Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  He was out there for anybody who wanted him. And nobody did. It surprised me, because he had power and you could see he was going to be a bigger kid. I have a copy of that report in my den, framed. The original’s in Cooperstown.

  —Brad Kohler, scout, Major League Scouting Bureau

  I attended a couple of other tryouts. One was at East Stroudsburg University. Another was put on by the Dodgers at some small college where I stayed in a motel with my dad. The reception was lukewarm. Teams recognized that I had some power, and also that I didn’t have a true position. Most first basemen were left-handed. I was a right-handed first baseman who couldn’t run and wasn’t all that slick around the bag. Looking back, I might have been a better prospect as a slugging left fielder, the svelte version of Greg Luzinski.

  Then the draft came, and I sat by the phone, and the draft was over.

  All of a sudden, blowing off high school didn’t seem like such a swell idea. I hadn’t expected to go in the first round, or any such thing, but even to the end, in spite of all the signs, I’d been unable—or maybe unwilling—to actually believe that not a single team would find me draftable. I guess that was my first heavy dose of baseball reality. It was devastating.

  For weeks, I was so depressed and distraught—pounding on my bed—that, finally, Vince and my dad bought me a brand-new Fisher stereo system, just to cheer me up. Vince said, “This is from us and the family. We love you.” I still have that stereo.

  A couple of buddies of mine were going into the Marines, and that sounded okay to me. I even took the test, and scored better than I had on any high school exam. Military recruiters were calling the house. It felt like my best option. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to mature, physically and socially.

  My dad said, “No way in hell.”

  Then he made a phone call.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The term is goombah, which is something like a godfather but not exactly. Contrary to what a lot of people thought for a long time, Tommy Lasorda is not my godfather. He’s actually the godfather to my youngest brother, Tommy. With me, he had a less formal but, thankfully, very practical relationship. As an elder, advisor, and uncle figure—my goombah—Lasorda maneuvered me, step by step, from high school to professional baseball. And always in cahoots with his friend, my father.

  At least some of that might not have been so necessary if I’d been more responsible about my schoolwork and realistic about my draft status. As it was, I was in dire need of an intervention. The summer of 1986 was sailing along and I was splashing around in a life jacket, just hoping to find land in the fall. And not just anywhere.

  Even in my predicament, I was audacious enough to dream big. In spite of their apparent indifference, I still thought I could play for the Miami Hurricanes. And I had two reasons to believe it. One was my ability to hit a baseball, which I never doubted. And the other was the clout in my corner, the one-two combination of relentless father and highly placed goombah.

  Not long after the draft, my dad mentioned to Tommy that I only had eyes for Miami—it seemed more accessible than Texas, since we already had a place in Boynton Beach, and much more my style—and Tommy stuck his neck out for me. He called the Miami coach, Ron Fraser, who, like just about everybody else who mattered in baseball, was a friend of his. It was a pretty big favor Tommy was requesting. He was asking Fraser to take a chance on a slow kid from a small school in a northern state who didn’t actually have a position or the academic standing to qualify. Needless to say, Fraser didn’t leap at the opportunity.

  In the meantime, I moonlighted for an adult team called the Skippack Skippers and put my sledgehammer skills to work on the land by the house we were building in Valley Forge, overlooking the national park that preserves the location where, in the winter of 1777, George Washington camped and trained his twelve thousand men of the Continental Army. Washington himself slept in a barn on what is now our property, which covers sixty-five acres, most of which were littered with major rocks and boulders. The ones in the vicinity of the house couldn’t stay there, so Dad designated Vince, Danny, and me as field labor, charged with pulling those suckers out of the lower ground and hauling them up to the high spot where an Italian stonemason would craft them into walls between the house and road. Vince ran the backhoe, Danny drove the truck, and my contribution was blowing up the boulders with my trusty sledgehammer.

  It was a stroke of genius on my dad’s part, because the job didn’t detract from my primary occupation, which, of course, was training for baseball. Frankly, it wasn’t fair. Vince and Danny put in long hours pushing the rocks into piles, where they would sit until I came by a couple of times a week on my breaks from the batting cage. But if my brothers resented the fact that I was on a separate program, they never really showed it. It was just part of the fabric of our family.

