by Mike Piazza
Given the nature and abundance of the New York media, it was surprising that more wasn’t reported on PEDs in those days. I suspect that the writers were as bewildered about the whole subject as we were. It certainly didn’t come up often in my experience, which is why the instance with Hermoso stands out to me.
At any rate, when New York got in my face, whether it was the fans, a newspaper guy, or the city itself, I had a refuge. And I’m not talking about New Jersey.
I mean music. My answer—especially before a ball game, in the car and the clubhouse—was to crank it up and drown out the rest of the world: Anthrax, AC/DC, Boston, Bad Company, Van Halen, Yesterday and Today, Zebra; everything from A to Z, as it were.
• • •
After he sent up Todd Pratt to bat for me in the ninth inning of an 8–3, early April game in Montreal in which I had three hits, including a home run, and five RBIs, Bobby told the press that he did it so “Todd Pratt could tell his grandkids one day that he pinch-hit for Mike Piazza.” Actually, it was because I slightly tore the medial collateral ligament in my right knee—although we didn’t know the exact nature of the injury at the time—in a rundown between second and third after Brian McRae missed a bunt. Bobby initially wrote me into the lineup the next day, but he took me out after Fred Hina observed how much the knee had swollen. Then they put me on a plane to Newark, so I could get an MRI. I missed a couple of weeks.
It wasn’t much of a problem for the ball club, because we had a hell of a lineup in 1999, starting at the top with Rickey Henderson. (Now that I think of it, I still owe Rickey a pair of headphone amplifiers. I had a nice set that he envied and I told him I’d pick one up for him. Never did. Sorry about that, Rickey.) It’s common knowledge that Henderson was one of the greatest leadoff hitters of all time and also one of the greatest characters. I didn’t know him well before the season, because he’d spent most of his career in the American League, but whenever he’d come up to bat against us he’d turn around and say, “Whaddup, P?” He could make you smile.
So many Rickey stories made the rounds that you were never sure what was true. Rick Rhoden, one of his teammates with the Yankees, told me that Rickey had had some issues with their manager, Lou Piniella, and after they met in Piniella’s office one day somebody asked Rickey how it had gone. He said, “We agreed to let bye-byes be bye-byes.” Most of the lines, though, involved Rickey referring to himself as Rickey—such as “Rickey don’t like it when Rickey can’t find Rickey’s limo.” A lot of that might be urban legend, but this much is definitely true: Rickey Henderson was a consummate pro, a bighearted guy and a player I really appreciated as a teammate. For starters, he was always on base, even at the age of forty. That’s a big part of the reason why we got outstanding seasons that year from so many people—namely, Edgardo Alfonzo, Robin Ventura, John Olerud, Roger Cedeno, and Benny Agbayani. We scored nearly a run a game more than we had in 1998. With all that production across the board, we played through my injury and were doing well . . . until we somehow lost eight straight games in late May and early June.
The last two of those were my introduction to Yankee Stadium. For the most part, I enjoyed the hell out of playing there. The first time I walked into the park, fans were lined up outside chanting, “Piazza sucks! Piazza sucks!” I got a chuckle out of that. But I wasn’t laughing after we dropped the first two games of that weekend series, and neither was Steve Phillips. In New York, you don’t lose eight straight without consequences.
The consequence, this time, was that, on June 5, Phillips and Bobby engaged in an hour-long meeting/argument, during which Phillips fired three of Bobby’s coaches—the pitching coach, Bob Apodaca; the hitting coach, Tom Robson; and the bullpen coach, Randy Niemann. So we now had two owners who didn’t get along and a serious split between the manager and GM. And Bobby saying that he didn’t deserve to keep his job if the ball club didn’t pick up the pace over the next couple of months.
And Roger Clemens pitching against us the next day.
At age thirty-six, it was Clemens’s first season with the Yankees after thirteen in Boston and two in Toronto, where, both years, he led the American League in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. In my only previous appearances against Roger, the season before, I’d had a couple of singles in a game at Toronto. I remember thinking, hmm, I see the ball pretty well off this dude. I could pick up the split-fingered fastball coming out of his hand—because I was blessed with great eyesight, I could actually see the spread of his fingers—and was able to eliminate that pitch, which he depended upon heavily.
