Long Shot (17 page)

Bud Black started for the Giants, but my long ball came off Steve Reed in the fifth inning, deep to right-center at Dodger Stadium. I believe it would have cleared the street next to Phoenixville High and probably landed on Mr. Thompson’s driveway; maybe even dented the roof on his garage. It was one of four home runs I would hit against Reed over the years, in only seventeen at-bats. All of those came in the first dozen or so times I faced him, when he couldn’t get me out. Then he hit me in the elbow, and after that I had one little single against him.

As the 1992 season wound down, I was expecting some grief from the veterans, for at least a couple of reasons—one, on general principle, since I was a rookie; and two, because I was a threat to the job security of a guy who had earned their loyalty. Traditions were changing, but the old-school custom amounted to completely ignoring rookies unless the opportunity arose to humiliate them. Eric Anthony once told me that when he got called up to the Astros, they were a predominantly veteran team with well-established players like Mike Scott, Terry Puhl, and Alan Ashby, and for a long time nobody said a word to him. That same year, 1989, Dennis Cook—nicest guy ever—pitched a couple of games as a rookie for San Francisco, even won one, and the Giants made it to the World Series; but Dennis Cook didn’t even get a T-shirt. It wasn’t like that for me, but there were moments that called for thick skin.

On one particular bus ride to the airport, Billy Ashley and I were on the receiving end. Some of the older players, mostly pitchers—guys like Ojeda, John Candelaria, Kevin Gross, and Roger McDowell—would sit in the back of the bus and get blasted, and on this night we were coming off another ugly loss. Billy had been having some defensive issues in the outfield—one ball had bounced up and nailed him just below the mouth—and they started cracking on him. “Hey, Ashley, why don’t you put a glove on your fuckin’ chin?!” He was visibly shaken. I could see his lower lip start to quiver.

Then Bobby Ojeda turned to me and said, “And you, fuckin’ Piazza! Takin’ Scioscia’s job!” Thankfully, Scioscia was laughing.

Mike had been the Dodgers’ starting catcher for most of his thirteen years, his entire career, but even he was not exempt from the kind of jocular abuse that baseball is famous for. He was known to have a pretty fair appetite—I can just imagine some of the pasta dinners that he and Tommy put away on the road—and with that in mind, a couple of the Dodgers would bring a little kitchen timer and a bunch of bananas to team meetings and set them next to Scioscia. The timer would go off in the middle of the meeting and somebody would announce, “Snack time, Scioscia!”

But Scioscia, who by that time was making over $2 million a year, was a consummate pro, a rock of a catcher, and extremely kind to me. As tough a time as it must have been for him, he never showed a trace of bitterness about turning over his position. Maybe it was because we’re both Italian Catholics from Philadelphia.

The move became practically inevitable when his batting average dropped to .221 that year. I didn’t do much better, at .232, but I was a hell of a lot cheaper. With that factor in the mix, I was pretty sure I finally had the front office behind me. I’d shown that I wasn’t overmatched in the big leagues, and I was holding my own defensively. The fairy tale appeared to be back on track.

Before the season ended, though, I was in store for one more little dose of disillusionment. This one had nothing to do with
me
, per se, but reminded me, once again, that professional baseball is not always the sport for romantics.

It was the last day of the year, at Houston, and it would be our ninety-ninth defeat, the most games the Dodgers have lost since they moved to Los Angeles; and tack on a half century to that: the most since they dropped 101 as the Brooklyn Superbas in 1908, the year the
Cubs
won the World Series. But that wasn’t what bothered me so much. Astacio was pitching for us, Pete Harnisch for the Astros, and the guy behind
me
was Doug Harvey, the umpire who was referred to as God—probably because that’s how Harvey referred to
himself
when he called balls and strikes. It was an interesting dynamic: over the shoulder of the most impressionable rookie loomed the most grizzled guy on the field. Harvey had been in the National League for thirty years, and by that time was considered probably the greatest umpire of the second half of the century.

