Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  If nothing else, the attitude and general bullshit gave us an indication that New York was on its way back to being itself. At least as far as the trivial stuff. On the larger scale, of course, the country was still grieving, frightened, economically reeling, and very much at war. What we all fervently wished for, in 2002, was that life would return to normal.

  I have to say, the Mets did their part. In 2002, we were Team Tabloid.

  After the disappointment of our 2001 performance, the front office obviously wasn’t going for continuity. Steve Phillips traded Zeile, Agbayani, Glendon Rusch, and Kevin Appier. Ventura left to sign a free-agent contract with the Yankees. On top of that, Franco would miss the season after Tommy John surgery. The only returning regulars would be me, Alfonzo, and our shortstop, Rey Ordonez. Only Leiter and Steve Trachsel were back in the starting rotation. But Phillips was working hard on the roster, and not being cheap about it. Coming our way were outfielder Roger Cedeno, who’d been with us in 1999; outfielder Jeromy Burnitz, who’d driven in a hundred runs for the Brewers the year before; Pedro Astacio, who’d been in the Dodgers’ rotation when I was with them; Shawn Estes, another starting pitcher; and, through trades, two big-time, thirty-four-year-old veterans from the American League, Roberto Alomar and Mo Vaughn.

  Alomar, known as a fantastic second baseman, had just put up a monster season in Cleveland. Vaughn, who had three years and $46 million remaining on a six-year contract he’d signed with the Angels, had been sidelined for 2001 with a biceps injury on top of his chronic knee and ankle troubles. He reported to Port St. Lucie at 275 pounds. Thus began our soap-opera season.

  I had a prominent scene in the first week of Grapefruit games. It started rolling when I was smacked on the forearm as I raised it to block a fastball coming at my head from Eric Gagne of the Dodgers. The next inning, Brian Jordan, who’d been traded to the Dodgers by the Braves for Gary Sheffield, was brushed on the thigh by Mark Guthrie. Jordan—that guy again—got ticked off and accused Valentine of ordering Guthrie to hit him. Bobby more or less denied it, but also told the L.A. Times, “Good. Let everybody know we’re going to protect our guys. No doubt, our pitchers know Mike is a very valuable part of our team. My guy got hit on the arm real hard, and he could have been hurt and sidelined for a while. Their guy got hit on the belt buckle.”

  Bobby was just fulfilling his obligation to discourage pitchers from fulfilling their obligations by throwing at me, the same way La Russa sometimes made a public stink when a pitch came in extra tight on Pujols. The underlying premise is that, in the tradition of protecting its own, it’s not unusual for a team to make the point with a purpose pitch to the best player on the other side.

  Sometimes that decision is made from the bench, but more often by the pitcher himself. The catcher rarely gets involved; or at least I didn’t, unless I was asked for an opinion. For example, when Antonio Osuna clipped Barry Bonds in 1997, that was entirely Osuna’s call—his reaction to Julian Tavarez throwing behind Eric Karros. Bonds was the only batter Osuna hit that year in more than sixty-one innings. He was happy to do it. I liked Barry, but it wasn’t my position to interfere with the natural order of the game. When a catcher does that, people take note. I was told by Houston players that when Eric Yelding once crushed Jeff Reed of the Reds in a play at home plate, it was because Reed was observed giving the “flip” sign—the little signal, like flipping a coin, that tells a pitcher to get the ball inside and leave a mark. But I can say that, of all the times I was hit or thrown at, I never thought to blame the catcher.

  At any rate, Bobby’s warning didn’t scare anybody off. In all, I was drilled four times that spring, which isn’t right. The third time, I had to miss a couple games. By the fourth, I’d had it.

  Coincidentally or not, we were playing the Dodgers again, in Vero Beach. Guillermo Mota, who’d just been traded to the Dodgers a few days before, was pitching in the seventh inning. The count was 3–0, and he nailed me in the small of the back. He’d been struggling with his control, and I might have given him the benefit of the doubt; but like I said, that always depended on the pitcher’s reaction—or the pitcher’s reaction to my reaction. Mota didn’t appear to be in a conciliatory state of mind when I glared at him and asked, “What the fuck?” He answered with a stare and a gesture that reflected some belligerence, in my opinion.