That was my plan when I faced Clemens leading off the second inning on that Sunday in ’99, with Al Leiter going for us. The result was a double over Bernie Williams’s head in center field, which got us started on a four-run rally. In the third, Olerud singled and I made it 6–0 with a home run. Four batters later, we’d knocked the big guy out of the game.
That got us going on a roll in which we won fifteen out of eighteen, and had some fun doing it. Bobby saw to that. I’m referring specifically to June 9, an extra-inning game against the Blue Jays at Shea Stadium.
Joe Ferguson had taught me how to subtly cheat on pitchouts by running into the ball to shorten the pitch and build up some momentum for the throw. I tried it in the twelfth inning that day with Pat Mahomes pitching, Shannon Stewart on first base, and Craig Grebeck at the plate. I suppose I might have taken an extra step forward to try to nail Stewart, and the umpire, Randy Marsh, called catcher’s interference on me. It was an unusual call, which prompted Bobby to come rushing out of the dugout and get himself tossed. The next inning, I looked over and did a double take. There he was—we all knew it instantly, which he’d fully expected—leaning against the ledge alongside the steps that led to the tunnel. He’d taken two of those strips that players use for eye-black and made a mustache out of them. He’d also put on a Mets T-shirt, a different cap, and dark glasses. I don’t know if he was trying to masquerade as a grounds-crew guy or what, but of course the cameras caught him, and the league wasn’t as amused as we were. He got suspended for two games and fined five thousand bucks.
But he had succeeded in loosening us up, which was very much in order because the dugout had been decidedly tense for a few days: bad vibes between Valentine and Bobby Bonilla. Valentine had benched Bonilla, Bonilla had refused to pinch-hit, there was some shouting, Valentine had snubbed him the next time he needed a pinch hitter, and so on. Anyway, we won the fake-mustache game in the fourteenth with smiles on our faces, completing a sweep of Toronto, then took two out of three from the Red Sox and Reds, three out of four from the Cardinals, and three straight from the Marlins before the Braves—always the Braves—stopped us.
In the opener of the Boston series, the Mets honored my old hero and backyard instructor, Ted Williams. Tom Seaver drove him to the mound in a golf cart, Lasorda introduced him, and it was my privilege to catch his ceremonial first pitch. The guy was eighty years old, so I stepped out in front of the plate. He waved me back and delivered a strike. As you might expect, I was eager to do something noteworthy that night, and tied the game, 2–2, with a two-run homer off Tom Gordon in the bottom of the ninth. But the Sox beat us in the twelfth.
Nevertheless, we were six and three against the American League by the time the Yankees came to Shea to resume the Subway Series on a weekend in July. I continue to watch the Subway Series every year, and it’s still a great show; but at that stage it was novel, immensely competitive, and truly special. The modern version of the series had started in 1997, and when they visited us in 1999, the Yankees, predictably, had gotten the best of all three sets. They were also sailing through the AL East, up three games on the Red Sox. And once again, they had the ball right where they wanted it—in the meaty hands of Roger Clemens.
But in the bottom of the sixth on the ninth day of the month, with the score tied 2–2, I had Clemens where I wanted him—at two and one, with a couple of runners on base. He served me the slider I’d earned by laying off t
he splitter, got it up a bit, and I lined it into the temporary picnic area set up beyond left field. Leiter had the situation in hand, and 5–2 was how it ended. It appeared that Al and I both had Clemens’s number.
In the Saturday game, on a sinker that Ramiro Mendoza didn’t get as low as he would have liked, I crushed a higher, longer (measured at 482 feet) three-run homer that landed on top of the picnic tent and put us up 7–6 in the seventh. For the second day in a row, I took a curtain call from a fired-up crowd. Even the Yankees were buzzing about that blast. Jorge Posada said it was the hardest-hit ball he’d ever seen. When Derek Jeter came up to bat in the top of the ninth, he inquired, suppressing a smile, as to whether I’d gotten it all. Still, after I’d been intentionally walked, it took a two-out, two-strike, two-run pinch single by Matt Franco, against Mariano Rivera, to pull the game out in the bottom of the ninth, 9–8.
