by Mike Piazza
When those discussions broke down, my dad poked around the Dodgers, heard what he wanted to hear, and told me that they were willing to bring me back at a discount—for less than they’d offered me in April. I insisted I wasn’t going back there, and especially not at a discount. After the word got back to Tommy, I heard he was upset, on a personal level, that our relationship hadn’t meant more. Going back to the spring, that made two of us. As far as I was concerned, the Dodgers were the one team that was definitely out of the bidding. And the Mets were the one team that was definitely in it.
Steve Phillips did the negotiating for the Mets, the problem being that he had different marching orders in each ear. Just like May, Fred Wilpon was the conservative voice and Nelson Doubleday the enabler. But Doubleday was on safari in Africa. From there, he went quail hunting in England. The way I heard it, Phillips or somebody reached him on the plane and told him that I wanted a shitload of money and Doubleday said, “Fuck it, sign him!” and hung up the phone.
When he was in San Diego for the World Series (Padres and Yankees), Phillips drove up to Los Angeles to sit down with Danny. It was obvious from the start that he was serious about getting something done. Danny called me and said, “You know, we could send a nice message to everyone in New York that, ‘Hey, this is where I want to be; I’m not interested in going anywhere else.’ ” I was on the same page.
So they began talking in earnest, and Danny was amazed: Phillips had it all laid out already. He named the teams that would probably get involved with me and the ones that wouldn’t and who might sneak in late as a dark horse. Danny had been talking to a few of those clubs, and he knew that Steve had it nailed. Phillips also had phone contact with Fred Wilpon whenever he needed it. He’d step outside, make the call, come in, and report the conversation, and then Danny would step outside and call me. The first offer was a package of $82 million for seven years, a pretty good starting point.
I really didn’t know if it was going anywhere from there—or if so, when—so after a while, I headed to the gym in Venice Beach. Danny reached me on my big, clunky, analog cell phone and said, “Hey, the Mets have ninety-one million on the table. I think you should hold off on your workout.” The deal being offered was almost exactly what I’d wanted from the Dodgers in the spring.
I said, “You think you can get ninety-three?”
All this time, the press was going nuts with rumors: I’m leaving, it’s not getting done, whatever. When Danny called back again, he and Phillips were on a break. The numbers were still at seven years and $91 million, but the Mets had been talking about a limited no-trade agreement, which was another thing the Dodgers hadn’t been willing to do. Plus a half-million-dollar relocation bonus if they did trade me. A hotel suite on road trips. A luxury box at Shea. After a while I just said, “I’ll take it.”
We never even talked about making me the highest-paid player in baseball history at the time (surpassing Pedro Martinez). It just happened, in one day.
I flew to New York to sign the papers and be there for the announcement. The Mets said they’d never had so many credential requests for a press conference. It was also one of the very rare occasions on which Wilpon and Doubleday were pictured together—one on either side of me. Caught up in the moment, I referred to New York as “the capital of the world” and said that if I were ever fortunate enough to be elected to the Hall of Fame, I’d go in wearing a Mets cap.
That night, I went out with Danny for dinner at Asia de Cuba, where we ran into Jeff Bagwell and his wife. I’d become friends with Jeff from all-star games and whatnot. He was a hell of a hitter and blatantly unorthodox; he’d “crab,” I called it—squat way down and stay close to the ball. Bagwell and Craig Biggio, his running mate with the Astros, were among the first players to switch over to tiny bats. (Biggio’s had a weird shape that, to me, resembled a mushroom.) Those two had some serious symbiosis going on, to the extent that a lot of guys thought they relayed signs to each other when one of them was batting. I don’t know about that, but I do know that they won a lot of games for Houston; and I know that, if the 1994 schedule had played out to its completion, Bagwell would have put up one of the best seasons in modern history. At any rate, we got along, and Jeff’s wife had set me up with a friend of hers, a model named Monica Mesones, who was from Uruguay and had been the first Playboy playmate from Latin America. Originally, I was supposed to meet the three of them after a game—this was in Los Angeles—but that night Bagwell barreled me over on a play at the plate. He was out, and I was seething. I was a moody son of a bitch, and I didn’t care if my date was Miss America; I wasn’t going. As it turned out, Monica and I ended up dating for a while anyway . . . which has nothing to do with seeing Jeff and his wife at Asia de Cuba, except for the fact that it might have made me a little uncomfortable. Or a little more uncomfortable.
