Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  No sooner had we set our deadline than Fernandez called to say that we’d have to hold off on that because they expected Fox to be approved around the first week of spring training. We understood that O’Malley might be reluctant to put such a large obligation on the books—I was looking for a package of seven years at approximately $15 million a year, over $100 million total—at the very moment he was trying to complete a sale. Without saying so publicly, we agreed to relax the deadline. In retrospect, that was a mistake. I think the Dodgers detected it as a sign of weakness, which it wasn’t. I was firm and confident about my asking price, and certainly not of a mind to cut the club any slack. I felt that they’d missed chance after chance to do right by me, and the time had finally come.

  As recently as July, they’d had an opportunity to sign me for considerably less. The Texas Rangers had completed a contract with their catcher, Ivan Rodriguez, for five years at just over $8 million each. Pudge was the best in the game defensively, but his offensive numbers didn’t compare to mine. I couldn’t understand why the Dodgers didn’t come to me the very next day and say, okay, we’ll give you five years at nine million each. It would have been a hell of a bargain: less than half what I wanted by the end of the season, after batting for the highest average in Los Angeles history and finishing off the best five-year stretch of hitting that a catcher had ever racked up. I’d have probably taken the deal. But they had made no effort in that direction.

  It didn’t escape my notice, furthermore, that they’d signed Karros through his first three years of free agency. Then, in January, they signed Mondesi for $36 million over four years, which would cover his first two years of free agency, with a club option for the next two at $12 million each. It appeared that I was their lowest priority. Lozano described it to me as a slap in the face. At the same time, though, I was picking up interesting signals from the Fox people—indications that signing me would be their first order of business. I wondered if perhaps the O’Malley administration was delaying the deal as a favor to Fox, to allow the new owners to kick off their regime by announcing the biggest contract in the history of the game.

  The whole thing made my head hurt. I could hardly keep track of all the angles and personalities involved. There was O’Malley representing the old organizational style: we’re the Dodgers, and you should be happy to play for us; we’ll pay you well, but not Yankee-well; we’re not getting into those stratospheric salaries, no matter who you are. It was because of the modern economics that O’Malley was getting out of the game, so he certainly wasn’t looking to violate that philosophy on his way out. Meanwhile, with Fox about to take over as the new sheriff in town, maybe, rather than making a splash by trotting me out in front of the cameras all signed and sealed, the team president, Bob Graziano—who had been a longtime aide to O’Malley—was eager to draw his six-gun and demonstrate just who was in charge now. Then there was the personal war playing out between Danny and Sam Fernandez, who was a two-time loser in their previous skirmishes. On the periphery, of course, there was also Tommy in his new management role, sorting through his deep-seated interest in me, his professional loyalty to O’Malley, and his working role with the new ownership group. And finally, there was my father, torn between his allegiance to the Dodgers, the possibility of bringing me closer to home, and his highly developed instinct for deal making.

  Over the winter, I worked through my funk in the usual way—went to the gym and wore myself out. Because of the negotiations, I spent more of the off-season in Los Angeles than usual, and devoted it to getting stronger. I hired a nutritionist, who made me six meals a day, high in protein; lots of eggs, pancakes, tuna, chicken, steak, and creatine shakes. A trainer named Mike Ryan, who works with a lot of Hollywood and high-profile types—his client history includes Karros, John Elway, Mark Wahlberg, and the Rock, among others—took a look at my diet and recommended a supplement regimen.

  In March, the steroids issue was brought into the spotlight when Tom Verducci wrote about it in Sports Illustrated. He reported that I had put on twenty pounds and gotten up to 240 over the winter, which may have been a bit exaggerated since my weight generally remained steady around 230 to 235, and quoted me saying, “Let’s face it, guys get paid for home runs. If you hit 30 home runs, nobody cares if you hit .250 doing it. That extra strength may be the difference of five to 10 feet—the difference between a ball being caught or going over the wall. Why wouldn’t you lift and take supplements? You’ve got one time in your life to get it right. I want to get it right.” I stand by that, and point out that I didn’t say illegal supplements. I played by the rules, as hard as I could.