Sunday, I had three singles, but my old buddy Orel Hershiser—we had signed him as a free agent at the end of spring training—didn’t have one of his better afternoons and the Yankees salvaged the finale. Regardless, we’d made our statement, and I felt like I’d made mine, as well. For a while there, I’d started to take some flak again about not hitting in important games and situations. In the Subway Series, I’d proved to New York that I could do that.
And I’d proved to myself that I could do New York.
• • •
At the end of July, we began to bob and weave with Atlanta. On the West Coast in mid-August, I hit a stretch in which I pounded five home runs in six games, and Robin Ventura was right there with me, virtually matching long ball for long ball and RBI for RBI. Edgardo Alfonzo—Fonzi—wasn’t far behind. That’s how teams get hot.
After falling a few games behind the Braves again, we revisited the coast in September, starting in Los Angeles; starting with Kevin Brown, the pitcher the Dodgers had signed in the off-season for the money I’d been requesting. He was good that night. So was Hershiser, pitching as a Met against the team he won 135 games for. With one out in the sixth and the Dodgers up 1–0, Olerud reached on an error. The count on me went to two and two. I fouled off four pitches, mostly fastballs. Then Brown let one drift too far over the plate, and I dropped it into the left-field seats. The Los Angeles fans gave me a standing ovation. Hershiser held the Dodgers to two hits in eight innings, Armando Benitez finished them off, and the final was 3–1.
The next day, Bill Plaschke wrote in the Los Angeles Times,
Thursday was poignant reflection of what has been evident around here since the day Dodger blue turned to black. The deal that Fox’s Chase Carey cut behind everyone’s back? The one that has made May 15 the most infamous date in club history? . . . Turns out, it was not a trade, it was a wound. Turns out, it was a cut so deep, 16 months later it is still there. . . .
Come to find out, this suddenly unsteady organization needed Mike Piazza more than he needed it. Turns out, the complaining he did about his contract was just a whisper compared to the griping his former teammates have done since then. And today, I admit, I miss him. Despite his clubhouse aloofness, I miss his on-field stability. Even with his October disappearances, I miss his September presence. Part of me wanted to cheer him Thursday for taking another team toward the playoffs. Part of me wanted to boo him for leaving us behind.
Yet again, reports surfaced that the Dodgers had been attempting to get me back. The Times made it known that Kevin Malone, the Dodgers’ general manager, had twice that year contacted Steve Phillips about trading for me. “The significance of the revelation,” wrote Jason Reid, “is that Malone is trying to correct what many Dodger fans consider the worst mistake in franchise history.” It was all very flattering, but otherwise of little consequence. I wasn’t thinking about the Dodgers. I was thinking about the Braves.
We trailed them by only one game when we met in Atlanta in late September. I’d homered in the previous game, a victory over the Phillies, but was dealing with a sore and swollen left thumb, banged up two nights before that on a foul tip off the bat of Ron Gant. Since the X-rays were negative and the Braves were next, the thumb would just have to hurt. And I don’t say that to sound valiant. That’s just the way it is, for everybody, in a 162-game baseball season. But especially for catchers. And most especially for catchers in closely contested pennant races.
For all the hype surrounding the Subway Series, our chief rival was Atlanta. As a rule, the Braves worked us over pretty good. Hell, they owned us. At one point, I stated publicly that we always seemed to play tight against the Braves, as though they had a psychological advantage going in. The follow-up was a report that one Met said I should take a look at myself instead of trying to psychoanalyze the whole ball club. Over the years, in fact, there was a lot of stuff in the New York papers that the mysterious “one Met said.” At any rate, my remark certainly didn’t imply an insufficient respect for the Braves’ incredible pitching. The fundamental problem, for us, was Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz. Also Chipper Jones, the great third baseman.
This time around, it was more of the same. Smoltz handled us 2–1. Then Glavine took care of us 5–2. I hit my thirty-seventh homer that night, and got another the next day against Maddux, but Chipper Jones—the very guy we weren’t supposed to let beat us—topped me with a three-run blast against Leiter, his forty-fifth of the season, and they did it again, 6–3. They got us nine times that year out of twelve, the same as the year before. The series sweep pretty much wrapped up another division title for the Braves, their fifth in a row and eighth in nine seasons.
