Long Shot (19 page)

At Harry O’s, we’d sometimes stay after hours drinking a little in that back room, where they stacked the money. I recall one night, in particular, when Eric and I were having a beer and there were about a dozen women waiting for us. Finally one of them said, “Are you guys gonna take one of us home, or two of us, or what? What’s the deal? Because if not, we can all get out of here.” But it wasn’t like it sounds. Occasionally, we’d invite ten or twelve people over to just hang out at our place after hours. We had a strobe light, kind of a disco ball that we’d fire up, for a party effect. Truthfully, though, there wasn’t any debauchery going on. We tried to keep it light and laid-back. And yet, any way you slice it, here I was, a guy from Philly who made it through high school without so much as a date, with a whole corral of California women, right in my house. It occurred to me that, yeah, this baseball thing is okay.

Without much of a strain on our social lives, Eric and I were always well aware that we had a ball game to play the next day. One time, we might have been a little
too
aware. It was a Friday night, and Saturday we’d be facing Ken Hill of the Expos. He was a short-armer with a wicked splitter, and frankly, neither of us was looking forward to that. So we arranged a ride
ahead of time and dedicated ourselves to getting messed up. I’d just gotten my first credit card, a white MasterCard from Charter Pacific Bank, and Eric had a fine suggestion. He said, “Let’s go out and break this thing in.” We started out at Harry O’s and then moved on to Sunsets, by the Manhattan Beach pier—which happens to be where Eric eventually met his future wife one night. She was a college basketball player, and they ended up hopping a fence at an elementary school and playing on eight-foot rims at one o’clock in the morning.

On this night, we were drinking sex-on-the-beach shots. That’s kind of a fruity, wimpy cocktail, with vodka, and for the full effect we had about thirty apiece. After a few hours of that, I was sitting on some steps just off Manhattan Beach Boulevard—the main street—throwing my guts up. I’d bought a pair of suede and leather Bally shoes at an outlet mall in Pennsylvania, and Eric gave me a lot of grief about those shoes. He called them elf boots. I still don’t have much style, but back then I had considerably less. I thought those shoes had a nice Italian look. Anyway, according to Eric, the best thing about that night was that I puked all over those elf boots and had to throw them away. The
worst
thing was that Kevin Gross was our starting pitcher the next day.

We walked into the clubhouse Saturday afternoon looking a little lethargic—my ribs were actually sore from throwing up so much—and Kevin Gross glared at me and said, “What’d you guys do? Did you go out last night? You motherfuckers went out last night? I’m fucking pitching!”

We replied with something smart-ass and brilliant, like, “Uh, ya, uh, ya . . . yabba-dabba-doo,” and that set him off all over again: “If you guys don’t get some hits today, I’m gonna kill you!”

I looked at Eric sort of sheepishly and said, “Uhhh, I think we better get a couple hits.”

I ended up with two, including a two-out RBI single in the first inning on a three-two pitch. I felt better then. Kevin Gross was a big guy to start with, and he’d been studying karate with Jim Gott, one of our relief pitchers. I really wasn’t looking forward to him kicking my ass.
That
was pressure.

Mike really didn’t have that much of a normal college life, and that’s where your social life is usually developed. Now, all of a sudden, he’s a single, good-looking guy in L.A., the face of the Dodgers, and he felt like he had to act like it. I think he almost felt like he had to live up to other people’s expectations. From the social standpoint, it seemed like, hey, this guy should be out there banging everybody
around. But when you got down to it, I’m not sure that was him. Mike was the kind of guy that, whoever he’s with, that’s who he’s with. When he had a girlfriend, he would never mess around, and I don’t remember any year when he didn’t have a girlfriend. The minute the season ended, he’d break up with whoever he was with and go back to Philly. I know he’d been hurt by that girl from North Dakota, but once he got to the big leagues, there wasn’t anybody from North Dakota. It was all L.A.

We were just a couple of jackoff ballplayers who had life by the balls. It was good to be us.

—Eric Karros

On the first of May, after pressing a little hitting third in the order, I settled into the five hole and started to relax and roll. It was the last of May when, after making progress as a catcher, I hit Candiotti in the ass on a throw to second base.