  Knowing that he’d be finished after that inning and had to walk past our bench on his way to the clubhouse, I took my time changing my shoes, waiting for an opportunity to chat. As I did, I happened to notice the other Dodgers slapping hands with him. It might have been a simple case of standard congratulations, but under the circumstances, it was one of those little things that made me go, hmmm.

  By the time Mota strolled by our side, I was steaming. I threw my bag over my shoulder, strode up to him, and said, “You got a problem with me?”

  He contended that he didn’t mean to hit me. It wasn’t convincing. I forget exactly what I said next, but as I said it I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and pushed him away.

  His subsequent comment, when talking to reporters, was “Why didn’t he do that to Roger Clemens?” He also said that he’d remember what happened.

  And I’d remember that he said it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Bobby Valentine had some mysterious ways. On a Tuesday night in mid-April 2002, we beat the Braves for the second time in a row to hold our lead on first place and, more important, move three and a half games ahead of Atlanta. There was an afternoon game the next day, a circumstance in which it’s fairly customary for the backup catcher to get the start. I figured that might be the case in this instance, considering that I’d been dealing with a bruised knee from when Chipper Jones rammed into me at home plate, a bump on the head from yet another guy—this time, Corey Patterson—conking me on his backswing, and a tight back, which had me taking muscle relaxers in the middle of ball games. It’s kind of helpful to know ahead of time if you’re going to get a day off, so before I left the park, I checked with Bobby. As I expected, Bobby said, “Oh yeah, yeah, you’ll have tomorrow off.”

  There was no batting practice scheduled for Wednesday, so I showed up a little later than usual, dressed in a suit for the trip to Montreal after the game. I dropped off my suitcase with Charlie Samuels, our clubhouse manager, meandered over to the lineup card, and did a double take. My name was smack in the middle of it.

  Naturally, the beat writers had already seen the lineup and taken note of my tardiness. They were watching me for a reaction, and I was hoping they couldn’t read my thoughts. Al Leiter and I had talked about Bobby’s occasional breaches of credibility, and this time he was making me look bad in full view of the media. It smelled like a setup, like the incident in 2000 when he reamed me out in front of the team. Bobby, I suspected, was messing with my head, embarrassing me for the purpose of proving who was in charge. He knew what he’d told me, he knew I’d come in late, and he knew how it would look if I were in the lineup.

  We lost the game, 2–1, and I was held to one single. Afterward, Wallace Matthews of the New York Post asked me about the mix-up. I laughed it off. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was part of a bigger issue on the ball club.

  Because of the huge shadow that the Yankees cast in the city, it seemed to me and other players that the Mets chronically catered to the press in the continual effort to get attention. In the process, they often exposed us—almost sacrificed us, in effect—to the jaws of the New York media monster. Our publicity director, Jay Horwitz, was a good guy who worked hard and loved the ball club, but I felt that he was more loyal to the writers and broadcasters than he was to the players. For example, I always had pretty good chemistry with Mike (Francesa) and the Mad Dog (Christopher Russo) on WFAN. They would rip me from time to time, but I could deal with that as long as it wasn’t incessant or too personal. My problem, specifically, was with being asked to come on the show the day after they’d been tearing me to shreds. Jay would practically beg me to do i
t, and I’d be like “You can’t reward them for that shit. You’ve got to make them hurt a little bit. You’ve got to say, ‘Screw you guys. If you change your tune a little bit, maybe I’ll come back on the show.’ ” They could respect that. They were big boys. I just felt that the Mets needed to look after their own a little bit. Their position seemed to be that players come and go but the newspapers and stations will always be around. The effect, for us, was a sense that we were constantly walking the plank with sharks circling below. That was certainly the feeling I came away with on that April 17.

