Long Shot (7 page)

Boyertown came in as a very heralded team my junior year—they had a couple of guys who went on to play in the minor leagues, plus
a stadium with lights
—and they won the conference, but we drubbed them when we played. Our football team took a beating on a regular basis, but there was no problem in baseball. We had good ballplayers, including Mike Fuga, who later played at Temple. We kicked ass. It was disappointing that we got bumped out of the district tournament on a bad day, because I really felt like we had a team that could have gone far in state.

My senior year, those trees in right field were no longer a problem. Doc appealed to the athletic director on the basis that they were a safety issue, because an outfielder could crash into one or turn an ankle stepping on a root, and they were cut down. That opened up some airspace, and I was able to land a few shots onto the street beyond the fence and into the yards beyond the street, even though opposing teams made it a point to move their left fielders way back and pitch me in tight so I’d pull the ball that way. One of the home runs that cleared the street (City Line Avenue) landed on the driveway of a friend, Rob Thompson, and bounced into his backyard. Rob’s dad, who was watching the game from a folding chair, strolled back, picked up the ball, and gave it to me later.

But I wouldn’t describe my senior year as smooth sailing. For one thing, a lot of teams wouldn’t throw me strikes, so I finished with eleven home runs and a batting average that wasn’t quite as glittery as the season before. The other little issue was that I totally slacked off in school—even more than usual, which was quite a feat. I mean, I was a bad,
bad
student. I think I did one hour of homework my entire high school career. I was completely unmotivated. By the time I was a senior, I had my heart so set on being drafted out of high school, and was so cocksure that I would be, that academics just didn’t mean anything to me. The truth is, I’m not certain if I was genuinely eligible or not. I suspect that the principal might have pulled some strings so I could play.

Other than baseball, there was simply nothing about high school that
interested me. Not even dating, such as it was. I wouldn’t say that I was antisocial; just aloof, ambivalent, cynical—totally disengaged from all the structure and sis-boom-bah, as if it were a language I didn’t speak. It was my rebellious stage, and I was tenacious about it, with a defiant attitude that showed even on my face: my senior year, I played ball with a goatee and Sparky Lyle chops, just to look intimidating. I was so disagreeable that I didn’t even want to hang out with the family. My dad had bought a home in Boynton Beach, Florida, and we’d stay down there for a little while around Christmas. I don’t know what it was that I did—just being the typical jackass, I guess—but that year my dad kept threatening me that I wasn’t going. So I said, “All right, fine, I’ll just stay here and party with Joe and those guys and drink beer and have fun.” He said, “Oh no, you’re going.”

I’m not making excuses, but I suspect that my attitude was related to the pressure I placed on myself to get drafted. In my heart, I was positive that I was good enough, and felt certain—especially after what Tommy said at the assembly, although I knew better than to pin all my hopes on the Dodgers—that
somebody
would notice that and pick me. I just wasn’t seeing the hard evidence of it. Eddie Liberatore would come to a game occasionally, but he never talked about drafting me out of high school. I got calls from scouts for the Giants and Blue Jays, and they’d ask me where I was playing that week, but it was never anything like “You think you’ll get drafted?” or “If you get drafted, are you going to sign?” Jocko Collins, the scout who originally signed Tommy Lasorda for the Phillies, came to one of my games and watched me hit a fly ball to center, and then it rained. He left and never came back. He told somebody I looked clumsy around first base. Tim Thompson was a Cardinals scout who was in our area quite a bit and ate at the Lasordas’ restaurant. My dad knew him pretty well. He told Dad that he’d give me the same advice he gave his own son: get an education.

Every time I heard from a scout, or saw one in the stands, the pressure turned up a notch. I played nervous. It started to screw ever so slightly with my confidence, which made me think about looking into college ball. So I did. It was my way of acknowledging, as a sort of formality, that, well, sure, there was always a
chance
that I wouldn’t be drafted after all, as strange as it might seem.

