Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  I’d done something for the city—not enough, but something—and I’d done it in my own particular way. I had channeled my anger and fought back, just a little, with my weapon of choice. I savor that. I take professional satisfaction in the fact that I was able to come through at a time when I was needed, and personal satisfaction in the afterglow of that extraordinary night. I never imagined that a home run—much less a regular season home run, with no obvious ramifications in terms of the pennant—could resonate so far beyond the boundaries of baseball. Even now, I never get tired of people approaching me to say how much that home run meant to them. It still stirs my emotions. It still makes me proud.

  When I saw Karsay a few years later, we didn’t talk about the 0–1 pitch in the eighth inning of September 21, 2001. That’s a touchy-feely thing for ballplayers. But by the handshake, and by the smile, it was clear that there was a common understanding. We knew what we shared.

  In return for me not mentioning the home run, he was kind enough not to bring up the rest of the season.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The energy of that extraordinary night carried us for nearly another week. We won the Atlanta series, then swept the Expos in Montreal. With that, we were 25–6 since bottoming out in Los Angeles in August. Somehow, we had closed to within three games of first place—of the Braves, that is, since they had passed the Phillies—with nine more to play.

  The first three of those came, of course, in Atlanta. We lost the series opener but were looking good late in the second game. I’d cleared the bases with a double, and when Leiter completed the eighth inning, we led 5–1. Benitez started the ninth, but with two outs, two on, and the score now 5–4, he gave way to Franco. Johnny walked Marcus Giles to load the bases, and then Brian Jordan—that guy killed us—unloaded them with a grand slam.

  We were effectively finished. The Braves had done it to us again. From that point, we petered out and finished six games behind.

  Looking back, I believe that the passions of 9/11 ultimately drained us of the intensity we needed to stay in the race to the very end. The long haul of the baseball season makes it nearly impossible to sustain a high level of focus after an emotional stretch like the one we had in 2001. It’s nearly impossible, as well, to sustain the high level of success that we experienced for more than a month. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford any letup. We had dug ourselves too deep a hole over the first three-quarters of the season.

  I can’t help but think that there was something else at work, too, as September wound down and the season extended into October. Being as absorbed as we were in the resonance of those times, a lot of us were dealing with unfamiliar, undermining doubts about the significance of what we did for a living. Suddenly, with fear in our stomachs and families suffering, baseball didn’t seem so important. It had been important, certainly, on September 21; but after the crescendo of that mystical night, where was the relevance? I was rethinking my priorities, and I’m sure that some of my teammates were doing the same. A pennant can’t be won without the players’ hearts in pursuit of it, and ours, I confess, had strayed a bit. I’m convinced that the events of that year had a detrimental effect on our ball club. They took something out of us.

  Of course, we were well-paid professionals and that’s no excuse. The Yankees managed to represent New York all the way to the World Series, where they were upset by Arizona. The bottom line was, we underachieved. I might add that, in a normal year, the New York media would have skewered us for an 82–80 record, given the talent we possessed and the expectations that had built up around us; but, because of everything that happened in 2001, they didn’t pile on, thank you.

  Individually, I felt like I kept pace, for the most part. I batted at least .300—with no margin for error this time—for the ninth straight year, which was a record for catchers. For that matter, it was the ninth straight year I’d put up at least twenty home runs, which was also a record for catchers. I thought my thirty-six was a pretty nifty sum until I realized that Barry Bonds hit more than twice that many.

  • • •

  Seventy-three seemed, and still seems, like an absurd number of home runs. It was nearly 20 percent more than Roger Maris’s record of sixty-one, which had stood until only four years before. Just as absurdly, Maris’s mark had been exceeded six times in those four years, after being untouchable for thirty-seven. Prior to that, Babe Ruth’s record of sixty homers had lasted for thirty-four years. Obviously, something about the game had changed dramatically in the 1990s.

  The standard explanation is steroids. It seems an easy conclusion, starting with the fact that all three of the players who topped Maris’s total—Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa—have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs in varying degrees. There’s no denying that, for a decade or more spanning the turn of the century, home run totals in general were out of whack in comparison to previous generations. It stands to reason that advances in medical science, including those in the areas of supplements and PEDs, may well have been a contributing factor.

  But in order that the entire period and all the players in it are not colored carelessly by the same broad brush, it’s helpful to start with a bigger picture of the times. Without condoning the use of illegal substances, I am compelled to evolve the discussion and defend my era. I find it regrettable that nearly every accomplished hitter from the 1990s and early 2000s has been subjected to scrutiny. In several instances, the mere raising of the steroids question—a single writer pondering, in print, whether a guy was aboveboard—has been damning enough to taint a player’s image and slide him over to the user/cheater category, in terms of general perception. It’s unjust. It shouldn’t be assumed that every big hitter of the generation used steroids. I didn’t. That’s not to say, however, that the era didn’t contribute to my power numbers and those of virtually everyone else who hit a lot of home runs in those years. It most certainly did.