  For the record, the batting cage made the move, too, more or less. Dad actually changed the design of the house to stretch the basement, so he could put the cage down there. He also painted the back wall—the hitting background—white instead of green, so it would train my eyes to pick out the ball.

  That summer, through my father’s arrangements with Tommy, I also spent a few charmed weeks as a junior counselor at Mark Cresse’s baseball camp in California. Cresse was kind enough to put me up at his house, and to take me with him to the stadium every day around one thirty so I could work out on the field before serving as the Dodgers’ batboy that night. As usual, I don’t think I impressed anybody with my footwork around first base; but Lasorda took note of my power. Even batting left-handed, I’d muscle the ball high in the air, and Tommy would nod like he knew something. Through the good graces of him and my dad, I had now, at the age of seventeen, batted in three major-league ballparks.

  I was in my element during those weeks with Cresse. Mark’s son, Brad, was around ten and loved professional wrestling as much as I did. Naturally, we went at it. Brad would try to put the pretzel hold on me, and I’d respond in the spirit of Randy “Macho Man” Savage, who, as Randy Poffo, had actually played minor-league ball with Cresse in the Cardinals’ system. It was all good until one day I thought I’d really hurt Brad with a pile driver. I guess he wasn’t damaged too badly, though, because, as a catcher, he went on to become a two-time All-American at LSU, leading the nation in home runs. I’d like to think he took after me a little bit, hitting-wise. He certainly had me down pat when he mimicked my routine at the plate, which involved tugging on my shirt and holding up my hand for time until I was good and ready—trying, you know, to put the confrontation on my terms. I got it all from watching Juan Samuel with the Phillies.

  While I was in Los Angeles, I had a very welcome visitor. Fraser had sent one of his assistants, Dave Scott, to take a look at me. The tryout was at Dodger Stadium, which was a nice advantage in itself but not the biggest one. I also had the good fortune of getting to take my cuts against one of the best batting-practice pitchers in the big leagues. Cresse was laying them right in there for me, and I was crushing the ball with a wooden bat. I thought I did okay at first base, too, but Scott didn’t give a hoot about my glove. He was actually kind of freaking out about the way I hit. Knowing I didn’t have the grades to get into Miami, he said, “Okay, this is what we’re going to have to do. First, you have to go to this freshman seminar . . .”

  It amounted to a couple of classes I was required to take before the semester started, in order to qualify. So I went home, got my stuff, and headed down the coast to be a freshman All-American.

  • • •

  Yeah, right.

  There was no big scholarship waiting for me. And not much playing time. Miami had been to the College World Series the previous spring and had won it the year before. I needed to be pretty damn impressive to turn the heads of the coaching staff and earn a spot in the lineup, even for the exhibition schedule we played in the fall. I wasn’t. Fraser asked my dad, “Didn’t you ever put a glove on his hand?”

  In one of the f
all scrimmages, I was relishing the rare chance to play first base when a batter hit me a high chopper off the turf. The sun was setting directly behind home plate and I botched the play when the ball was momentarily caught in it. As I reached the dugout after the inning, the bench coach, Brad Kelley, asked me what happened. I told him. He thought I was being a smartass. He said, “You lost a ground ball in the sun?”

  That set the tone. Kelley knew his baseball—he later became the head coach—but he and I saw eye to eye on practically nothing. The Miami style called for everybody to sprint to their positions, sprint off the field, and sprint back to the dugout after an out. My attitude was, I had seen a lot of big leaguers make outs, and they didn’t run back to the dugout. Admittedly, I was a little too big-league for my britches.

  It was especially bad form for a guy as overmatched as I was. I hit bombs in batting practice—my teammates called me the best five o’clock hitter in the country—but still had to learn how to hit. I was totally unprepared, for instance, when, in an intrasquad game, I had to face a senior named Kevin Sheary, a good, polished pitcher who got drafted by the Mariners. It was the first time I’d ever seen a slider. I almost shit my pants. I was like “What was that?” It was the slider from hell.