  All in all, it was not a standard-issue spring that year. For starters, the sale of the Dodgers had not been approved by the first week of training camp, in spite of what Sam Fernandez had told us. But the Fox people were on the scene, nevertheless. One of their public relations guys, Vince Wladika, approached me at a restaurant in Vero Beach and said something like “Yeah, we know you want a hundred and five million for seven years. I think we can do that.” I didn’t know if he was serious, sarcastic, drunk, or what.

  Around that time, I sat down with Vin Scully for a television interview and his first question was on the order of “What’s this deadline thing?” I was like “Uh, well, Vin, we just wanted to kinda make sure we were focused on baseball . . . .” He wasn’t happy about it. And Scully’s voice carried a great deal of authority in Los Angeles.

  A few days later, Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times reached Brett Butler in Atlanta, where he had retired after the 1997 season. I guess the conversation got around to my contract situation and leadership skills, because, “answering a general question,” as Plaschke put it, my old teammate went off. “Mike Piazza is the greatest hitter I have ever been around,” he said, “ . . . but you can’t build around Piazza because he is not a leader . . . . You know all that stuff that went down last year about Mike being the leader, calling out the team, all that stuff? It was all fabricated. Mike Piazza is a moody, self-centered, 90s player . . . . We’re in (crunch) time during pennant races the last two years, and all Piazza seems to care about is winning the MVP from Larry Walker or the batting title from Tony Gwynn. We’d be winning games 8–0, but if he isn’t getting his knocks, he’d be all ticked off, walking up and down the dugout all mad. Do you want to spend $100 million and build your team around that . . . or pay for a less talented guy who is more of a leader? . . . You know why Ken Griffey is a leader, why Barry Bonds is a leader? It’s respect. They are respected because they are team players. We didn’t have any of that on the Dodgers . . . . Mike doesn’t want to be a leader, he just wants to play.”

  The last statement, I agreed with. In fact, I didn’t express a lot of disagreement publicly with any of it. Thankfully, my teammates did. Eric Young and Todd Zeile were vehement, and even Billy Russell came to my defense. Not surprisingly, Tommy led the charge.

  “This is totally uncalled-for on Butler’s part, and I’m very disappointed he did this,” Tommy told the Times. “I’ve known Mike Piazza since he was nine years old, and nobody wants to win more than Mike. Believe me, these are totally erroneous statements. The audacity for him to say this . . . It’s just crazy.”

  He spoke in even stronger terms to the New York Post. We were playing the Mets in an exhibition game, and a writer named Tom Keegan took the opportunity to ask Tommy which of us—Brett or I—was the more selfish player. “Butler, without question,” Lasorda said, according to the Post. “He’ll tell you what his average is against right-handers and what his average is against left-handers. This guy wasn’t well-liked by players, you know. Whatever his reason for saying the things he said, it was stupid . . . . Piazza wants to win. When his pitcher pitches a good game, he’s the happiest guy in the world . . . . Terrible, terrible statement, and a very erroneous statement. What does he mean Piazza’s not a team man? He plays hard. He gives it all he’s got. How can a guy who hits .330 with 40 home runs and knocks in 120 runs not
be good for a team? No catcher has ever done what he has done.”

  In the same story, Tommy also mentioned a testimonial dinner at which he had sat with Whitey Herzog, who asked him which current player he would pick to build a team around. Tommy suggested they both write a name on a piece of paper. In Tommy’s words, “He turned his paper over and it said Mike Piazza. Mine said the same thing. He sure as hell didn’t put Brett Butler on it, and neither did I.”

  Still, Butler’s assault seemed to be what a lot of Dodger fans wanted to hear. The way the whole contract drama looked to them—many of whom were taking their cue from Scully—was that, by setting a deadline and insisting on so much money, I was demonstrating a conspicuous lack of loyalty to the ball club. I understood that. I don’t profess to have been driven by loyalty, except to say that I was willing to give up my free agency and stay in Los Angeles for the rest of my career. On the flip side, though, how hard had the Dodgers tried to tie me up for the long term? What loyalty did they show Karros that winter, when they left him unprotected in the first round of the expansion draft for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays?

