Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  That said, I suspect the Latin players were picking up vibes from me, as well. It was a clash of styles. I’m not anti-Latin by any means. For Pete’s sake, I had the initials of a Peruvian woman tattooed on my ankle. There were plenty of Latin players whom I liked, respected, and got along with just fine. Generally speaking, those were the guys who felt blessed and lucky to have the opportunity to play Major League Baseball in the United States and make a lot of money at it, just like I felt blessed and lucky. It’s a privilege. I admire the Spanish-speaking players who honor that privilege by learning the language of the nation where the dream comes true.

  When I played in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, I picked up some Spanish so that I could order my meals, talk to taxi drivers, and communicate better with my teammates. I’m currently taking Italian lessons so that I can converse with the guys I coach for the Italian national team and do a few interviews with the Italian media. It’s a matter of respect. Except for Toronto, which is an English-speaking city, Major League Baseball is played in the United States. For some Latin players, there seems to be a mentality that since they come from a less advantaged socioeconomic background, it exempts them from having to adapt to our culture. That’s misguided, in my opinion. I strongly disagreed, for instance, with Ozzie Guillen’s complaints that organizations typically provide translators for Asian players but not Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, or Mexicans. The fact is, a Japanese or Korean player would be totally isolated without an interpreter. A Latin player is far more likely to find himself in the company of teammates and even coaches who speak his language. In a sense, the Latin guys have interpreters all around them.

  I can’t speak for every club, but in my experience with the Dodgers, in particular, no category of player was more catered-to than the Latin American. To start with, the organization ran an academy in the Dominican Republic with English teachers and three square meals a day. From what I’ve seen on the larger scale, major-league teams go to great lengths to prepare their Spanish-speaking players for successful careers in the United States. And they should. I certainly don’t dispute that Latin players are entitled to the same dreams and opportunities I had, but I’m sorry: when they arrive on U.S. soil, the onus isn’t on the American players to learn Spanish, although that certainly helps; it’s on the Latin players to learn English. Speaking English permits them to better serve the ball clubs they play on, just like learning the signs or staying in shape in the off-season. It also provides benefits from the personal standpoint, connecting them to the public and making them more marketable. It’s in everybody’s best interests.

  No doubt, my views on the subject—in general, on the privilege of being a big leaguer—came through, one way or another, to the Latin players, and their attitude toward me, at least to some degree, was a response.

  There were some mixed messages coming from Mike, in a way. He had this Southern California flip-flop thing, this GQ guy with his kick-back disposition, a father who adores him and was there all the time; but there was also this stern, play-the-game-right, don’t-be-a-hotdog, run-the-ball-out attitude. Not one time did I ever see Mike just jog to first base on a ground ball, even a ground ball to the second baseman. Here he is catching a hundred and forty games a year, trying to leg out infield singles. Often, on ground balls to the shortstop, he wouldn’t run past the bag but just bang his foot down on the bag trying to beat it out. The trainer would cringe. It always seemed amazing that he didn’t blow out an Achilles or something.

  That’s just how he approached the game, and sometimes the Dominican [style] would bother Mike. When guys were fucking around, his thing was, cut it out, let a sleeping dog lie. He’d say that all the time. Don’t make other players want to kick your ass.

  —Al Leiter

  We hung in the race for the first few months of the season, and I have to say that Pedro Martinez had more to do with it than I did. In the back of Randolph’s mind, he probably wished he didn’t have to play me as much as my salary more or less dictated. Around mid-April, I did muscle up for one of my longest home runs—a shot off Vicente Padilla at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia that landed up by Bull’s BBQ (Greg Luzinski’s place) in the left-center-field pavilion—but my stats stunk and my throwing hadn’t gotten much better, in spite of the fact that I had hired Steve Yeager to work with my catching mechanics.

  That was my dad’s idea. I learned a lot from Yeager, but my body was simply deteriorating at that point. I did think, however, that I did a nice job with the pitching staff, Pedro included, although Ramon Castro got several of the starts when Pedro pitched.