  But if I was taken aback by the talent around me on the baseball team, I was almost in awe of Miami’s football team. That was the year the Hurricanes were ranked number one in the country, went to the Fiesta Bowl against Penn State, and got off the plane wearing army fatigues. Vinny Testaverde, Alonzo Highsmith, Michael Irvin, Melvin Bratton, Jerome Brown, Gregg Rakoczy, Brian and Bennie Blades . . . they were monsters. It was impressive just to walk into the cafeteria, down by the athletic department, and see them all at the training table. It was even more impressive to see them in the weight room.

  I kind of clicked with the football mentality and began to embrace it. I went so far as to have a barber buzz my hair, marine-style, and shave grooves into the sides, like Brian Bosworth, the controversial All-American linebacker from Oklahoma. The Boz. When I flew back to Philly for the holidays and Dad picked up me at the airport, he took a look at that haircut, flew into a rage, and threatened to leave me there.

  The baseball season started shortly after I got back to school, and I settled into life on the bench. One day, though, after watching me mash the ball in batting practice before a game against Creighton, the coaches went ahead and let me start—probably out of curiosity. I think I swung at the first pitch I saw. Ended up 0 for 4. I was way too anxious. Had no concept of taking a pitch; no concept of hitting in general. No approach. I was just swinging. If a guy had thrown me a first-pitch meatball, I might have sunk a sailboat on Biscayne Bay; but why would they?

  I didn’t play for weeks after that. I thought, well, there goes my one shot to be an All-American. I just wasn’t ready. I was probably the youngest guy on the team and extremely inexperienced, not to mention immature. In my six games, I had one hit in nine at-bats, a single against Georgetown.

  My single highlight was a tournament at the Superdome in New Orleans. I got to stay at the Hilton, take in Bourbon Street, meet a couple of ballgirls from the University of Florida, and enjoy a few adult beverages because the drinking age there was eighteen. I was quite pleased with myself when I had a hurricane for the first time and didn’t get sick. New Orleans, for me, was not just the coolest trip of the season, but the only trip, unless you count the quick one to DeLand, Florida, to play the Stetson Hatters. The first time they left me behind, I was the only guy who hadn’t made the traveling squad. I called my dad to moan about it, and he said, “That’s not right. That’s not gonna happen next year. We’re gonna talk to Tommy and get you transferred out of there.”

  But while Miami was all wrong for me, baseball-wise, it wasn’t a lost year, by any stretch. I learned humility, among other things. I really thought I was the cat’s meow in high school and figured I’d bust through college with everything going my way. My rude awakening made me think, hmm, maybe I’m not cut out for baseball. Maybe I should actually study. I was getting a little financial aid—maybe a thousand dollars a semester—but twelve credits at the University of Miami cost a lot of money. I realized that, hey, my mom and dad are shelling out quite a bit for this school; I should probably try to get something out of it. I won’t say that my grades were good, but for the first time I started to apply myself academically.

  To that end, one of my ballplayer roommates set a good example—a little first baseman with glasses named Bobby Hernandez, who was a premed student. We called him Stump. Stump clearly possessed the heart and stomach to become a doctor. He had a little dissecting kit, and—I still can’t believe he did this—he’d sit me down, sterilize his scalpel or probe or whatever it was, and lance the pimples all around my back and shoulders. It was disgusting. One time I had a big boil that he jabbed and popped, and the thing squirted all over his glasses. Stump goes, “Oh, look! It got on my glasses!”

  Aside from pimple popping, the biggest physical benefit of my time at the U was the weight program. As fanatical as I’d always been about getting strong, I was brand-new to sophisticated weight training. In high school, I did curls and whatnot on one of those sit-down stations with the stacks, which was all we had. My dad had bought me a set of cement-filled weights for Christmas one year, and every night, before I went to bed, I ripped off fifty curls and fifty presses with the dumbbells. During the day, I’d do bench presses with the bar. But as far as training systematically at a serious, vibrant, well-equipped gym, alongside motivated, high-level athletes, I’d experienced nothing remotely resembling Miami.

