by Mike Piazza
I held on to my condo in Manhattan Beach, and that winter I found some solace in reading the local year-end reviews of what the Fox people had done to the Dodgers. One in particular helped me, perhaps, to move on. Or at least made me smile. It was part of a column in the Times by Bill Plaschke, who, in my perception, had always seemed to operate with an agenda when it came to matters about me, as if he preferred that I fall on my face. This time, though, with more than half a season to look back on what he had wished for, presumably, he wrote, “The difference between this trade and one of Carey’s hot projects—the movie ‘Titanic’—was that the movie eventually sailed . . . . The Piazza trade will be forever viewed as concrete shoes.”
Ultimately, I felt like I came out on the winning side of the titanic trade. It sure didn’t hit me that way in the moment; but like they say, a baseball deal can be properly judged only over time.
I’d say that thirteen years is long enough. In 2011, when the Dodgers were wallowing around in the marital and financial mess surrounding Frank and Jamie McCourt—who had bought the club from Fox in 2004—Chris Dufresne wrote this in a lengthy Times story about the team’s slow, sad surrender of the city: “The Dodgers’ reign lasted, unchecked, for about 40 years. The headstone would read 1958–1998 . . . .
“You can town-track the sea change, Dodgers to Lakers, to a period between March 1998 and June 1999. It began with Peter O’Malley selling ownership to Fox, much more interested in Murdoch Green than Dodger Blue. News Corp. then made the cataclysmic misjudgment, in the spring of 1998, of thinking it could trade Mike Piazza and not pay a price for it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nothing against the Marlins. I liked Miami well enough that I’ve made my home there. The franchise itself is sharp enough to have won two world championships in the first eleven years of its existence. The one in 1997, the year before I arrived, came in only its fifth season. It was pretty remarkable. In certain ways, Florida was an admirable organization.
But I was miserable.
It was a bad time for me and the ball club both. My pride was smarting and my head was spinning. And, although it was only mid-May, it seemed to me that the Marlins had practically packed it in. The first time I ventured into their clubhouse, in St. Louis, it felt like a morgue. I was trying to put on a good face and be all gung-ho, like “Hey, guys, let’s go, let’s go,” but the atmosphere sobered me up in a hurry. It was quiet, lifeless, depressing. Cliff Floyd was the only guy I recognized. I went up to Cliff and said hello, and that was about as lively as it got.
Right off, Jim Leyland, the manager, called me into his office and said, “Mike, I’ve got to be honest with you. We don’t know how long you’ll be here. We’re talking about a possible deal. But let me tell you something: There’s no doubt in my mind that you’re going to get your money. You’ve earned it, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I’ll do the best I can to keep you in shape.” I took that to mean I probably wouldn’t be playing much, if at all, because, for one thing, he wasn’t going to disrupt his lineup for a temp who wouldn’t be there long enough to do laundry, and for another, the Marlins didn’t want me getting hurt while they were trying to trade me.
So I was sitting in the dugout in my turf shoes when Mark McGwire caught a pitch from Livan Hernandez and launched it against the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sign in center field. They measured it at 545 feet, which was almost unimaginable to me, because I knew how special it felt to hit one 445. A few innings later, I looked up at the scoreboard and happened to see that that Expos and Dodgers were getting started in Los Angeles. That’s when it really sunk in that, wait a minute, hold the phone, I’ve been traded. . . . What the hell just happened?
As the weird reality swept me up, I slipped into a narcissistic haze, more or less, so caught up in my own situation that it felt like I was the epicenter of the universe. In my efforts to maintain a positive spin, I’d told myself that it would be nice to move into our family house in Boynton Beach, on a golf course and close to the ocean, and let Zeile stay there for as long as we remained with the Marlins. I’d told the press that we had golf clubs, Jet Skis, and no worries. Half of me even believed it . . . until I saw that the Dodgers were batting in the bottom of the first without me. I didn’t snap out of it until, in the top of the seventh of the game at hand, Dave Berg was on first, Craig Counsell was on third, Hernandez was due up with us trailing 4–3, and from the end of the dugout I heard, “Piazza!”