  Less than a week later, I was sidelined for five games with a strained hamstring. The last of those games happened to fall on a Sunday afternoon when they were giving away my bobblehead doll. That morning, while I was on the training table, trying to get myself ready to catch on Tuesday in Arizona, Bobby walked in and said, “You know, a lot of people are coming here to see you play.”

  I said, “Bobby, you want me to risk hurting myself more, and missing more games, so I can entertain the crowd on bobblehead day?”

  No doubt, he was getting pressure from the front office. It was reminiscent of the time when I was nursing an injury before the first spring training game and Jeff Wilpon came around asking if I could at least pinch-hit because they were expecting a sellout. For the Mets, there was never a break in that perpetual struggle to please everybody. The fallout, for me, was major drama seemingly every time I was due for a day of rest.

  That type of drama, though, I could anticipate. Nothing could have prepared me for the stuff that hit the fan on Monday, May 20.

  • • •

  It was a day off that we spent in Philadelphia, after flying in from San Diego. There was some convenience, I suppose, in being near my family when that kind of hell broke loose, but it wasn’t really necessary. If I’d been holed up in my condo in New York City, with taxis honking and Guns N’ Roses blasting in my headphones, I could have heard my father bellowing when he got the news.

  The adventure began with an interview Bobby Valentine did for the June issue of a magazine called Details. Chris Isenberg, the young guy who put the interview together, had been a batboy for Bobby in Texas, and Bobby was trying to help the kid along. They talked about a variety of subjects, and then Isenberg asked whether baseball was ready for a gay player. Bobby offered up a straightforward, politically correct response.

  The magazine itself wasn’t out yet when a copy of the article reached Neal Travis, a gossip writer for the New York Post. His reaction was to publish an item based on Bobby’s statement that, yes, baseball was “probably ready for an openly gay player.” From that, somehow, Travis extrapolated that perhaps “Valentine is getting in first, before one of his big guns is outed.”

  And who might that be?

  “There is a persistent rumor around town that one Mets star who spends a lot of time with pretty models in clubs is actually gay and has started to think about declaring his sexual orientation. The rumor even goes so far as to say that the player and a still-closeted local TV personality recently purchased a house together in a ritzy New York suburb.”

  The whole episode was such a strange, incredible phenomenon . . . I still don’t get it. I don’t know where the rumor came from—although I’ve heard many theories, including one that I suppose makes the most sense to me, involving a former teammate and his agent. (If I take that much further, I’ll be like the Post. I’ll stop at saying that the spurious gossip to which Travis referred might have started on Wall Street, passed through Long Island, and been the product of a coordinated campaign of misinformation.)

  Anyway, as soon as Danny heard of the Post report, he phoned to say that he’d already received a call from Jay Horwitz of the Mets, informing him that the rumors were all over the airwaves and the club wanted to set up a conference call with those two (Danny and Horwitz), me, Steve Phillips, and Fred Wilpon.

  When we got hooked up, Fred was supportive and very concerned, assuring me that all he cared about was my reputation and that the club would have my back. Knowing that there would be a lot of media waiting for me the next day at the Vet, somebody broached the idea of a press conference. I didn’t want to do anything that formal. I respected and got along well with Dave Waldstein of the Newark Star-Ledger, so Danny suggested that we ask Dave to toss me a question about the rumors. We agreed, and Danny called Waldstein. We figured my comments would maybe show up in the notes sections of the papers and everybody would move on.

  Tuesday evening, I made myself available outside our dugout during batting practice. The notebooks, cameras, microphones, and tape recorders came out, reporters leaned several-deep into a semicircle, and Waldstein asked me, flat out, if I was gay.

  “I’m not gay,” I said. “I’m heterosexual. I can’t control what people think. I can say I’m heterosexual. I date women. That’s pretty much it. I don’t see a need to address it any further. I deny those rumors. I don’t know how they got started. I don’t know why. I don’t know where. But obviously, these things do not apply to me at all.

  “I can’t control what people think. I can only say what I know and what the truth is, and that’s that I’m heterosexual and I date women. That’s it. End of story.”