In spite of all the ceremony surrounding the contract, and notwithstanding all that it represented for me, I wasn’t truly at peace with it. When Bagwell offered me congratulations, something pounded me in the stomach. I came down with a terrible case of panic and anxiety. That night, I didn’t sleep a wink, wrestling with the gravity of what I’d just done and the expectations that I’d have to deal with. I was thinking, goddamn, this is seven years. What if I don’t play up to the contract? What if I end up hating New York? What if New York ends up hating me? What the hell did I just do?
Thankfully, Danny talked me down, as he often did. I leaned on Danny for intervention in a lot of different areas. He spoke with my dad, for instance, when I started thinking seriously about buying a house in Alpine, New Jersey, a very nice suburb in Bergen County, roughly ten miles from Manhattan.
My dad thought I should just rent a place in the city for the season, since it would be so easy to come home when it was over. He had guided me through virtually every step of my life and career, and I appreciated it profoundly. I took my father’s advice to heart and still do. But the events of 1998 had been life-changing for me. The misery I’d felt for most of the year was closely tied to confusion, which stemmed, in large part, from the conflicting counsel of so many well-meaning people. It wasn’t so much that I had to stop listening to my dad, but I had to start listening to myself. I wanted to live in New Jersey, where I could park in my own garage, tool down to Starbucks for breakfast, and otherwise be left the hell alone. If that meant standing up to my father, well, it was time. Danny felt the same way about his relationship with my dad. So he called him, told Dad how badly I wanted this house—the owner, a guy who had managed Mike Tyson, was offering it for a steal—and added that I’d really like his blessing. My father didn’t appreciate Danny’s involvement, and it caused some tension between them for a while. But they got over it. And I moved to New Jersey. I’d like to think my dad respected me for that.
Meanwhile, two days after the Mets announced my contract, they announced Al Leiter’s. Then they signed Robin Ventura. They signed Rickey Henderson. In a three-way deal, they also picked up reliever Armando Benitez from the Orioles and traded away Todd Hundley. To the Dodgers, who had decided they needed a catcher who could hit.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Like a lot of people in the game, my impressions of Bobby Valentine had not been favorable. When he managed the Texas Rangers, he had been called the most hated man in baseball. Opponents found him arrogant, smug, annoying, and sneaky. Valentine had been known to stand on the top step of the dugout—Chris Wheeler, the Phillies announcer, called him Top-Step Bobby—and cuss at players on the other team. There were rumors that he had a spy planted in the visiting clubhouse. He was the ultimate micromanager, the intuitive type who had his hand in every pitch and every twitch, it seemed like. The year before I got to New York, he used 131 different lineups. Nobody questioned that Bobby was smart; they just wished he didn’t remind you at every opportunity. Or sweet-talk the media the way he did.
I was probably more inclined than most players to cut him some slack, because he reminded me so much of To
mmy; but I’d had my own little run-in with Bobby. It was during the last spring training before I was traded to the Mets. They were crushing us one day. I think Rico Brogna had three home runs. One of their guys stole a base, which is considered bad form in that situation, and Billy Russell gave Bobby a hard stare from the other dugout. Bobby responded with something like “I’m trying to do you a fucking favor and get you some fucking outs!” Then I glared at Bobby with that “what an asshole” look—I was catching at the time—and he glared back at me with a “what are you looking at?” look. A week or two later he approached and said, “You’re not still mad at me, are you?” Whatever.