  For example, people tend to neglect the fact that, in the 1990s, baseball expanded twice, adding a total of four teams, an increase of more than 15 percent. That’s 15 percent more pitchers, all of them either up from the minor leagues or hanging on beyond what would have been their time. Those guys made regular appearances in games that were over by the fourth or fifth inning, and hitters, as a rule, loved to lunch up on them, as we called it. The old expression was “riot at the bat rack,” but ours referred specifically to feasting on pitchers who had no business being in the big leagues. Todd Zeile and I used to hash over who the best lunch-up hitters were. Some guys just had that knack. Others were on missions. For the Mets, Benny Agbayani was pretty remarkable in that respect; he’d just wear out middle relievers. But I don’t think he could touch Sammy Sosa. Don’t get me wrong; I certainly don’t believe in giving away at-bats. But it’d be a 12–2 game in Chicago, we all just wanted to get our asses over to Gibsons for a steak, and Sammy Sosa’s up there against our mop-up man taking pitches. As a catcher, especially, that sort of thing stood out to me, because, by the time a game got to 12–2, I’d be long gone, taking the opportunity to get a little rest. Bear in mind, also, that of those four expansion teams, three—the Rockies, Marlins, and Diamondbacks—were placed in the National League. All the guys who hit sixty or more home runs in that period did it in the National League. I’m just pointing that out.

  While we’re at it, what about the general strides made in nutrition during that time, and the increasing awareness of its value? And the vast improvements in conditioning? I recall, early in my Dodger days, a meeting in which Lou Johnson, a former outfielder, told us that he and the other players of his time never worked out with weights, for fear it would make them muscle-bound and slow down their bats. When Tony La Russa was managing the Oakland A’s in the late 1980s and Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were just becoming the Bash Brothers (this is according to what Tommy Lasorda told my dad that La Russa told him), he was leaving the ballpark one night, heard some noise coming from the weight room, peeked in, and was startled to se
e a bunch of players in there lifting, of all things. That had never happened before. But perceptions were changing. With salaries going wild as they were, and home runs being the big bargaining chip, guys were highly motivated to gear their games—their bodies—toward hitting the ball for distance, and willing to train year-round to that end.

  At the same time, the more money the players made, the more it cost the teams when they were injured. An emphasis on conditioning in general and strength training in particular evolved quickly into a movement. When I started playing, baseball weight rooms weren’t really adequate. They weren’t outfitted with pull-downs and pulleys, etc. Living in Florida and then California, I had become acquainted with the cutting-edge equipment; so at spring training, instead of coming back to Dodgertown in the evenings to work out, I’d grab some rest and dinner and head over to the local World Gym in Vero Beach. But by the mid-nineties or so, ball clubs had modernized their weight rooms and hired staff to oversee them.

  Unless you were an Otis Nixon or Brett Butler type, you had to make yourself stronger, just to keep up with the game. Everybody had heard that old yarn about becoming too muscular for baseball, but the reality was, you’d lift in the off-season, come back in the spring, take a few swings, and think, hey, wait a minute, the ball’s jumping off my bat pretty nice. Strength was good, it turned out—especially if it came with good hitting mechanics. The prevailing attitude concerning muscle, in the space of my first few years as a pro, did a 180. All of a sudden, curls and presses were standard stuff in everybody’s routine. I didn’t know of a single player who wasn’t in some kind of strength or conditioning program. It was like the California gold rush. PEDs played a part in the big power numbers of that period, no question, but they were an offshoot of weight training. The sea change came in the gym, not in the ass. I’ll go to my grave screaming about that.

  Meanwhile, for all the noise about the players being juiced, what about the ball itself? In the past, whenever home run totals were on the rise, controversies would break out about whether the baseball was being tinkered with. Why did that discussion suddenly vanish in the nineties?

  I don’t know the answer to that one, but—in the way of modifications to the equipment—I do know that guys were using lighter bats than they used to. Hitters could generate a lot more speed with the smaller bats, and also control them better. That led, in turn, to a feeling of empowerment and confidence at the plate; and don’t underestimate the value of confidence. Guys became more aggressive. The padding we were permitted to wear on our arms and elbows added another dimension of confidence and aggressiveness. (For that matter, earflaps on batting helmets hadn’t become mandatory until 1983.) Craig Biggio wasn’t a power hitter, but he was the first guy I remember who batted with a protective sleeve, because he had been hit by so many pitches; the thing’s displayed in the Hall of Fame. Of course, the most recognizable armor was that of Barry Bonds.

  Not surprisingly, bigger swings led to more strikeouts, and suddenly that was okay. Even with two strikes, some hitters were still swinging as hard as they could. I’m a strong believer that the acceptance of strikeouts was a significant factor in the proliferation of home runs.

  So, obviously, was the modern ballpark. One after another, playing fields became smaller and friendlier to hitters.

  These were perfect conditions for a power surge. I’d like to add that it was also a fantastic and immensely fun time to be a big leaguer. The game had some fireworks. It had some offense. I’m a huge soccer fan, and if I want a 1–0 final—like baseball had so often in the sixties, for instance (Gibson versus Marichal)—I’ll catch a game in the Italian Serie A league. Our generation fit somewhere between soccer and cricket, I guess, and I’m happy to have played in it. I’m proud of my era. It produced some of the greatest players in history—Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Tony Gwynn, Chipper Jones, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Maddux, Clemens, Bonds.

