to talk to his pitcher through an interpreter.

  In any event, the little firestorm didn’t set back the ball club. We entered July eight games out of first place and left it tied at the top with the Giants, with a couple of nice winning streaks in between.

  • • •

  Pennant races were hard on me. They meant that I couldn’t get the rest a catcher craves and genuinely needs. My performance had suffered in the final weeks of 1995 and 1996, and I badly wanted to turn that around. By 1997, I was determined to dominate the last couple of months of the season and will my team to the World Series.

  It helped tremendously that we began interleague play that year. In those games, I was able to stay in the lineup as a designated hitter without having to catch. It felt like a few days in the Bahamas, and it got me through the schedule much fresher. Another source of relief was the best lineup I was ever a part of. Karros, Mondesi, and Todd Zeile, whom we had signed as a free agent, all hit thirty or more homers, the most impressive being one that Zeile hammered into about a forty-mile-an-hour gust of wind one night at Dodger Stadium. We were loaded and dangerous.

  In August, we traded for Otis Nixon. By September, we were thanking him for coming on over. Delino DeShields was off to St. Louis and Brett Butler, while back in action, wasn’t up to the workload he’d once carried, so Nixon brought a needed blast of speed to the lineup. A week after he arrived, we traded Pedro Astacio to the Rockies to bring back my old minor-league teammate Eric Young, who added another great set of legs. We also signed Eddie Murray for a month. He was forty-one years old and had just been released by the Angels; but still, he was Eddie Murray. Meanwhile, our pitching was second only to the Braves. We thought it was our year.

  For that matter, I thought it was my year. Tim McCarver—leave it to a catcher—touted me as the MVP choice on national television, and it pleased me that Fred Claire and Billy Russell spoke up for the cause, as well; not to mention Karros, of course. At the same time, Don Baylor, the Rockies’ manager, lobbied hard for his own guy, Larry Walker, who was putting up huge numbers in Coors Field. Baylor described me as one-dimensional. Mike Scioscia—another old catcher, naturally—answered by saying that we wouldn’t be in first place without me, and Russell told Ross Newhan, “Our guy might not have the numbers that (Walker has), but he’s more valuable to our team than Walker is (to the Rockies). They could win without Larry, but we couldn’t do that here. For us, the game doesn’t start until Mike starts it.”

  I’d waited a long time to hear words like that from my own organization. They gave me the sense that everything was coming together. It sure seemed that way on September 16, when, in the top of the first inning at St. Louis—after we’d won in fifteen the night before, the opener of a two-game series—I cracked a two-run homer to put us ahead. Then, in the bottom of the inning, Mark McGwire made me feel like a skinny backup shortstop.

  The Cardinals had traded for McGwire at the end of July but weren’t expected to re-sign him. That day, however—on his way to fifty-eight home runs for the season (he had thirty-four in Oakland)—there had been a press conference before the game to announce that he had agreed to a four-year contract. The deal included the creation of a foundation to combat child abuse, to which he would donate a million dollars a year. It was a cause that McGwire felt strongly about, and the weight of the moment moved him to tears. When he came to bat against Ramon in the first inning, the St. Louis fans were already on their feet. They were still standing on the fifth pitch, which McGwire lofted over the scoreboard high in left-center field, at the time the longest home run in the history of Busch Stadium. It seemed almost superhuman that he could crush a ball like that in those circumstances. When we got back to the dugout, Karros walked up and said, “Are you shittin’ me? We should have given him high-fives when he went by.”

  We trailed, 6–3, going into the ninth, with Dennis Eckersley on the mound to close for the Cardinals. I led off with a single, Karros followed with a double, and Mondesi and Zeile kept the rally going with singles. We tied the game on an error and went ahead on a sacrifice fly by Eric Young. Scott Radinsky struck out the side in the bottom of the ninth—McGwire wasn’t involved—and we headed off to San Francisco with a two-game lead over the Giants.

  It was another two-game series, but this time we lost the first one, 2–1, as I went 0 for 4 and Barry Bonds hit a two-run homer in the first inning off of Chan Ho Park. We all noticed that Bonds did a little pirouette on his way to first base, possibly because we’d plunked him a couple of months before—Antonio Osuna got him in the ribs and the Giants had charged the field. Anyway, a series split would serve our purposes just fine.