But he treated me well when I joined the Mets. I’m sure that Todd Hundley wasn’t as thrilled with him, but I certainly had no complaints. For one thing, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he didn’t try to call the game for me when I was catching. My only issue with Bobby was the incestuous relationship he maintained with the media. The players were frequently puzzled by leaks that we couldn’t trace to any other source. Of course, the writers and broadcasters loved Bobby. He understood the way New York operated and was only too happy to play that way. He embraced it. In fact, that was part of the reason why he embraced me.
I think the team needed somebody like Mike. We needed to be able to have that celebrity status because, a) we were in New York, and b) we were competing on a daily basis with a celebrity team across the borough. There was no other chance for us to compete on Page Six [the New York Post gossip section] or on talk radio without the celebrity status of Mike.
It was a very demanding situation for him. I’m not sure that anyone deserved to be put in such a role of responsibility. He was being asked to catch every day and hit the home run in the ninth inning and say and do all the right things in the biggest city in the country, every day.
—Bobby Valentine
I was generally moody with the media, as I was with everybody else, but I understood what came with the territory and served my time in front of my locker. What I didn’t understand was the full sweep of the public spotlight that bears down on a well-paid ballplayer in New York City. It didn’t hit me too hard during the 1998 season because, in my misery, I didn’t go out much. Then, when I moved to New Jersey, I figured I’d bought some privacy. And I had. But I still tried to sneak into the city, unnoticed, from time to time. It was difficult.
In February, I checked out a club in SoHo called Varuka, where some Yankees hung out. I was wearing sneakers at the time, which didn’t meet the dress code, but the guy at the door said, “If I let David Wells in here almost naked, I guess I have to let you in with sneakers.” The next day, I read in the paper that I was kicked out of the place because no Mets were allowed. Sometimes, when New York is being New York, all you can do is laugh.
On another occasion, I was driving to Shea Stadium and heard some girl on the radio berating a ballplayer for making a fuss about something or other. I had no idea what it was all about until I got a call from Danny saying that the singer Usher’s people had phoned to apologize. I said, for what? Turned out, there had been a story that I’d shown up at Usher’s private party, couldn’t get in, and made a scene over it. When I arrived at the ballpark, one of my teammates, Benny Agbayani, said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were trying to get into the party? I was there. I could have gotten you in.” I still don’t know where all that came from. Just New York being New York, I guess.
The city never takes off the full-court press, even when it’s in foul trouble. Drivers would jump out of garbage trucks to shout something at me or talk baseball. Cars would pull up to the curb and guys would lean out the window for autographs. A kid would open his jacket to show me his Mets jersey—and of course, have me sign it. Random people would remark on my mustache. And the national media were always just down the block. On that front, I played along, for the most part. I became a semiregular on Howard Stern’s show. I dressed up as a city slicker—silk handkerchief and everything—for the cover of GQ, April 1999.
Needless to say, there’s a useful side to all that attention. For a few years, I was going strong on the commercial circuit. I filmed a series of them for 10-10-220, a long-distance service, with Emmitt Smith, Terry Bradshaw, Hulk Hogan, and my good friend Alf. (I also did one with John McEnroe that didn’t air, for whatever reason.) AutoZone had me trying to start a car with a dead battery. And at one point, I had a contract with Claritin, which one or two of my teammates resented: “Why the fuck is Piazza doing Claritin commercials? He doesn’t have allergies!”
Meanwhile, the local sportswriters did their jobs in ways that weren’t really objectionable or even unprofessional, necessarily, but kept me on edge. Joel Sherman of the Post liked to write about how much money everybody was making and what they were doing to earn it. I recall one game, early in 1999, in which we were down 3–2 in the bottom of the ninth, with Trevor Hoffman closing for the Padres, and John Olerud singled to lead off the inning. I’d been scuffling a bit and as I headed to the plate I was actually thinking, “All right, I need to come through here or Sherman’s going to rip me for being overpaid.” Thankfully, I ended the game with a two-run homer, which, for the bucks I was making, was apparently what I was expected to do. About a month later, I snapped out of a slump with a big series against the Brewers and the headline over Joel’s column read PIAZZA BREAKOUT MORE LIKE IT. (Sherman also belonged to the camp of New York writers who seemed to take delight in reporting my failures, and he waited patiently for the opportunity to do so. One year, when my numbers were down, he showed up at a series in Philadelphia ready and eager to write about it. Right about then, I went on a tear. He finally approached me in the clubhouse and said something like, “So, you’ve had a good week or so . . .” I had stolen his thunder, and the disappointment showed on his face. He never wrote the story.)