Shit. I wasn’t even wearing a cup. Thankfully, Todd Stottlemyre gave me a first-pitch slider and I lined it to center field for a sacrifice fly that tied the game. We lost it in the bottom of the inning on a home run by Brian Jordan.
The next day, Sunday, I started against Kent Mercker, went one for five, and we got hammered. On Monday—it was an odd four-game series—McGwire amazed me with another ridiculous blast and I did something even more incredible: hit a triple. We actually won. Afterward, headed home to Miami, we walked onto the bus for the airport and one of my young teammates got up to give me his seat. I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or old.
A couple of days later, though, after two losses to the Diamondbacks, I had no trouble at all figuring out how to feel about my new life. In the second one, a day game, it was blistering hot and Amaury Telemaco, whom I was always leery of, fired a ball behind my back. Then I broke my bat on a grounder between first base and the pitcher’s mound and wanted so badly to run him over at the bag, but he took a sharp left turn as soon as he touched it. I stranded four runners that day and let one in when I threw the ball into left field as Devon White stole third. Do you know what’s worse for a ballplayer than having a miserable game? When nobody cares. It was probably my self-absorption speaking, but it seemed like I was the only guy in town with any feelings whatsoever about how we played.
That was my low point. That was when humiliation overtook me. I slumped back in the dugout thinking, what am I doing here?
My only solace was the prospect that it wouldn’t be for long—with one caveat. My dad was thinking that he might get involved with the group negotiating to buy the Marlins from Huizenga. The Marlins’ president, Don Smiley, was heading up that party, and if my father purchased an interest in the team, it was of course unlikely that I’d be traded. But that would probably take months to play out, and Dombrowski wasn’t waiting around.
Meanwhile, Dan Lozano was staying with me and Zeile in Boynton Beach, ready for anything. We had no idea what was next or when it would come. The situation was complicated by the fact that I’d be eligible for free agency at the end of the season. Some of the teams asking about me were thinking only of the current pennant race, but others didn’t want to do a deal unless they could sign me for a few more years. Then there were teams like the Angels, who said they weren’t in a position to trade but would go after me in the free-agent market.
Baltimore was a player, but, as I understood it, didn’t want to give up a young third baseman named Ryan Minor. The Rockies were talking. The Red Sox were very involved but preferred not to trade a lot of talent if they were going to have to pay me a pile of money after the season. I would have been interested in going to the Yankees, but they were in good shape, catching-wise, with Jorge Posada. On WFAN in New York, Mike and the Mad Dog (Mike Francesa and Christopher Russo) were campaigning for the Mets to trade for me, but I wasn’t seeing it. Fred Wilpon, one of the Mets’ co-owners along with Nelson Doubleday, went on their show and said, nah, the club was going to stand pat. Then Doubleday went on and said, oh yeah, the Mets would love to have me. What was up with that? All the while, Steve Phillips, their general manager, was telling the media that if he were to part with prospects, he’d do it to fill a position not already equipped with his leading power hitter (Todd Hundley had hit thirty homers in 1997). My guess was the Cubs, who seemed to be in the picture all along.
On Friday, May 22, exactly a week after the Dodgers had officially traded me to Florida, Danny was on the phone all morning at my place in Boy
nton Beach. Before I stepped into the shower, he hung up and told me, yep, it looked like I was going to Chicago.
When I stepped out of the shower, I walked into a brand-new world. Danny had been on the phone again, and then again. I stood there dripping, half dazed by the news. It was the Mets.
I said, “The Mets? Get out of here! Don’t they have Todd Hundley?”
I hadn’t realized that Hundley was hurt. The Mets needed a catcher, the sooner the better, and they needed some power. It was all good. It was fantastic, in fact. But I hadn’t heard it from the Marlins.