  The second game was 5–5 in the tenth inning when I singled on a tough pitch by Rod Beck and Karros followed with a solid hit that moved me up a base. It was a great chance for us to go in front and get back our two-game lead. Mondesi was next, and he proceeded to hammer a screaming line drive to right field. It froze me for a moment or two. The ball fell in for a single and Joey Amalfitano held me at third, which was the right move with no outs and my dial-up speed. The ba
ses were loaded and life was getting good. But Zeile struck out looking and then Murray, pinch-hitting, tapped into a home-to-first double play. Brian Johnson won the game for the Giants with a leadoff home run in the twelfth. The race was tied.

  That little sequence might well have cost me the MVP award. As Tom Verducci wrote in Sports Illustrated: “Either way you slice it—that Piazza should have scored [on the single] or that he should have been replaced—the episode is a black mark against the Dodgers’ catcher in a contest so close that the smallest of blemishes is scrutinized.” In the same article, Verducci laid it on thick for Walker: “Larry Walker of the Colorado Rockies had a season that, were it an oil painting, would be immediately hung in the Louvre. In some ways, it was a season that comes along once every two generations . . . . Except . . . Didn’t Walker play his home games in a hitter’s paradise, and didn’t his team fail to contend for a playoff spot? True enough, but Walker overcame both understandable prejudices.”

  Returning home, we dropped the first two games against the Rockies, to fall one behind San Francisco. In the finale of that series, I got hold of a changeup from Frank Castillo and it landed on the pavilion roof, then caromed into the parking lot—the first time a ball had ever left Dodger Stadium via left field. A headline in the next day’s Los Angeles Times read, PIAZZA’S HOMER DENTS SOME CARS. The home run was my thirty-seventh, a career high, and, at 478 feet, matched the distance of the one I’d hit in Miami three years before. Two batters later, Mondesi added another blast to give us a 5–1 lead in the third inning. Ramon Martinez couldn’t hold it. Meanwhile, the Giants were winning in San Diego.

  We went down swinging, at least. My next home run came five days later in Colorado, against a right-hander named Darren Holmes, and was recorded as the longest ever hit at Coors Field—somewhere around five hundred feet. I’ve seen it listed as 504, but more often as 496. According to the records, it was also the farthest I ever hit a baseball, although I suspect that the Colorado air played a part in that; it didn’t feel like my longest shot.

  I can’t say for certain which of my home runs did feel that way, but there’s definitely a different sensation involved with the ones that are truly crushed—when you catch a pitch out in front of the plate and meet it square with all the leverage of a perfect swing. The homer off Holmes came on another changeup, which was no coincidence; an off-speed pitch allows a hitter to maximize his bat velocity and complete his transfer of weight. When you can wade into the ball and lift it right out of your wheelhouse, the mechanics are almost like a punt. Practically every muscle in your body is working toward the same purpose, which is where the hours and hours in the batting cage come in. I was a grinder. All my life, I hit and hit and hit, and in that way developed and refined the relationships between my feet and hands, my hips and head, my forearms and eyes. Leverage—in effect, power, when you factor in physiology—results from the harmony of all those parts. If a pitch you anticipate happens to sit on a tee in front of the plate, and you see it well and time it right and bring enough strength to bear, your bat becomes a catapult. The bat will actually bend an inch or so when you address the ball with the full force of a sublimely coordinated rip. I’ve felt that. The visceral response is close to euphoria. It’s a power hitter’s sense of perfect.

  Of course, it lasts only for a moment. A season lasts half the year, and for the Dodgers in 1997 that was just a little too long. It didn’t matter that we won four of our last six games, because the Giants matched us and closed out their division title. We were five days late and two games short.

  Our failure was blamed, predictably, on an absence of leadership. References were made in the media to Kirk Gibson and 1988. I guess I was supposed to play the Gibson role. Batting .362 with 201 hits, forty homers, and 124 RBIs wasn’t sufficient; I should have set the tone in spring training by reaming out the ball club in four languages. It would have also helped if I’d talked one of our pitchers—presumably Nomo or Park, who led us in victories with fourteen—into winning twenty-three games like Orel Hershiser did in ’88. Maybe I could have been a better leader by picking up a little speed in San Francisco.