We were well ahead of the Cardinals in the eighth inning, with Ozzie Smith on first base. Knuckleballers are traditionally easy to steal against, since the pitch comes in slow and cuckoo and isn’t easy to handle cleanly, so Ozzie broke for second. I stabbed at a low knuckler that left me fading away from the throw, and came up firing without having my feet set. Unfortunately, Candiotti’s feet were set. He would tell you that his ass was not an insignificant obstacle, but it was embarrassing nevertheless. I cursed and stomped around and generally made myself the biggest ass in the play, but of course, since it was 5–0 at the time, my teammates thought it was hilarious. The next day, the entire pitching staff showed up in the dugout with targets that Orel Hershiser had taped onto the seats of their pants.

Generally, though, I didn’t have a lot of trouble catching Candiotti . . . until June 12, when we beat the Padres, 6–4, in spite of my four—yes,
four
—passed balls. His knuckleball was the devil itself on that night. I tried calling for curveballs, but there was no way he’d go for that. The way he saw it, if I couldn’t knock down his knuckler with a special mitt the size of a sofa cushion, what chance did the batter have to square it up with a twig of ash? There was another occasion, though, when we had a big lead and just for the hell of it—or maybe it was for my sake—Candiotti decided to throw nothing but his lackluster fastball for a while. It worked for a couple of batters, and then they started lighting him up. So he called me out to the mound and we kicked at the dirt and let the wind blow a little bit, as Johnny Roseboro would put it, and then Candiotti looked at me and said, “Forget Plan B.”

There were fewer complications on the batting end of it. Later in June, in Cincinnati, I clobbered a ball that the
Los Angeles Times
reported might have gone five hundred feet, maybe even 550, if it hadn’t been stopped by the upper deck. Eric Davis said, “That guy is from another planet.” When we returned to Chavez Ravine and I was introduced with the lineups, I was greeted by a rousing reception that was something new for me. Then I hit a three-run homer and caught Ramon Martinez’s shutout.

“It’s kind of cool, and it’s a little flattering,” I was quoted saying in the
Times
, concerning the cheers. “In my last at-bat, they were really charged up. I think it’s neat.” Yeah, I said “neat.” I wasn’t
always
a badass.

That was the series in which
Sports Illustrated
came out to do a cover story on me. It was a heady time, and I’m afraid I fell into the trap of getting too full of myself, which led to a regrettable error in judgment the following week. Roy Campanella died on June 26 and I didn’t show up for his funeral in Hollywood Hills on the morning of the thirtieth.

McDowell and Gott made it, and without a doubt I should have, too. Ross Newhan of the
Times
let me have it at the bottom of a notes column, under the heading of “Where’s Piazza?”:

John Roseboro, Joe Ferguson, Steve Yeager, and Mike Scioscia—an impressive string of Dodger catchers who were all helped and influenced by Roy Campanella—attended Wednesday morning’s memorial service for the Hall of Famer, but Piazza, the new Dodger catcher and another visitor to Campy’s Corner in Vero Beach, was conspicuous by his absence. Of course, Piazza had a night game Tuesday and another Wednesday, a pretty tiring schedule for a 24-year-old who noted the other day that he’s getting sick of all the media questions and attention regarding his rookie-of-the-year chances . . . . Piazza has come a long way from the 62nd round of the 1988 draft, but it can be a short trip back.

Newhan’s item came out on the Fourth of July, and the
SI
story—“Blue Plate Special”—was dated the fifth. I was playing defense in the cover photo and swinging the bat in the two-page spread inside, accompanied by the headline, “A Piazza With Everything.” The article quoted Greg Maddux—Greg Maddux!—saying, “He’s one of the better hitters in the game right now . . . . A lot of people have trouble in their second or third year after a really good first season, but I would be really surprised if he did.” Among the pictures was one of Tommy pinching me on the cheek.

I have to say, the photo made me cringe a bit. It was more ammunition for well-informed, opportunistic fans like the ones at Shea Stadium. I was walking out to the bullpen to warm up the pitcher before a game there one night, and the loudest people in the house—God love ’em—are yelling stuff like, “It’s not who you know, is it, Mike?”

Honestly, I was bitter about that subject. Wherever we went, I kept hearing it over and over, in all forms—the godson (which I wasn’t), nepotism, the silver spoon, growing up as a dilettante, all of that. People assumed I spent my childhood taking violin lessons; that somehow my family
bought
my way to the major leagues. Nobody would give me credit for, one, being a pretty good ballplayer, and two, working like hell to get there. I know that credit shouldn’t matter, really. But it did. In my experience, it would always be the hardest thing to get.