  Yeah, I wish that had been the end of the story. Even the story about the story became a story. Wallace Matthews wrote a column critical of the article by Neal Travis, who was a colleague at the New York Post, and the Post refused to print it. The next morning, Matthews—who in effect was defending me against “scurrilous” (as he called it) journalism—successfully submitted the column to a national website, and prefaced it with harsh remarks about the Post. That afternoon, the Post released a statement saying that it had terminated him. (Matthews contended that he had quit.) I’d had my differences with Wally, but this time I had to tip my cap to him for his guts and principles.

  Meanwhile, my dad wanted to sue everybody in sight. I think—no, I’m sure—the incident hurt him more than it hurt me. He was distraught. I was more dumbfounded than anything. And awakened.

  The experience changed me almost immediately. I’d never strayed far from my Catholicism, but at that point I reaffirmed my faith. I became more inward and philosophical, lower-key. I realized that the life of the playboy sports star wasn’t fulfilling me or even making me superficially happy. I was carrying on that way, in large part, because I felt like I should, and I felt like I should because everybody else seemed to think so. I’d allowed myself to be caught in a tangle of image and expectation. It had only made me excessively public and inherently vulnerable, an object of invasion, speculation, and innuendo.

  What offended me most about the whole to-do was not the charge of being homosexual. It was the general insinuation that, if I were gay, I wouldn’t want everybody knowing about it. That I’d perpetuate a lie in the interest of some personal agenda. I found it hugely insulting that people believed I’d go so far out of my way—living with Playmates, vacationing with actresses, showing up at nightclubs—to act out a lifestyle that would amount to a charade. If I was gay, I’d be gay all the way. I had plenty of faults and character flaws, but being fake was never one of them. I was proud of that.

  I was proud, also, of the friends who came to my defense. A reporter from the Post got hold of Darlene Bernaola, and she told him, “Mike is definitely not gay. Our sex life was very, very healthy. Do you think a gay man would have my initials tattooed on his ankle?”

  Vance Wilson, our backup catcher, was probably the most defiant guy on the ball club, saying that the rumors were an embarrassment to the New York media. Even opposing players offered support in their own ways. That Wednesday night, I singled and was standing at first base next to the Phillies’ first baseman, Travis Lee, when some of the fans—good Philadelphia boys—yelled out, “Travis, don’t get too close to his ass!” Travis said, “What the fuck is wrong with people?”

  I couldn’t answer that. And other than Neal Travis, I couldn’t blame the situation on anybody in particular, at l
east not definitively. Certainly not Bobby. He had given an honest, seemingly innocuous answer that became embellished and distorted in the subsequent spinning. Then Travis repeated a rumor and fired the starting pistol. This all came at a time when blogs and online forums were just getting hot and a whole lot of silly stuff was going unchecked. The Internet was a cesspool of irresponsible rumormongering, and I was a convenient casualty. A common theme had me being spotted at gay bars in Manhattan’s Chelsea district.

  It didn’t let up for a while. On one baseball website, the fashion was to post gay jokes under my name. They called it Piazza-posting. In the meantime, I received a call from a woman with Fox News in Los Angeles who said she wanted to sit down and let me tell my side of the story. My side of what? I didn’t have a side of anything. There was no story. There was nothing to tell.

  As I might have expected, David Letterman absolutely crushed me. It may have had something to do with the fact that I’d snubbed his show years before in order to take my trip to Hawaii with Debbe Dunning; but more likely, the material was just too easy for him. He got me more than once, and even held up the tabloid headline that screamed I’M NOT GAY next to a full-page picture of me. My brother Vince said I should go on the show and punch him in the face. I opted to laugh at the jokes.

  Then there was the song called “Piazza, New York Catcher”—by a Scottish band, Belle and Sebastian—that made reference to the rumors (“Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?”) and was actually on the sound track of the movie Juno. All in all, the saga had a phenomenal shelf life. Further adding to it was the ironic coincidence that there is a well-known activist named Michael S. Piazza, who was the leader of the world’s largest gay-and-lesbian church and has authored several books on issues related to homosexuality. He lives in Dallas and, as far as I know, is not related to me.