When we hobbled out of Atlanta, we were no longer competing expressly with the Braves. It was now between us and the Reds for the wild card; and in spite of our beaten asses, we were looking good, still ahead by a couple games. The trouble was, the Atlanta series shoved us into a seven-game losing streak, which lasted until the Braves came to New York a few days later and we managed to win the middle game of three. But they went on to take the rubber match in eleven innings, after which Chipper Jones said something to the press about the good people at Shea being able to go home now and change into their Yankees jerseys. Atlanta’s loose-cannon closer, John Rocker, chimed in that he hated the Mets, adding, “How many times do we have to beat them before their fans will shut up?”
We’d fallen two games behind Cincinnati by the time the Pirates arrived for the last series of the season. In the opener on Friday night, I was intentionally walked to load the bases in the bottom of the eleventh and Ventura delivered a two-out single for the win. On Saturday night, one of my heavy-metal heroes, Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society—I actually grunted a couple of backup words when “Stronger than Death” was recorded, and I’m the godfather of his son, Hendrix—ripped off a cool, controversial national anthem and presented me with an electric guitar. Then, in a 7–0 shutout by Rick Reed, I hit my fortieth home run. Ironically, the forty homers for the season went with 124 RBIs, numbers that happened to precisely match the totals of my last full year in Los Angeles.
The Saturday victory sent us into the regular season’s final day in a wildcard tie with the Reds, who, thank you very much, lost the first two games of their series in Milwaukee. On that suspenseful Sunday, Hershiser turned in a clutch performance and I was at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, with one out and the bases loaded in a 1–1 game, when Brad Clontz relieved my old roommate, Greg Hansell. On his first pitch, Clontz fired up a wild one to hand us our ninety-sixth victory. But we didn’t know what it meant because the Reds hadn’t played yet. They were scheduled for a late-afternoon game in Milwaukee. So we all meandered up to the Stadium Club to have dinner and watch nervously, not knowing whether we were headed to Arizona for the first round of the playoffs or to Cincinnati for a sudden-death game.
The answer turned out to be Cincinnati, and I’d never seen it so wired. The crowd on Monday night was insane. But Al Leiter subdued it slowly, methodically, inning by inning, as he sliced through the likes of Barry Larkin, Sean Casey, Greg Vaughn, and Aaron Boon
e with a two-hit shutout. The final was 5–0, and it was, in effect, our fourth straight sudden-death victory; a loss in any of one of those games would have left us out of the playoffs.
Under the circumstances, it was maybe the best-pitched game I ever caught. Catching it was certainly the best thing I did that night—better, by far, than walking three times (and finishing the season at .303)—and also the most painful. After that foul tip from Ron Gant, my thumb had never healed. Leiter just pulverized it with that cutter of his. He made me sore and proud in roughly the same proportions.
• • •
With Leiter unavailable for the playoff opener in Arizona, we had to throw Masato Yoshii up against the best pitcher in the National League that year. Randy Johnson had led the league in ERA, complete games, and strikeouts, which brought him his first of an amazing four straight NL Cy Young awards, on top of the one he’d already earned in the American League. At six foot ten, left-handed, side-wheeling, mullet-haired, with ferocious stuff and just the right amount of wildness, Johnson scared the shit out of a lot of hitters. He might have done the same to me if he’d been right-handed. I can’t say that I lit him up over the years, but I had my hits against him—mostly singles, except for one home run. Personality-wise, Randy was considered kind of inscrutable and “out there,” which only added to his mystique. That didn’t faze me, though, because we had something very much in common. Like me, he was, and is, a hard-rock freak. On the occasions when we bumped into each other, the conversation was more likely to be about Twisted Sister than Sammy Sosa. Randy’s also an amateur photographer, and goes from concert to concert taking pictures. I mean, the man is seriously into it. I hooked him up with my friend Eddie Trunk, the radio and TV personality and all-around guru of heavy metal, and now the two of them talk a lot.