  In June, I actually got ejected arguing balls and strikes on Pedro’s behalf. Well, that’s stretching it, I guess; but it started out that way. Eric Cooper was the umpire on a Sunday afternoon when we played the Angels at Shea, and I thought he squeezed Pedro on the first two pitches of the ball game. So Cooper and I had a chippy little dialogue going on (some of my teammates, in fact, were calling me Chip in those days), and when I came to bat he rang me up on a three-two pitch. I had a thing or two to say about it, and kept riding him when I got to the dugout, at which point he tossed me. In a rage, I bolted out of the dugout toward Cooper and might have earned myself a hefty suspension if Mientkiewicz hadn’t intercepted me in the on-deck circle.

  Mientkiewicz, in fact, kept me in check on a regular basis with his interventions. When I was slumping and moping—so out of sorts at the plate that I was chasing bad pitches, which I didn’t ordinarily do—he told me that I’d probably be leading the league in home runs if I played in a normal ballpark, which was a lie but a helpful one. Cliff Floyd was another guy with a talent for being able to make a friend feel and sometimes play better. That’s what a good teammate is all about.

  Floyd also had a huge power season going, which made him an even better teammate. Together, he and David Wright, who came into his own as a big-time player that year, more than compensated for the drop-off in my hitting. We had also added Carlos Beltran, a switch-hitting center fielder who strengthened the middle of our lineup when he moved into the three-hole. For the first time in a few years, we weren’t bad. I only wish I could have said the same about myself.

  I did, however, make my twelfth all-star team, joining Beltran at Comerica Park in Detroit. I started the game for the eleventh time and was hoping to catch Clemens again, to improve upon our misadventure of the year before. But when he entered the game to pitch the fifth inning, I left in favor of Paul Lo Duca, who, like me back in the day, had been traded from the Dodgers to the Marlins.

  • • •

  A couple of days before the all-star break, Randolph had nudged me from the cleanup spot back to fifth in the batting order. Floyd moved up. I understood. Then, less than a week after the break, Wright moved up, deservedly, to the five-hole, and I found myself batting sixth. In early August, I sank to seventh.

  It was a blow to the ego, but nothing I was compelled to complain about—I didn’t want to be just another guy who couldn’t face the fact that he wasn’t what he used to be—and nothing that I didn’t see coming. All signs pointed to the fact that the Mets were phasing me out. It was a reality I chose not to fight.

  Then, for three weeks starting in mid-August, I wasn’t in the lineup at all. A bone in my wrist was fractured by a foul tip off the bat of Freddy Sanchez of the Pirates. By that time, although we still had a winning record, we’d fallen into last place in our loaded division. When I came off the disabled list on September 10, we had dropped under .500, twelve games behind the Braves.

  That night we played in St. Louis, and in my first at-bat I gave us a 1–0 lead with a solo home run off Jeff Suppan. But we trailed, 4–1, when I led off the eighth against Julian Tavarez, a tall, slender right-hander from the Dominican Republic. He humped up and nailed me in the right earflap.

  I left the game with a concussion, but something happened in the bottom of the inning that hurt worse. Randolph and Sandy Alomar, a former big-league infielder from Puerto
Rico who was one of our coaches, got hooked up in a heavy discussion over who we were going to throw at in retaliation. Randolph’s original thought was to wait for Albert Pujols, who was due up fourth against Aaron Heilman, but Sandy said something like “No, you can’t hit Albert. He’s a much better player than Mike is right now.”

  That jolted me on two levels. One, it sounded like a little more of the Latin conspiracy that I was increasingly convinced of. And two, it was a big-time reality check. Make that a kick in the nuts. A couple of years before, I’d have been an even exchange for Pujols. I like Albert a lot, and I didn’t want to see him hurt, but he knew he was the one who was supposed to get drilled in that situation. Instead, we hit David Eckstein. Don’t get me wrong, Eckstein was a tough dude and I admired the way he played; but he stood five foot six and muscled up for a home run about every other month or so. All of a sudden, the payback for me is David Eckstein? That was a big, fat humble pie in the face.