When I got to the stadium, Leyland was there to intercept me. The deal had already been announced: me for Preston Wilson, a promising young outfielder; and two highly rated pitching prospects, Ed Yarnall and Geoff Goetz. I did an impromptu press conference, and Danny, who had come to the park with me, worked his own session. He’d been talking to reporters in the tunnel when somebody told him to just come on into the clubhouse and do it there. The papers took note of that, making the point that we’d reached the age of agents in the clubhouse. That was one way of looking at it. Another was that we’d reached the age of all-star catchers being traded twice within eight days of May.
When they made the trade, John Franco and I were like little kids, like twelve-year-olds trading our baseball cards. We’re going, “We got Piazza!”
—Al Leiter, teammate
The Mets were playing at home on Saturday, a four o’clock game against the Milwaukee Brewers. I planned on making it, and after a mostly sleepless night I got to the West Palm Beach airport in time for a mid-morning flight. The trouble was, my flight was actually leaving out of Fort Lauderdale. I caught a later one, and the guy I sat next to on the plane told me all about this new catcher the Mets had traded for.
It was around two o’clock by the time I got to New York. Immediately, I was dumbstruck by the difference between arriving there and arriving in Miami. A crowd was actually waiting for me at the airport. “Yo, Mike! Go get ’em, Mike!” It was crazy and phenomenal.
Another crowd was standing in line at Shea Stadium to buy tickets. Next thing I know, I’m dumping my equipment bag at a locker next to John Franco’s, meeting and shaking the hand of Al Leiter—the starting pitcher that day—and being escorted to a press conference by Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ PR guy. My locker, incidentally, already had my number 31 uniform hanging in it, courtesy of Franco, who was in his ninth year with the Mets and fifteenth in the big leagues. Franco was the National League’s career leader in saves by that time, and of his own accord had given up his number so I could wear it, graciously switching to 45 in honor of Tug McGraw, one of his childhood idols. I had fond memories of McGraw from his days with the Phillies, but he carried significance with the Mets as the lefty reliever who had popularized the phrase “You gotta believe!” when they went to the World Series in 1973. Franco’s gesture made me feel wanted and recognized in a way that I really needed right about then.
That seemed to be the theme for the day. The trade had been made at the urging of Nelson Doubleday, but it was evident that even Fred Wilpon had come to believe in what I could mean to the Mets. He told Bill Madden of the New York Daily News, “Look, I’m a businessman, but I wasn’t able to sell this team to the public without Mike Piazza. They weren’t buying it . . . . Nobody can say we’re not a better team with Mike Piazza. Now maybe our fans will start believing in us.” Steve Phillips said it was the most exciting day of his career.
And then there was my new manager, Bobby Valentine. While never at a loss for original thoughts or words, Bobby’s image and personal style were cut from the mold of his mentor. Tommy Lasorda had been his first minor-league manager. Bobby was Tommy’s guy. And he was pleased.
I was in the bathroom of my office and Steve Phillips yelled into the bathroom to say we had gotten Mike. I think we got instant credibility with that trade, and we began to build an identity around Mike. The Mets had not had a player of Mike’s star quality in many years. For a couple years, since I’d gotten there, we’d been in search of an identity and credibility. But the instant impact was the fact that the Mets would make such a deal and Mike would actually be in our uniform. From the first day, everything about it was rather bigger than life.
—Bobby Valentine, manager, New York Mets
The revitalization of the Mets had already brought Leiter and another left-hander, Dennis Cook, by way of the Marlins. I’d never really crossed paths with Leiter, who had an earned-run average under two and a cut fastball that took some getting used to. We huddled for a brief meeting before the game with Valentine and the Mets’ pitching coach, Bob Apodaca, but for the most part we would depend on veteran instincts. It was complicated, highly technical stuff: when I walked out to the mound in the second inning, Al pointed out where Jerry Seinfeld was sitting. I told him that he’d probably develop some whiplash from shaking me off so much. Later, when Leiter and I became good friends, our mound conferences deteriorated further. One time, he was getting knocked around a little and I walked out there, glanced around at the runners on base, and gave him the Chevy Chase routine from Caddyshack. “You’re not that good,” I told him. “You suck.”
