Long Shot

by Mike Piazza

  But we had Leiter ready for game five, and I always felt good about it when Al was pitching under pressure. Of course, they felt the same way about Pettitte, who was making his nineteenth postseason start in six years—and wasn’t half finished yet.

  They scored first on a second-inning home run by Bernie Williams. We went ahead with a couple of cheap runs in the third. Jeter homered to tie it in the sixth. In the ninth, Leiter struck out Martinez and O’Neill but walked Posada and gave up a single to Brosius. And then, for all of the Yankees’ handsomely paid, widely admired, big-game superstars, it was Luis Sojo who singled up the middle to bring in the lead run. Another came home on a throwing error by Payton to make it 4–2.

  I stepped to the plate as the tying run in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and Agbayani on—Rivera pitching, of course—but my fly ball to center field wasn’t deep enough.

  It was the story of the Series. I couldn’t deliver a punch.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We’d grown accustomed to winning. Over the three seasons beginning with 1998, the Mets had put up the best record in baseball short of the two teams we were chronically judged against, the Braves and Yankees. Notwithstanding our World Series disappointment, we were movin’ on up. In that spirit, I sold my New Jersey house to a horse trainer and left for a penthouse condominium in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park.

  Meanwhile, Mike Hampton, after winning fifteen games and rubbing a few people the wrong way in his only season as a Met, sought his prosperity elsewhere, signing a free-agent contract with the Colorado Rockies that made him the highest-paid pitcher in the game. Our own free-agent signing, Kevin Appier, took his place in the rotation. We were positioned for more of the same in 2001.

  At the end of May, however, we were somehow ten miserable games under .500, already trailing the Phillies by thirteen and Atlanta, which was having its own uncharacteristic troubles, by five. Inexplicably, we stunk. Zeile’s production was down and Alfonzo’s and Ventura’s were way down.

  My problems, once again, were primarily on the defensive end, throwing out base stealers. In June, Gary Carter, the Hall of Famer who was a minor-league catching instructor for the Mets, spoke out to the New York Times and suggested strongly that I consider switching positions. He referred to my percentage of throwing out runners as “horrible.” I know that Gary was trying to be supportive in his own way, one of his points being that I could better preserve my knees, hands, and body if I moved out from behind the plate, presumably to first base. I appreciated the health benefits of what he was talking about—at the time, for instance, my back was acting up—but frankly, the whole thing stung me a bit, and it was getting old. From all directions, it was becoming an annual refrain that I just couldn’t bring myself to hum along with. Catching had been my ticket into professional baseball in the first place, and on some fundamental level I equated my success with my position. I was reluctant and probably a little frightened to give it up. I felt that, if I began to dabble at first base, it wouldn’t be long at all before I was over there full-time. To me, it seemed like more of a life change than just a position change; sort of like checking into a nursing home before the kids started college. I didn’t care to entertain that notion until I absolutely had to. And the way I saw it, that moment had not arrived. I was still an all-star catcher.

  Besides, I had a clever, one-step solution to all my problems. I dyed my hair blond. It was so intimidating that, in the tenth inning of a game in Houston, the Astros walked me intentionally with one out and nobody on base.

  Roger Clemens avoided me, as well, when we played the Yankees that year. Joe Torre saw to it, even though Clemens’s regular turn in the rotation came up when we played in June at Shea and again in July at Yankee Stadium, just before the All-Star Game. I guess Torre had seen enough of the circus. He said he was concerned that, if Roger hit me accidentally, nobody would believe it. (Incidentally . . . before the season, MLB had sent around a memorandum to umpires that confirmed their prerogative to eject a pitcher who they believed had deliberately thrown at a hitter’s head. I’m not sure I would have supported that concept before my encounters with Clemens in 2000, but my perspective had effectively been revised.)

  I did face Clemens at the All-Star Game in Seattle. He started for the American League, I batted sixth for the National, and my fly ball to right field on a three-two fastball completed his two perfect innings. That mundane little out was apparently so fascinating that it warranted twenty minutes of interviews after the game. I should note, though, that it wasn’t the only topic of conversation. There was a more memorable moment that night, with indirect connections to me in two respects. It involved a broken bat and Tommy Lasorda.