• • •

Otherwise, there wasn’t much to gripe about in my rookie year. That didn’t stop me, however. I was committed to the art.

For starters, I couldn’t tolerate anything that distracted me from playing baseball. I mean,
anything.
Like kids in the clubhouse. I’m ashamed to admit that, now that I have two daughters of my own, but the fact is, I had a hard time drawing the line between focus and selfishness. I was so single-minded about my job that it was all about me—my meals, my sleep, my privacy, my rights—and I
hated
it when teammates allowed their kids to run around when we were putting on our game faces, or taking them off. Cory Snyder was Mormon, and he had a gang of them. At one point, we actually held a team meeting to talk about day care. I think Orel, Jim Gott, and Tom Candiotti organized it. The discussion was that there were going to be new babysitters in the wives’ room, and they were going to supply toys and coloring books. This went on and on until finally Tommy couldn’t stand it anymore and blurted out, “What the fuck? A fucking day care? Let’s get some fucking runs!” Best meeting ever.

Of course, I don’t mean for that to reflect poorly on good fathers in general or Cory Snyder in particular. Cory was a good teammate, and, in fact, one worth fighting for. Especially if it meant fighting the
Rockies.
I hated them about as much as kids in the clubhouse.

We had some battles with those guys. Literally. Once, at Mile High Stadium, Ramon Martinez buzzed Andres Galarraga, who led the league that year with a .370 batting average. Galarraga ended up singling for his fourth hit of the game. Then Ramon tried to pick him off first base and hit Galarraga in the neck. On the next pitch, Galarraga took off for second, and I
threw him out by twenty feet. But while he was being tagged, Galarraga kicked Jody Reed in the elbow and put him on the DL. The next batter was Charlie Hayes, and Ramon, doing his duty, drilled him in the back. Hayes just erupted, screaming, “I’m gonna kill him! I’m gonna kill him!” He tore out for Ramon before I had a chance to even slow him down. On one hand, it’s the catcher’s job to protect his pitcher whether or not he agrees or gets along with him. On the other hand, we’re not the speediest class of athletes. The system works best when it’s another catcher we’re trying to get our hands on. Anyway, Ramon runs off the mound like a gazelle and Tim Wallach dashes in from third base and takes down Charlie Hayes with a sliding tackle. We all jumped into it, and then suddenly I felt like a little kid being picked off the pile. It was big ol’ Don Baylor, the Rockies’ manager, telling me, “That’s enough, that’s enough.”

The next inning, I caught hold of a fastball from Keith Shepherd—I was
on time
for that one—and crushed it way the hell out to center field for my second home run of the game. The next batter was Cory Snyder, and Shepherd hit him. Shepherd was a boxer, and after he nailed Snyder he stood out on the mound staring into our dugout going, “Come on! Come on!” We all looked at one another, nodded, then charged out there at the same time and kicked his ass. Bloodied his lip, at least.

That brings me to pitchers. Since it’s so vital for a battery to be of the same mind in the course of a ball game, I wish I could say that I got along famously with every pitcher I ever worked with; that they were my best friends on the ball club and my special guests for Thanksgiving dinner. Not the case. Right from my rookie year, I picked up on a pattern in the clubhouse: pitchers on one side, everyday players on the other. Or, more to the point, pitchers on one side,
me
on the other. And among the pitchers, Ramon and Pedro Martinez tended to be front and center. That was why, privately, I was so pleased with Eric one day when he blew up Ramon.

Ramon had gotten knocked around a couple times and simply left the ballpark after he was taken out of the game. So Karros calls a meeting and he stands up, looks at Ramon, and goes, “I just want to ask this: Why the fuck are you leaving, dude? We’re out there busting our asses trying to get you to spit the fucking hook and you’re walking out the tunnel in the fucking fifth inning and getting in your fucking Ferrari and driving home?” Poor Ramon was shaking, almost crying. Then Orel got up, and it turned into a pitchers-against-hitters thing. He was really just trying to be the peacemaker, but I didn’t want to hear it. That day, I was proud to be the friend of Eric Karros.