  All those factors took a toll on my attitude. While I liked and respected Peter O’Malley, I felt very little chemistry with the front office. All along, I believed that we could get a deal done if O’Malley, perhaps as a final gesture of his ownership, would simply invite me to lunch so we could talk it through. That never happened.

  As I saw it, there were three sticking points in our negotiations—three important items on which the Dodgers weren’t about to budge. One was the money, of course. It wasn’t in their DNA to give out Steinbrenner money; or, for that matter, to appear like they had capitulated to a player. The second point was the length of our demand. They wouldn’t go beyond six years and I wouldn’t accept fewer than seven. And finally, I was insisting upon a no-trade clause, which the Dodgers never gave. This was about loyalty, right? If I was to forgo free agency and commit my future to the Dodgers, I wanted that commitment to work both ways, and I wanted it in writing.

  For me, Exhibit A was Eric Karros. After signing him to a long-term contract, the club had not only exposed Eric to the expansion draft but—according to what Danny kept hearing from baseball officials—had attempted to trade him to the Devil Rays for another player who had been left off the protected list (the plan being that Tampa Bay would first draft that player). It was exactly the sort of thing that hardened my position. In my history with the Dodgers, everything had always been on their terms. It was as if they felt entitled to treat me in whatever manner they chose, as if I should feel privileged to wear their particular shade of blue for less than my market value. Well, at long last, I had worked myself into a position where I no longer had to do business that way, their way.

  The sale came through on March 19, at which time the old Dodger traditions became a moot point. We were now dealing with Fox.

  But we were still dealing with Sam Fernandez. He called Danny and set up a meeting after work at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Ray, which was peculiar. Fred Claire was not present, which was even more peculiar. Although Sam was the lead negotiator, Fred had always acted as a facilitator of sorts. He was the one who would say, in effect, “Let me put this thing together because I can see it’s not getting done.” Now, without Fred or O’Malley in the picture, the discussions took on a different tone. Danny tried to impress upon Sam the importance of star quality in a city that had lost the Rams, Raiders, and Wayne Gretzky. Unmoved, Sam showed Danny an offer sheet for six years and $76 million, without a no-trade clause.

  I truly believe it was an offer calculated to make me turn it down, while, at the same time, good enough—a million more than Pedro Martinez was making in Boston as the highest-paid player in the game—to convince the fans of the club’s sincerity and generosity. Danny asked for a limited no-trade clause, a handful of teams that they couldn’t send me to. Nothing. He asked for a seventh year. No. He then asked for a $3 million buyout for the seventh year. That would put the package at $79 million and I’d sign it the next day. Uh-uh.

  Incentives? Nope. A hotel suite on the road? No. Four box seats for family and guests? No, no, no. The media widely reported the offer at $80 million—a figure they didn’t hear from us—but it never got there. Meanwhile, Bob Graziano stated publicly that signing me was not an urgent matter because I was already under contract for the season. And that’s where it stood on Opening Day, 1998, when we played in St. Louis.

  “Mike,” Danny told me, “they don’t want you to sign. You have to say something. This is making you miserable. If you need to vent, go to somebody you trust and tell your side of it. Get it off your chest. It’s time.”

  I reluctantly agreed. I’d been deliberately avoiding the subject with the beat reporters, but I couldn’t let it fester any longer. My position all winter and spring had been that I didn’t want to drag the negotiations into the season. Well, the season had arrived.

  So, after we’d been shut out by the Cardinals and the clubhouse had finally emptied, I sat back and opened up to Jason Reid of the Times. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not concerned about this, that I’m not confused and disappointed by the whole thing, because I am,” I said. “I’m mad that this has dragged into the season, and that it now has the potential to become a distraction.