  Since we’d won the pennant the year before, Bobby Valentine was the National League manager. Although Lasorda had been Bobby’s first minor-league manager, they’d never worked together in the same dugout; so Bobby invited him to Seattle in an honorary capacity. Tommy didn’t disappoint. He delivered a classic, X-rated pep talk before the game: “Those motherfuckers over there want to beat your fucking ass. . . .” MLB actually taped it and gave me a copy.

  Unfortunately, the American League owned us in all-star games during that period. This time, I was catching my old teammate Chan Ho Park in the third inning when Cal Ripken Jr., in his last of twenty-one seasons and nineteen straight all-star games, opened the scoring with a home run. As poignant as that was, however, the night’s enduring image came in the sixth inning, with the American League leading 2–1, Mike Stanton pitching to Vladimir Guerrero, and Tommy coaching third base. He was having a good time of it, chattering away in full glory, going through his whole repertoire and entertaining everyone within earshot, as Guerrero took a whack at a pitch in on his fists and fractured his bat at the handle. The fat part hurtled right at Tommy and caught him with a glancing blow to the left hip, sending him tumbling over on his back, feet in the air. He nearly completed a backward somersault, then rolled over on his side and popped right up. I was pretty scared—Tommy was seventy-three years old—but everybody else seemed to think it was hilarious. Bonds ran out to give him a chest protector. All right, that was funny. I thought it was less amusing, though, when they replayed the entire thing on the big scoreboard at Safeco Field. Maybe I just wasn’t in a laughing mood, since we were on our way to losing our fifth straight All-Star Game.

  For that matter, there was nothing humorous about the way the Mets’ season was going, either. At the break, we were in fourth place and the Braves had finally found their groove to nearly catch the Phillies.

  We continued to flounder, reaching our low point—fourteen games under .500—in Los Angeles on August 17. But we won the next two in Los Angeles, the first two back home against Colorado, and then, who can explain it? How can a team playing so badly all year start playing so well all of a sudden?

  Over a stretch of twenty-one games, up to September 8, we won seventeen. The next day was a Sunday, and we had a chance to even our record for the first time since the fourth game of the season. Instead, we lost a slugfest in Florida. And on that down note we flew to Pittsburgh, where we’d have Monday off before starting a three-game series with the Pirates on Tuesday.

  • • •

  Danny came to Pittsburgh, and we met a few of the Mets at a bar to watch the Broncos beat the Giants on Monday Night Football. It was late, for me, when I got back to the Vista Hotel, so I turned off my cell phone and was sleeping hard on Tuesday morning when the room phone rang, which surprised me, because I’d checked in under an alias. When it wouldn’t stop, I finally picked up.

  It was Danny, shouting at me: “Turn on the TV!”

  “What for?”

  “They attacked the World Trade Center!”

  “What? Who attacked the World Trade Center?”

  “The terrorists! They hit us good! Turn on the TV!”

  He didn’t know yet what had actually happened. We stayed on the line and were both watching when the second plane flew head-on
into one of the most famous landmarks in New York City. At that moment we realized, as most Americans did, that life in the world’s greatest country had suddenly, tragically, changed.

  We had no idea, however, that Al Qaeda terrorists had also hijacked a plane—United Airlines Flight 93, scheduled from Newark to San Francisco—that was crossing over our heads, eastbound toward Washington, D.C., after being turned around somewhere in Ohio; that four hijackers had taken over the cockpit; that the passengers, learning through phone calls that the World Trade Center and Pentagon had been struck by airplanes, were gathering to overpower the terrorists; that one of the heroes, Todd Beamer, would turn to the others and say, “Let’s roll!” That Flight 93 would crash in a field about eighty miles southeast of us.

  As the sickening day developed, there was an emotion inside me that overwhelmed the gloom. I felt rage. There were children on those planes. There were mothers and fathers in those buildings. It was peacetime. It was an unprovoked assault on a nation and system of values that mean everything to me. I was consumed.