  It also let me know exactly what the Mets thought of me at that point, confirming, for all practical purposes, that they had no intention of re-signing me and I’d be out of there in a few weeks. But not before I had a few choice words for Sandy Alomar. I confronted him on the spot.

  That, however, didn’t settle the matter of Tavarez. After the game, I stormed over to the Cardinals’ clubhouse to find him. Tony La Russa spotted me first and took me back to his office. He apologized, and one of the St. Louis owners did the same, which I appreciated; but I still wanted to see Tavarez. It didn’t happen. Plan B was to fight him the next day before the game. I waited through batting practice to catch him coming off the field, but he eluded me by walking out through the center-field gate. That was my last shot at him for the season.

  The following spring, I was training in Florida with the Italian national team before the World Baseball Classic and riding with Frank Catalanotto of the Blue Jays, telling Frank how badly I wanted to beat the shit out of Julian Tavarez, when we pulled up to the Ritz-Carlton and there he was. Frank said, “Here’s your chance.”

  I walked up and Tavarez goes, “What’s up, my friend Mike Piazza?” He had a phone to his ear.

  “Get off the phone,” I said. “I want to talk to you. Let’s take a walk.”

  I was waiting for him to say, “Fuck you,” but he started yammering and yabba-dabba-dooing and asked me why I didn’t charge Roger Clemens. Mota, Pedro, Tavarez—they all said the same thing. I’m not sure why I didn’t punch him right then and there.

  Out of all the guys who hit me, I felt that Julian was the one whose ass I definitely should have kicked. But I guess I’ve mellowed since then. Away from the game, my anger has subsided somewhat. When I saw Tavarez on the occasion of the Marlins’ last game at Sun Life Stadium, we exchanged greetings and he even introduced me to his family. Seemed like nice people.

  • • •

  As the Mets’ support of me slackened, the fans’ actually picked up. It was a significantly different dynamic than I’d endured in Los Angeles, when the organization had effectively alienated me from its constituency. At Shea, the customers gave me a standing ovation every time I hit a home run.

  I was moved—not only by the gestures but by the evolution of my relationship with New York. That first year, the Mets’ crowds had booed me unreasonably. Seven years later, here they were cheering me unreasonably. I think—I hope—that, through all the weirdness and drama, they appreciated my role in reestablishing the Mets as a credible, capable franchise. It’s something I was proud of.

  The loudest home run cheer may have been the one for my nineteenth and last of 2005, a 450-footer in the opener of our four-game, season-ending series against the Rockies, which everyone pretty much understood would mark my farewell as a Met. Appropriately, David Wright hit two that night, and Glavine threw a two-hit shutout that I thoroughly enjoyed catching. The victory, 11–0, assured us of at least a .500 season.

  By the time Sunday came around—the final game of the year—I thought I was ready for it. The warmth of the fans hadn’t budged my feeling that it was time to move on, and I was fairly certain it hadn’t changed the organization’s position, either. In my mind, in fact, the good karma served as reassurance that this, indeed, should be my so-long to Shea. I went to the stadium mass that morning in a melancholy mood.

  The sermon was about the victims of 9/11. It got me. Combusting with my frame of mind, it rekindled all the emotions of that time, from the horror of the event to the high of the home run. It reminded me, also, of how that ternble day in 2001 had clearly divided my eight seasons with the Mets. We’d been on the rise before it and the decline thereafter; and the same applied to me. As I listened, the scenes and tribulations of those years came swirling back in my memory—that first day at Shea, with thousands of people walking up for tickets; the sleepless nights that year; the tough decision whether to stay in New York; seeing your breath in April home games; Bobby V; the Subway Series; Clemens; the smoke over the city; the rumors; the injuries; first frigging base . . . Finally, I had to get up and move to the back of the room, off by myself.