  The football guys had their own time set aside, and if they happened to be in there when we were, obviously we were second fiddle. The baseball team was on a totally different program, but it was specific and probably pretty advanced for the times. I thought, What do I have to squat for?

  I followed the script, but also did my own thing. I loved the steel sound of the weights knocking against each other, that clink, clink, clink. The first time I bench-pressed 185, I felt like I was really doing something. That propelled me. I got stronger and liked it. For me, though, weight training was about more than just adding muscle. It was a way to build up stamina for the wear and tear of a season. Not that there’s a whole lot of wear and tear in nine at-bats . . . but I was hooked. I started reading magazines about proper training and the right supplements to take. With the training table available to us, I ate more. It was the first time I’d ever gone so heavy on salad, fish, and meat—all the food they liked to serve the football players. I’d also run out to the health food store for protein powder and the original Joe Weider vitamin packs. To this day, I believe in protein, supplements, and shakes.

  There was another little training device I came up with after watching one of the backup quarterbacks, a black guy with huge hands, throw the football in a way I couldn’t believe. It just impressed me somehow. So I went to a guy I knew on the football team and gave him twenty bucks to steal me a football. The Wilson 1001 with the half stripe. I bought a couple, actually, and loved to toss them around with other baseball players. There’s no question that it improved my throwing.

  • • •

  Since I was only eighteen at the end of my freshman year, I had one more season of Legion ball left and finally made the Pennsylvania East-West all-star game. I also hooked up with the Skippack Skippers again, essentially regrouping while I tried to figure out what was next. Accepting the fact that I was miscast as a Hurricane and wouldn’t be missed, I had cut my ties with Miami U—but not with Miami the city. This time, when my dad talked to Tommy, Tommy said, “Well, what about Miami-Dade?”

  Back then, it was officially Miami-Dade North, a busy community college with an excellent baseball program and another coach—Demie “Doc” Mainieri—who knew the right people; a lot of his players had signed professional contracts. So I started a dialogue with Doc Mainieri. I think he might have been a little annoyed at being put on the spot. H
e wanted to accommodate Tommy but didn’t know the first thing about me. Kind of grudgingly, Doc said, “Well, I’ve got some pretty good players down here, but come on down.”

  By then I’d finagled a car out of my dad, a red Honda Prelude, so I drove south to the beats of heavy metal and took a one-bedroom apartment on Sans Souci Boulevard in North Miami, directly across the bay from Bal Harbour. I’d walk over the bridge to Bal Harbour, stare into the windows of those fancy stores, and think, I’m never going to be able to shop here. I couldn’t even eat lunch in that neighborhood. Every day, I’d have one meal in the school cafeteria and gobble down a Subway sandwich for dinner. I knew the Subway lady by name. Once I had tuna sandwiches two nights in a row and she said, “You on a diet, big boy? You’re eating a lot of tuna fish lately.”

  We started right off with fall practice, and it was evident from the outset that I was in a great environment for baseball. The first time we took infield, I thought we looked like a pro team. We had kids from Hialeah, Miami Lakes, several Cubans—no shortage of talent, including a good catcher, Pete Gonzalez, who was of Cuban descent and would become a teammate of mine in the minor leagues. There was something pure about the program. Miami-Dade was a fun place to play. I was encouraged.

  That, in fact, was by design. Doc Mainieri maintained a climate of encouragement, and I got some more of it from his son, Paul, who was coaching at St. Thomas University and eventually won a national championship at LSU. Before a practice game against Florida International, Paul gave me a perfect pep talk. He knew I’d been disheartened by my experience at Miami and told me that there’s simply no way of knowing how things will play out in baseball; you’ve got to just keep plugging. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I’d expected everything to come fast and easy, and Paul was educating me to the hard fact that sometimes—most of the time—the game doesn’t work that way. By the time spring came around, I was in good shape, physically and mentally, and it showed.