  I don’t know if it even crossed my mind that we had a ball game that night. As it turned out, we didn’t. The baseball schedule was suspended for the rest of the week. Our focus was getting back to New York; but of course, all flights were canceled. In the meantime, the Mets, afraid that Pittsburgh might be targeted, moved us to a motor inn outside the city.

  The next day, we climbed into two buses for the ride back. Somebody put on a Jim Carrey movie—Me, Myself & Irene—thinking that maybe it would break the spell, but nobody was up to comedy. We switched to The Cider House Rules, but shut it off as soon as the New York skyline came into view, approaching midnight. We were still in New Jersey, on Interstate 78. After staring at pictures of the Twin Towers for two days, like everybody else, we knew generally what to expect; but even so, it was a shocking, chilling, numbing sight. All we saw was smoke and floodlights. I don’t think there was a human sound on our bus. Nothing to say.

  Jay Payton lived in the city and offered me a ride to my condo in Gramercy Park. We were stopped a couple of times at police checkpoints. As we proceeded on slowly and gawked, the sound track was provided by the military aircraft buzzing overhead. We crossed into Manhattan over the Triborough Bridge, which, like all the others, was unlit. The stench was dreadful. This wasn’t the America that I’d grown up in. We’d been invaded.

  My condo was about eight or ten blocks from the cordoned-off area surrounding Ground Zero. I can’t say that I was unafraid as we pulled up to it. The atmosphere was still too warlike to feel completely out of danger. As I shut the passenger door to Jay’s car and stepped onto the sidewalk, there was, at least, some welcome familiarity in the sight of my building, intact. Everything else was disconcertingly different—the smoke, the smell, the constant wail of sirens. And most of all, the view. When I’d last stood in that spot, I’d been able to see the World Trade Center. In its place was the grisly spectacle of nothing at all, floodlit.

  Over the rest of the week, police officers whom we knew from the ballpark picked up groups of Mets players every day and ushered us around the hospitals to visit firefighters, cops, and ordinary citizens who had been injured or suffered losses in the tragedy. I heard stories of people receiving calls from loved ones who were trapped inside the World Trade Center and knew they’d never make it out. An injured policeman, one of the last people out of the second tower, described to me, with a glazed look on his face, what it was like running down the stairs after the building had been hit, fully aware that it was going to collapse. I talked to a woman who had lost both of her sons.

  My friend John Bruno came over to my apartment and we sat on the terrace sniffing death. I know that sounds melodramatic, but that’s the only way I can describe the sensation of that first week or two in lower Manhattan. It smelled like death. I can still hear John saying in a matter-of-fact tone, as he gazed out at the scene, “They fucking got us.”

  The parking lot at Shea Stadium became a staging area for supplies, bottled water, you name it. The players and Bobby, too, helped load the vans and trucks headed to the city. Cots were set up in the tunnels for firefighters and workers who needed breaks. We invited them onto the field to take some swings with us. Our police buddies were in and out, and they drove several of us down to Ground Zero, where we walked through the security area just shaking hands with the cops and thanking them for risking their lives and saving other people’s. Being at the scene of the catastrophe, breathing in that wretched odor and smoke, brought on a smothering sense of helplessness. The Mets called a meeting for the players and some front-office employees, just to talk things through. It was one of the few times we saw Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday in the same room. They encouraged us to pitch in with the recovery, but didn’t mandate it. In a players-only vote, we decided that everybody would donate a day’s pay to the recovery effort.

  On Monday, September 17, we were back in Pittsburgh, picking up the season where it left off. The Pittsburgh fans gave us a reception unlike any we’d ever experienced on the road. They were cheering for New York, and by extension, for America. In effect, the Mets—like the Yankees, no doubt—were representing the country. It was inspiring. Wearing the caps of the New York police and fire departments, we swept the Pirates.

  After a day off, we were back at Shea to play the Braves. Friday’s game would be New York’s first professional sporting event since the city had been attacked.

  • • •

  Forty-one thousand people came to watch us play baseball on September 21, 2011. Can you imagine that? It was only ten days since dedicated terrorists had committed mass murder in Manhattan. The pall was a long, long way from being lifted. A crowded stadium was an obvious target. There were reports that a man had been found sitting in his car with ominously highlighted maps of the area surrounding Shea and LaGuardia Airport.