Starting time was one o’clock. Before I had a chance to pull down my mask, Harvey informed me, “This is the last game of my career. We all have four-thirty flights, and we’re gonna be on that plane.” It didn’t take me long to find out what he had in mind. When I’d drop down into my crouch to give the target, he’d bark at me, “Get out there, get out there!” Put my
mitt
out there, he meant—place the target
outside
the strike zone, and he would take care of the rest. I was actually setting up behind the opposite batter’s box, and Harvey was calling strike after strike. Apparently, he had given the same instructions to the Houston catcher, Eddie Taubensee. Astacio was shouting at me to get my target behind the plate, and Harvey wouldn’t even let me take the time to walk out there and explain to Pedro that everything would be fine if he’d just throw the ball to the mitt, no matter where it was. On the bench, we described the strike zone as “dugout to dugout.” Looking back on it, I don’t believe that the events of that day represented a true reflection of Harvey’s integrity or personal character. As far as I’m concerned, all of that is intact. The man was simply ready to go home. At the time, though, that very short afternoon did make a small contribution to my growing cynicism toward the industry.

In my second at-bat, I swung at a pitch that was practically over my head and somehow grounded out. When I came out to catch the bottom of the inning, Harvey greeted me with something to the effect of “That was great, Mike. That’s what I’m talking about.”

I came up one last time in the ninth, with us down 3–0, two outs and nobody on. As I’m setting up, Harvey tells Taubensee, “You know what? I’m gonna give him a real at-bat now.” So Taubensee passes that along to Doug Jones, who was on in relief, and I strike out anyway.

The game was over in an hour and forty-four minutes, at which point Harvey removed the chew of tobacco from his mouth, placed it on home plate, and walked away. Eighteen years later, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

• • •

My first big-league crush was over a beautiful green-eyed brunette named Christina. Actually, even though I’d made my major-league debut, I was playing at the time in the Arizona Fall League, which was making
its
debut. The previous couple of years, I’d been in Arizona for the Fall Instructional League, but had finally outgrown it. My education continued, however. The experience with Christina was highly instructional.

The rationale behind the Arizona Fall League was that the major-league organizations wanted to keep some of their best prospects in one general spot, closer to home, instead of seeing them scattered all over the Americas. We were the Sun Cities Solar Sox, and would become the AFL’s official first champions. Hansell was on the club, and Jeromy Burnitz. I split the catching with Derek Parks, who had been a first-round draft pick of the Twins.

The signature feature of the AFL is that all the ballparks are within easy
driving distance. One night I was at Christina’s house, which was closer to where we were playing the next day than the place I shared with Hansell in Glendale; so I asked her if I could crash there. We weren’t sleeping together, because, in spite of losing my innocence, I was still very mom-and-church about that sort of thing. Anyway, she didn’t want me to stay. I said, “What’s the big deal? We’re dating, we’re on our way to becoming boyfriend-girlfriend . . .”

Finally she relented, and I curled up on the couch. But I evidently wasn’t sleeping very hard, because after a while I thought I heard a window open. Turned out, I
did
hear a window open. Christina had crawled through it to go meet some other guy—one of the Phoenix Suns, I found out later. (Being from North Dakota and everything, she eventually married a hockey player.)

Now, you would think that I’d give it up after the window escapade. Nope. I was seriously infatuated with this girl. Hansell liked to point out that Christina’s answering machine was always a lot fuller than mine; but I just didn’t get it, even though everybody else did. She bartended at a place in Tempe, and after the infamous sleepover I went in there to see what was up. She gave me a hug and said she really liked me and whatnot, so I figured everything was cool. Then she said, “You’re the nicest guy . . .” Uh-oh. Red flag. And
still
, I soldiered on. I went with her to a fraternity bar called the Dash, and a couple of the frat dudes were checking her out. They were eyeing me and I was balling up like, “I’m gonna kick your ass.” It was almost like a swordfight thing.

A week or so later, Jeromy Burnitz was at Christina’s bar and saw a friend of hers, who said, “What’s up with Mike? Is he out of his mind? Christina doesn’t even want to see him anymore.” I grilled Jeromy about it afterward, and he basically told me, “Dude, come on, turn the page. Snap out of it, man.”

I finally did, but I was hurt. Hurt and prepared, in a way. From Christina, I learned a little bit about what it’s like to play in the big leagues.

• • •

Along those lines, it was also time—
past
time—that I hired an agent. I’d felt for a while that I wanted to take my business to Dan Lozano and his group. Danny had once called the apartment I shared with Hansell in Bakersfield, and to my surprise actually wanted to speak to me. That got the dialogue started, and we talked periodically, but mostly as friends. I was putting off the big decision.

For one thing, there were also other agents to consider. In the following
year or so, I had some contact with the cousin of Rafael Bournigal, who was the agent for Rafael and Ramon Martinez, among others. There was also a dude from Minnesota who kept calling my parents’ house—bad idea. And Tommy was pushing me toward somebody he knew. “You should sign with this guy John Boggs,” he kept telling me. My preference remained Lozano, but, still stalling, I told him that I planned to play through Triple-A and check out my options before I committed. And explained about my dad.