  Now, in the case of Bonds, specifically . . .

  I won’t pass judgment, as the purists will—as if comparing statistics between generations isn’t troublesome enough—on the validity of his records and numbers in the context of the BALCO steroids scandal. I’ll just say this: Barry Bonds was the very best at the essence of hitting—waiting for his pitch and getting his bat head to the baseball. Not that he was a better all-around pure hitter than Albert Pujols. I can’t go that far, because I don’t think Pujols has any weakness at the plate. He’s physically imposing, comes to bat with a very smart, intellectual approach, doesn’t strike out a lot, and utilizes the whole field to hit for both average and power. It could change for Albert, because it often does for great hitters when they get older and start compensating, sacrificing hits for home runs. But in his first ten seasons, while never hitting fewer than thirty-two home runs or failing to drive in a hundred runs, Pujols never batted below .312. I admit to a little bias on his behalf, because he and I share Danny Lozano as an agent and I’ve come to respect him on a personal level. In terms of pure hitting, though, I don’t know how you could praise Albert Pujols more than he has already been or deserves to be praised.

  Bonds is, of course, a more complicated subject; but if you observe his career in a vacuum and judge it for the way he played the game overall, the same sorts of things can be said about him. The man was nearly impossible to pitch to. There was simply nothing in his approach or swing that you could exploit. He’d take a certain pitch and you’d think he didn’t care for it, so you’d give it to him again and he’d send it to the moon. (One windy day in San Francisco, he hit a monster pop-up so high that I was reeling backward trying to catch it and fell onto my funny bone. Naturally, he then proceeded to blast a home run.) That was even in the first half of his career, before he was walking two hundred times a year. When I was with the Dodgers, our scout Jerry Stephenson once gave us his report on Bonds, and it consisted of a Peanuts cartoon he’d cut out. As a batter came to the plate, Linus walked up to Charlie Brown on the mound and said, “Charlie Brown, this is their best hitter.” And Charlie Brown said something to the effect of “Well, if you stay here long enough, maybe he’ll go away.”

  That was pretty much the strategy with Bonds. Personally, I didn’t believe in intentionally walking him as often as a lot of teams did. I thought it was actually counterproductive, because it magnified his stature and reflected a sense of awe. That’s no way to compete. When I was calling the game, I preferred to go at him and try to somehow put him on his heels, unless the situation clearly precluded it.

  I think Barry appreciated that. And I appreciated the things he could do on a ball field. Barry Bonds was the most dominant player I ever played against, and the most complete I’ve ever seen. If I could have swapped uniforms and been somebody else for a day or two, he’s the guy I would have wanted to be.

  • • •

  There’s no upside to missing the playoffs, but in 2001 there was, at least, a consolation—especially for those of us who lived in New York. It gave us some extra time to spend with people who were personally affected by 9/11.

  Bobby set the tone and the Mets organization pointed the way, to a large extent. Among other things, they arranged a baseball clinic for Staten Island children who had lost family members in the attack. Also, some of the team doctors showed us around at the hospitals where public safety workers were being treated for their injuries. Gradually, my anger receded and the sadness set in.

  It was during one of the hospital visits that I learned about a firefighter named Mike Carroll, who was one of a dozen from my neighborhood firehouse, Ladder 3, to lose his life. In addition to being a model fireman, Mike had been a great shortstop for the firehouse softball team and a Mets fan whose favorite player, for whatever odd reason, was a Sicilian-American catcher who didn’t throw so well. For his funeral mass, held at St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue, flowers were arranged on the pulpit in the shape of the NY on a Mets cap.

  Through the graces of a mutual friend, I was put in touch
with Carroll’s family and had the honor of spending a day with his wife, Nancy; brother, Bill; and young son, Brendan, who was a pretty good kid for a Yankee fan. We met for lunch and went to an indoor batting cage, where I found out that Mike Carroll had instructed his son to position his hands, as he waited for the pitch, just like I positioned mine. Then we headed over to my condo, where Brendan and I played Madden video football. It was a special day, but I’m not sure whether the Carrolls realized that it meant as much to me as it did to them.

  That winter, the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers of America honored Bobby for his work with the community after 9/11. At the same dinner, I was recognized with the “Good Guy” award for my cooperation with the media, if you can believe that. Here’s the other ironic thing about it: when I was introduced, Roger Clemens made sure that he was the first guy to stand and applaud. I guess he wanted to be the good guy.

  Anyway, I’d been scheduled as the last honoree of the evening, but somehow, at the urging of somebody, the order was switched around so that the festivities would end with Roger, who was receiving the Cy Young Award. Joe Torre also spoke, and the night turned out to be all about the Yankees, more or less. And Clemens. His mother was there, and he dedicated his award to her. My father was there, too, telling some obnoxious Yankee fans at the next table to shut up. A couple of them had been enjoying the free Yuengling and giving me a hard time, and my dad mentioned something about kicking their asses. Fortunately—considering that New York was supposed to be in a stick-together frame of mind and everything—the tables were packed in so tight, there wasn’t room for that.