  And yet, they came. They came to say they weren’t afraid. They came to support and celebrate New York City. That’s what the Mets stood for, whether we wanted to or not, on the night of September 21. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so determined, so compelled, so duty-bound to win a baseball game.

  Nobody knew what to expect, except that the evening would involve police officers, firefighters, a twenty-one-gun salute, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, and unbridled emotions. Tears. I should have anticipated the tears. I was welling up as soon as I heard the first blast of bagpipes just before the game. Then forty-one thousand fans joined Marc Anthony in singing the national anthem. It was remarkable. When it was over, the stadium rocked with chants of “USA! USA! USA!” It gave me goose bumps. It still does.

  Typically, high emotions are not of much benefit to a ballplayer. The game demands a cool head and an even keel. When strong feelings engulf you as they did that night, they have to be dealt with. I tried to reason with myself that it was still about catching the ball and swinging the bat. I also prayed. It’s not unusual for me to pray, but it was unusual for me to pray about a baseball game. I said, Lord, please help me get through this night.

  Bruce Chen was pitching for us, Jason Marquis—a New Yorker—for Atlanta. The game was scoreless until I dropped a throw in the fourth inning trying to tag Chipper Jones after a double by Ken Caminiti. I atoned, somewhat, in the bottom of the inning when I doubled, went to third on a single by Ventura, and scored on a fly ball from Tsuyoshi Shinjo.

  It was still 1–1 when Diana Ross irrigated about eighty-two thousand eyes during the seventh-inning stretch, joining a local gospel choir for “God Bless America.” Liza Minnelli followed with “New York, New York,” legs kicking, arm in arm with cops and firefighters. We had to win that ball game.

  As unique as the setting was, the situation, in baseball terms, was really not. Over the years, there had been countless times when we absolutely had to beat the Atlanta Braves. On those occasions, we almost never did. Believe me, we were well aware of that when Brian Jordan put them ahead again in the top of the eighth with a
double against John Franco, who was New York through and through. I had one more shot.

  It would come in the bottom of the inning. With one out and Steve Karsay pitching for the Braves—a Queens guy, Karsay, like Franco, was obviously pumped up—Fonzi worked a three-two walk. Karsay had also gone to three and two on Matt Lawton, so I figured there was a pretty good chance that he’d miss his spot and give me something to hit. And it would be a fastball, because he had a good one.

  He was throwing pellets, and the first one was right there for me. I took it for a strike and didn’t know why I did. As the ball slapped into Javy Lopez’s mitt, I thought, man, that was the one. Then, ahead in the count, Karsay brought it. And I, by the grace of God, squared it up.

  I caught that fastball with the full force of my emotional rush. When it cleared the fence just left of center and caromed off a distant TV camera, I thought the stadium would crumble into rubble. It was a moment for New Yorkers—the Americans on hand—to let it all out at last, whatever they felt. To scream, to cheer, to chant, to hug, to cry, to jump up and down in celebration of something happy again, something normal and familiar and fun again; of getting their lives back, at least in some small way. Franco said the hair was standing up on his arms.

  Benitez set the Braves down in the ninth, and we’d done it, 3–2. Like I said, we had to.

  I mean, are you kidding? Really. What an emotional time. It was hard to be normal in New York, when you saw those posters everywhere, all the reminders of the tragedy. Not only was it the first game back in New York after nine-eleven, but it’s against your rival, the great Atlanta Braves, and who better to win the game than our star, and the way he did it? Listening later to the Braves’ comments—Chipper Jones, Bobby Cox—they all said that, if there was one night they had to lose, that was the night.

  —Al Leiter

  At the time, it didn’t hit me that the home run would become an iconic event in the annals of New York sports. It was ultimately voted by fans as one of the top three moments in Shea Stadium history, along with game six of the 1986 World Series and game five of the 1969 Series. But as I was circling the bases, and after Benitez did his job in the ninth, all I knew was that it felt indescribably, overwhelmingly good.