  “How can I not think about this? If they say they have the intent to sign me, then sign me. But if they don’t have the intent to sign me, then just let me know. Just let me know, so at least I’ll be able to start to think about having a future somewhere else after the season. But what they’re doing now, the way this is going, I just don’t get it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The fans of Los Angeles were beating me up on a daily basis. That wasn’t characteristic of them, but my spiel in St. Louis hadn’t gone over well with the nine-to-five shift. On top of that, Vin Scully was crushing me, we’d lost our first four games, and by the time we got to Dodger Stadium for the home opener I still hadn’t driven in a run.

  The crowds booed me. Booed me hard. They chewed me out harder. One guy was screaming at me, “You’re no Steve Yeager!” In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, another fan wrote, “Rupert Murdoch, you would be better off spending your millions producing a sequel to the Spice Girls movie rather than re-signing the poster child for the Generation-X ballplayer.” People were siding en masse with Brett Butler.

  It hurt, but I could see it coming. Understandably, the paying customers didn’t care about no-trade clauses, fair market value, and my personal history. They found it hard to sympathize with a ballplayer who feels disrespected by $80 million and the biggest contract in the game. I got that. What I didn’t get was the ball club’s response to my remarks in the Times.

  The Dodgers answered with a statement of their own, issuing a press release in which Sam Fernandez said this: “Unfortunately, to date, we have not been able to bridge the wide gap that exists between our respective positions, primarily because, at this point in the negotiations, there is no good way for either side to accurately assess the level of compensation that a player of Mike’s caliber can command in today’s market.”

  What?

  They couldn’t accurately assess the level of compensation that I commanded in the market? That was their business! That’s what Sam was paid to do! They had at their disposal the terms of every contract of every player on every team. And from that, they couldn’t figure out what I was worth? Why? Because they didn’t want to? Or maybe because they couldn’t find a good comparison, seeing as how no other player had batted .334 in his first five seasons, averaging thirty-three homers and 106 RBIs, while catching 140 games a year? How in the hell could Danny and I negotiate with a man who had no idea what his offer should be and seemed to think that we didn’t, either? Believe me, we were having no trouble assessing the appropriate level of compensation. None at all.

  I was dumbfounded. In my response to their response, I told Jason Reid of the Times, “The
Dodgers’ actions are making it clear to me that they really aren’t interested in having me here much longer. From what I’ve been hearing, that is becoming painfully obvious.”

  To someone removed from the situation, the Dodgers’ company line may have sounded like merely a negotiating ploy. But I wasn’t removed from the situation, and to me, it was the latest of a numbing series of incidents over the years in which the organization had tried its damnedest to put me in my place. It felt like not getting a phone call after being drafted. Like being benched in Vero Beach and ordered to bunt with two strikes. Like being humiliated in front of my minor-league teammates. Like being told that I couldn’t take batting practice with the real prospects. To my ears, Sam’s ridiculous remark had the same offensive ring as all the doubting that I could make it as a catcher and all the unsubtle hoping that I wouldn’t. It came from the same place as making me file for arbitration. As not having my back in the MVP races. As coming to terms with everybody but me.

  In the papers and on the talk shows during those days, I was criticized for, among other things, characterizing myself as “unappreciated.” I may well have said that, but I don’t recall it. I do recall a radio interview in the dugout with Jim Rome before the home opener, when he asked me if I felt appreciated and I replied, “That’s not relevant.” I recall, while venting in St. Louis, using the words “confused and disappointed.” At any rate, whether or not I referred to myself as unappreciated, I hate that term. I reject it.

  That said, I don’t find it easy to describe my prevailing emotion toward the Dodgers at the time. It was complicated. But I can trace the path to how I got there, how the journey generally felt, which was this way: that, from the day I was drafted all the way through that final contract negotiation, they were invariably reminding me, in one form or another, that I was nothing. Or at least, not all that my dad or Tommy or, most important, my accomplishments would suggest. You could pin my perception on too much pride, too narrow a perspective, or any personal peccadillo that you choose, but that’s the dynamic by which my disposition toward the Dodgers was defined. I found myself constantly striving for the breakthrough moment when, in the organization’s eyes, I was no longer nothing but really, truly, something. I never got there.