  The Florida Marlins, who went on to beat Cleveland in the World Series, were the wildcard winners that year, which meant that we had nothing to show for a pretty damn good season. Nor did I personally, even though my batting average tied Bill Dickey (1936) for the highest mark a catcher had ever produced. (If you’ll indulge me, I’ll point out that Dickey caught 107 games that year; I caught 139.) Tony Gwynn won his eighth batting title by hitting .372, with Walker second and me third. I would never come that close again.

  The record I shared with Dickey was broken in 2009 by Joe Mauer, who batted .365 while starting 105 games as Minnesota’s catcher. Since I’m a member of the catchers fraternity, it does my heart good that Mauer has won three batting titles. It’s a remarkable accomplishment that stamps him as a great hitter. That said—and without taking anything away from Mauer—I didn’t have the DH position available to me once a week, and he didn’t have to beat out Tony Gwynn.

  In the matter of stats and records and the like, I can’t deny a certain measure of selfishness. It was an acquired quality, I think, brought on by equal parts ambition and pressure. Even in a season like 1997, when my teammates were flashing around the bases and banging the ball out of the park, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, if we were going to get where we all wanted to be, I was the guy who would have to put up the big numbers and deliver the big hits. A lot of that burden was probably self-imposed, but not all of it. To some degree, the Dodgers put it on me, inadvertently, when they kept me in the lineup at a rate well beyond what was required of most catchers, and when they rushed me back from an injury, like they did in 1995. I was good with all of that, and wouldn’t have had it any other way, but it did turn up the pressure. I especially felt the heat when we struggled. I knew that if we weren’t successful at the end of the season, my critics would attribute it to the fact that I didn’t carry us like the superstar I was supposed to be. To a certain extent, that went with the territory. But I also knew that if we were successful and I did carry the club, I wasn’t likely to be acknowledged with an MVP award. Blame seemed a lot easier to come by than credit.

  Of course, some might say that the slights were imagined on my part, or at least exaggerated. Maybe so. Maybe I needed to feel disrespected, because that was what fed the beast inside me. Maybe I needed the extra pressure, because that was just the right current for my kind of wiring. I can’t complain about a burden that I actually craved. If, under the weight of that burden, I carried myself in a way that made me seem self-absorbed to my teammates, I regret that part of it. But I can’t apologize for the way I had to play; for the way I chose to play. I subscribed to what Joe Morgan told me: winning is the product of players playing well. It was in everybody’s best interest—not just mine—that I perform at a high level. The way I saw it, the more I hit, the better chance we had of winning, which I coveted. And the more I failed, the better chance we had of losing, which I couldn’t stand. That year, I didn’t fail often, but we lost when we could least afford to.

  In the tally for MVP, my grand total was three, one of which came from Kevin Acee, then of the Los Angeles Daily News, who was kind enough to stop by my locker one day in September and say, “I voted for you, because I watched you every day. I witnessed it. You’re the MVP of this league, and I don’t give a shit what anybody says.” Jeff Bagwell had three votes also. Walker had twenty-two. With all respect to Larry, who was a great all-around player and whose raw numbers were admittedly better than mine (409 total bases? are you kidding me?), I can sincerely say that I felt cheated—more so than in 1995 or 1996. In those years, the rap against me was that I faded down the stretch. This time, I took the Triple Crown for the second half of the season, batting .367 with twenty-four home runs and seventy-three RBIs after the all-star break. It made no difference.

  But at least there was a distinction attached: Bagwell an
d I are the only players ever to lose an MVP award to a guy who played at Coors Field.

  • • •

  By the time of our season’s premature conclusion, Peter O’Malley had found a buyer. The sale hadn’t been approved and consummated, but Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation—effectively, the Fox Group—had won the sweepstakes by meeting the highest price a professional sports franchise had ever been sold for, a figure reported to be as large as $350 million.

  Meanwhile, I had my own business to take care of. There was one year remaining on my contract, but it was my last year before free agency and I didn’t want to play it while trading punches with Fred Claire and Sam Fernandez (the Dodgers’ negotiator) over a long-term deal. So, at the end of October, Danny Lozano and I established a signing deadline of February 15. If we didn’t have an agreement by then—by spring training, in other words—we’d shut down the discussions and file for free agency after the season. In the accompanying story in the Los Angeles Times, Danny said that if I signed a multiyear deal by the deadline, it would be my intention to finish my career with the Dodgers. If not, the same would apply to whatever team I signed with as a free agent.