This time, we at least came up with a plan, simple as it was. We stuck with fastballs for a while and moved on to his off-speed pitches later in the game, when we had the lead. Thankfully, I had contributed to that with an RBI double against Jeff Juden in the fifth. Leiter finished with his first shutout in two years, in front of a crowd numbering nearly thirty-three thousand—about half again as much as the night before. Talking to the writers afterward, Bobby described the occasion as so energizing that even John Olerud, our silent first baseman, had gotten caught up in it: “In the fifth inning, he said, ‘Let’s go, guys.’ ”
Franco was kind enough to let me stay with him for a few days, until I got settled, and it was in the wee hours that night when the gate closed behind us at his place in Staten Island. As soon as we stepped into the house, the bell rang. It was a carload of fans at the gate, just letting us know how excited they were about the trade; letting me feel the love.
By then, it was abundantly clear that, whatever else it might bring, life with the Mets would be interesting.
• • •
But not easy. Nothing in New York is easy.
In the words of Bobby Valentine, “The six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room was Todd Hundley. What do we do now?”
Coming into the season, Hundley was not only the Mets’ catcher and leading slugger but also their most popular player. In short, he was everything but healthy. After off-season elbow surgery, he was expected to be on the disabled list until July. It put the Mets in a tough spot, especially when the media was clamoring to trade for me and stick Hundley in left field when he was ready, which would be easier on his elbow. The last thing the ball club wanted to do was alienate him. And so, about the time Phillips was publicly saying that they didn’t need anybody else at Hundley’s position, he was also assuring Todd that I wasn’t coming to the Mets. I’m sure he meant it, at the moment. Having been put at ease, Hundley made light of the situation when the Mets reporters asked him what he’d do if the team made a deal for me. He said he’d empty his locker and get the hell out of there. It seemed to be all in good fun until the thing he had been told wouldn’t happen actually did.
Under the circumstances, Hundley was very cordial to me when I joined the club. Then, a few days later, rumors leaked that the Mets were displeased about his rehabilitation and concerned that he might have a drinking problem. In spite of that, he was back in the lineup about the time they expected him to be, just after the all-star break. He played mostly left field, and had a tough time with it. Todd was a hard-nosed guy, but it seemed as though all the drama took a toll on him. Some uneasiness developed between us, compounded by the fact that I was struggling, too, leaving more runners on base than I ever had—a point that the New York papers hammered home on a regular basis. Given his track record with the Mets, I could u
nderstand that Todd might have thought he should still be catching.
Whatever he thought, it nearly came to a flash point on a team flight. The Mets were a team that drank on the plane—there was always beer available—and he’d had a few. I was listening to my Walkman when Hundley sauntered up and said, “What’s up, dude?”
I said, “What’s up, Hot Rod?”
Then he punched me in the arm, a little harder than I thought he should have, and I said, hey, take it easy. Then he punched me in the arm again. By that time, I was definitely getting ticked. I kind of pushed him away and thought we were going to fight. Fortunately, it didn’t escalate. You can’t fight on an airplane.
At any rate, I wasn’t concerned about being moved out of the catcher position; not at that time. I knew the Mets hadn’t brought me in to play first base or left field. I also knew that, after trading away those pitching prospects, they weren’t eager to watch me walk off to free agency after the season. The media saw it the same way. Like they are with any story line in New York sports that involves even a trace of controversy, they were all over the contract angle. From the moment I got there, hardly a day went by without some reporter or another asking me, “Did you talk to Danny today? Did Danny talk to Steve? Any progress?”
Before they would discuss a long-term deal, the Mets sent me off for an intense, full day of physical examinations. Among other indignities, I had to duck-walk, practically naked, in front of two surgeons, so they could look for signs of arthritis in my hips. I must have proved myself physically capable of swinging a bat and waddling after bread crumbs. Danny came to New York to stay with me for a while, and during our first road trip after the trade—which, wouldn’t you know, was to Miami, the third time I’d played there in three weeks, for three different teams—he and Phillips finally sat down for their introductory discussion. But there was no progress to report.