My dad insisted that I didn’t need an agent. He never really said it, but the implication was that
he
could do my negotiating. He was also going on advice that Tommy gave him: “If a team offers you five million dollars and your agent gets you six million dollars, you should only give him five percent of that extra million dollars he got for you, not five percent of the whole six million.” But agents do more for players than just negotiate contracts. They help with managing money, endorsements, channeling media requests, and all sorts of details that require time and attention. I just felt that I needed representation from an outside party, which was the very thing my father was leery of. He didn’t want to lose his influence over me. I was very aware of that, and consequently the decision to finally hire an agent was a significant one in my life. It was a show of independence. I wouldn’t say that I made it in
defiance
of my father, but it was probably the first time I’d acted against his strong advice in an important matter.

After the Arizona Fall League, I’d returned briefly to Philadelphia, then headed back to Los Angeles and stayed with Hansell’s family. I’d lived with them during my call-up in September and felt at ease there. Ate well, certainly. But it also put me in closer proximity to Lozano. He and an agent he worked with, Brian Cohen, took me to a basketball game at the Forum that winter, ostensibly just to watch James Worthy, Byron Scott, Vlade Divac, and the rest of a mediocre Lakers team. But the night had a good feel to it, and afterward, in the parking lot, I said, “You know what? I’m gonna sign with you guys.” I knew I’d have some talking to do with my dad, but my mind was made up. Brian Cohen went rummaging through his car, tossing things all over the trunk, trying to find the paperwork he needed to make it official. Danny was laughing. I said, “Take your time, dude, it’s cool.”

There was another small convenience to being in Los Angeles that winter. In those days, the Dodgers maintained an unusual tradition by which they’d hold informal workouts at Dodger Stadium in January, before spring training, and top them off with an exhibition game against the University of Southern California. It was a big deal. Most of the top minor-league players would be there. One year I got into a home-run-hitting contest against Bret
Boone, when he was playing for USC, and the whole lower level of Dodger Stadium was packed.

But January 1993 was different for me. This time, I felt like I was playing in my home ballpark. The organization had allowed Scioscia to become a free agent, and he had signed with San Diego. The stars were now aligned so clearly that one of Danny’s partners, Dennis Gilbert, was able to call Fred Claire and say, in effect, “Look, we all know that Mike’s going to be your starting catcher this year . . .” To which Fred replied, “Okay, fine, what do you want?” Instead of the $110,000 minimum salary, I got a raise to $126,000.

In baseball terms, it wasn’t a lot of money. But if my negotiations with the Dodgers had always gone that smoothly, I’d have probably retired in their uniform.

CHAPTER TEN

Late in spring training, 1993, when I was batting around .500 with a few home runs and appeared to have ended any remaining suspense concerning the starting catcher’s job, Tommy sent me up in extra innings to pinch-hit against Steve Bedrosian, the veteran reliever for the Braves, with a couple of runners on base, and I lined a single to win the game. Afterward, in a live interview, a prominent Los Angeles television reporter named Jim Hill asked Tommy if I was earning the position legitimately.

In retrospect, that’s when I should have clung to the advice of Roy Campanella, the great catcher who had been paralyzed in an automobile accident after ten Hall of Fame seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Campy had first played in the Negro Leagues, but his father was a Sicilian immigrant and Roy had grown up in Philadelphia, so we had quite a bit in common. He’d helped Scioscia when Mike was a young player, and over the previous couple of springs had adopted me as his latest protégé. From his wheelchair in Campy’s Corner, as it was called—where catchers and others collected for his benevolent counsel and soft-pedal storytelling—Campanella favored me with practical guidance on the defensive and psychological demands of the position I was still learning. I’d already been privy to a lot of Campy’s theories through Johnny Roseboro, who was probably his first disciple. On the subject of blocking balls in the dirt, for instance, Rosie, passing along Roy’s concept of “body follows glove,” would repeat the same thing again and again, just like he’d first heard it from the Hall of Famer: “Turn the glove over, and the body will follow. It’s like a backhand in Ping-Pong. Just play Ping-Pong.” Adding those lessons to the techniques that Joe Ferguson had taught me, I felt that my ability to receive low pitches was equal to anybody’s. I’m confident in saying that, when I caught, no pitcher on the Dodgers’ staff was afraid to bounce his wickedest pitch with the tying run on third base. Campanella had a lot to do with that.