  Ordinarily, when there’s a lot running through a ballplayer’s mind, the field itself is a refuge. But on the way to it this time, walking through the tunnel, I had to stop and collect myself. The weight of the day was pushing on my head, and along with it, there was something else—something even heavier—that I found uncomfortable. It was the first time I’d ever sensed that a particular ball game was largely about me.

  To start, I’d always felt a certain amount of uneasiness about being a star, especially in New York. I wasn’t drawn to the spotlight the way Reggie Jackson was, for instance, or Joe Namath. If anything, I shied away from the attentions of the media. The more they pried, the more I shied. Usually I could get away from all that by losing myself in the competitiveness of a baseball game, but the outcome of this game wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of difference. If we lost, the Marlins could tie us for third place in the division. The Rockies would finish last in theirs, either way. Other than my every move, there was little else for 47,718 pairs of eyeballs to focus on.

  I might have convinced myself that the whole ballpark wasn’t really watching me if half the people there hadn’t been wearing the number 31. But I was flattered by that, and also by the observation of Sheldon Souray, the hockey player who had introduced me to Alicia. He said the cool thing about my jersey was that anybody could wear it, from a teeny-bopper to a punk rocker to a young professional to a pipefitter to a grandparent. There certainly seemed to be all types at Shea that day. To indulge them, and me, Randolph turned back the clock and wrote me into the cleanup spot.

  Victor Zambrano was pitching for us—and pitching and pitching and pitching. He walked only three, but it seemed like a dozen. In less than six innings, his pitch count approached 120. The Rockies were swinging at first pitches—they wanted to get the hell out of there and go home—but Zambrano insisted on running up the count anyway. Colorado, meanwhile, was pitching a sinkerballer, Aaron Cook, and he kept grounding me out to the shortstop. Three times, I grounded out to short and the crowd cheered as though I’d smoked the ball off the scoreboard, where, from time to time, the Mets were putting up video highlights of some of my better swings and moments.

  Then, during the seventh-inning stretch, they showed my feature video, which, to their credit, was very cool, set to “The Great Divide” by Scott Stapp from Creed. I happened to look over into the Rockies’ dugout, and they were standing and applauding—a nice gesture. When the video was finished, the fans brought me out for three curtain calls. I gotta tell you, it was touching. To be taken in as a true, appreciated Met, after all the ups and downs and controversies . . . Not knowing quite what to do, I bowed and blew kisses.

  I was still 0 for 3 when I reported to my position behind the plate in the top of the eighth and Mike DiFelice trotted out to replace me. Randolph was allowing me to receive one final ovation as I left the field. It was a loaded moment. I could see people crying
in the crowd. At the same time, my dad and brothers were up in our box going, “No! Give him one more at-bat! He may go deep!”

  Willie was criticized for removing me prematurely, because I would have come up to hit in the bottom of the eighth, but I had no complaint. There was no dramatic stroke in me at that point; no stirring send-off about to happen. There just wasn’t. Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ PR guy, had said to me that he’d never seen a player who could rise to the occasion in a big-time situation the way I could, and I cherished that remark, but, to me, this wasn’t that kind of situation. We were losing badly in a game that scarcely mattered. Besides, I was emotionally spent and Aaron Cook was still firing up that damn sinkerball. As they say, it was all over but the shouting. And I was okay with that. I actually thought there was a metaphor in the fact that I hadn’t been able to deliver that one crowning memory. My tank was empty. I had some more baseball left in me—of that, I was pretty sure—but no more New York.

  The city had made me older faster, in this respect: While it’s true that, as the years pile up, it gets harder for your body to recover, it’s even harder for your spirit to keep bouncing back. Passion is what New York uses up in a player, like no other town. Mentally exhausted, generally jaded, and physically torn apart, I had none in reserve. Not as a Met, anyhow. The emotion of my final game at Shea was a reaffirmation not only of that but also of the wrenching judgment I’d made seven years before, when I decided, against the testimony of all that had happened and the advice of people I respected, to sign and stay. It was the right call.