Then there was the Daily News beat writer Rafael Hermoso, who asked me straight-out if I had used andro. I told him I’d bought it over the counter at GNC as part of my Monster Paks. Then he said, in so many words, “So you did steroids?”
The question irritated me, but I tried not to be confrontational. My reply was something like, “Did I tell you I did steroids? What are you talking about? Andro is over-the-counter.”
But the landscape was shifting, as far as the way in which certain supplements were being regarded. As a team, we’d had an informational session about steroids, and that was the first time I’d heard andro referred to as a precursor to testosterone. (Creatine, on the other hand, is an organic acid, a naturally occurring substance that you consume when you eat salmon or steak, although, obviously, not in the same amounts that you get from purchasing it as a supplement.)
Around that period, we were also hearing more and more about human growth hormone (HGH). Guys were going to these life-extension or wellness clinics that offer hormone therapy, where you can get a blood profile and recommendations on supplements that will increase your hormone level, and the corresponding prescriptions. It didn’t seem much different than a woman going in for a face lift or a boob job. All the noise surrounding HGH—it was supposed to give you a vigorous, youthful feeling—made it sound as though it was on the verge of becoming mainstream. If you could get a prescription at a clinic, it wasn’t illegal. On the other hand, it did have to be injected with a needle. I absolutely detested needles. I once passed out in spring training when they drew blood for a simple blood test. The times I didn’t pass out, I always felt woozy and just plain lousy.
Anyway, I wanted to get the lowdown on HGH—like a lot of players, I was trying to sort all this stuff out—so I did a little reading on the subject, then went to Fred Hina, the Mets’ trainer, and asked him, “Fred, what’s the deal with this growth hormone? Are the teams going to be giving it out?” I figured, if it was so good and generally accessible, why wouldn’t the ball clubs make it available just like Vioxx, Indocine, Voltaren, and cortisone? I assumed HGH was simply the next step in the evolution of medicating the ballplayer, the lates
t drug that teams would use routinely for rehabbing injuries. Standard procedure.
When I inquired about it, Fred was sort of speechless for a moment, then said, “I’ll check around and get back to you on that.” I think he was genuinely curious about it. A day or two later, he came to me and said something about the feds, like it was some big thing, and that was the end of that. Fred made it clear to me that HGH was considered a controlled substance—although it wasn’t officially banned by MLB until 2005. The whole episode was kind of amusing, actually, and more than a little bewildering. Like creatine, HGH is made up of amino acids and is produced naturally in the body. The problem lies in the fact that people pig out on the stuff. That’s when it becomes unhealthy. At the time, though, so little was known about supplements and such, and the scene was changing so fast, and baseball’s policies were so ambiguous, that players often found themselves on unmarked trails, trying to navigate a hazardous (but promising) new frontier. It wasn’t simply a steroids issue. On a broader scale, guys were trying to figure out what they could do nutritionally in terms of supplements, sorting through the fitness magazines and health food stores for something that might help their games yet respect the rules and not create a firestorm like the one over McGwire’s bottle of androstenedione. A power hitter, in particular, was simultaneously teased and taunted by a general, growing premise that there was some sort of magic formula, a secret of unlocking athletic potential, to be summoned from the inside of a can or some other product easily found at the mall. There’s no such thing; but there was certainly the rumor of it, the tantalizing, unremitting murmur. It was an age of exaggeration, misinformation, and, most of all, confusion. It could be disorienting.