The more I looked around, the more intrigued I became about the idea of playing for the University of Texas or the University of Miami. I read
Baseball America
religiously and imagined myself being featured in it. But Texas didn’t call. Miami didn’t call. I got a letter from the coach at Old Dominion University. Got another one from William & Mary. The way I
had it figured, though, if I didn’t get drafted I was going to be a freshman All-American, and I didn’t see that happening at Old Dominion or William & Mary.

People used to say that Mike was a machine hitter. It was obvious that he was willing to put in additional time to hit the baseball. His hand-eye coordination was good because he saw so many pitches in his drill work in the batting cage. But the scouts wondered if, when push came to shove, he would be able to translate all that to hitting a baseball off live pitching. Plus, his defensive skills didn’t really show up as a first baseman. Scouts look for tools, and Mike did not run well. That contributed to the fact that a lot of people didn’t notice him as a player.

Probably the only position on the field where foot speed doesn’t have a big impact is catcher. I remember talking to Mike his sophomore year about catching. I mentioned it to him because I knew he could flat-out hit a baseball, and I knew his dedication and love for the game. He looked like he’d have the body type for catching. So I asked him about it and I remember Mike saying, “You know, I talked to my dad about it a little bit . . .” And that was pretty much it.

Another thing that people might not have realized was that Mike graduated when he was seventeen. With the numbers he put up, there should have been more scouts watching him. It was pretty evident that he had a lot of skill as a hitter. To my knowledge, there was only one scout throughout the whole process that turned in a pro report on him. That was Brad Kohler. He worked for the Major League Scouting Bureau.

—John “Doc” Kennedy, coach, Phoenixville High School

The fact that I was failing to impress the right people on either front—pro or college—made no sense to me. Anyone who bothered to watch me hit on a regular basis knew what I knew, deep down, in spite of my weaker moments: that I could damn well do it. The local press was well aware of it. The
Evening Phoenix
described my home run against St. Pius X as “a mammoth two-run blast over the center-field fence.” The
Daily Local News
in West Chester published a story that mentioned my relationship with Lasorda and my batting-practice privileges with the Dodgers. The Boyertown coach, Dick Ludy, told one of the papers, “Piazza’s the finest hitter in the league. He’s the finest hitter I’ve seen. He’s really a prospect.”

Anyway, we once again lost the league to Boyertown and fell short of our expectations. The most vivid memory of that disappointing season might have been the bus trip home from Perkiomen Valley. I was sitting in the back, right behind Tony Nattle and Joe Pizzica. They liked to dip Copenhagen tobacco, so they turned around and offered me a chaw. The next time they turned around, I was throwing up out the window. If you ask my teammates, that seems to be the thing I’m best remembered for as a high school ballplayer.

At Phoenixville High, there was a tradition by which the seniors would spend a week on the Jersey Shore after graduation. Naturally, that week fell during the American Legion season. Doc coached our Legion team, as well, and his rule was that it was okay to go to the shore as long as you made it back for the games; the drive was a little under two hours. Well, I missed a game. When I came back for the next one, Doc didn’t start me.

By around the fifth inning, I was still in the dugout and my father had had enough. He stormed over to me and said, “Get your stuff! We’re gettin’ the hell out of here!” Doc was coaching third base at the time and sort of pretending not to notice what was going on, so there wouldn’t be a scene. But it wasn’t over. My dad believed that was the reason I lost out on the Andre Thornton Award at the end of the season. Andre Thornton was a power hitter for the Cleveland Indians who had played at Phoenixville High, and the Thornton Award was the big prize given annually to one of Doc’s Legion players. Joe Weber won it that year, and my dad was
hot
. There were many occasions when he kept his feelings to himself, but this time he clashed with Doc. (“Come on,” my mom said as we reminisced about it nearly a quarter of a century later, after a spaghetti dinner, “he clashed with everybody.”) I just let Dad be Dad, and rolled with it. I didn’t feel slighted. Weber was our best pitcher, and he earned it.

I was, however, selected to participate in the scouts games that were staged every year all over Pennsylvania. First came the regional events where, in addition to the games, the scouts put the players through tryouts. I think I ran a 7.2 in the sixty-yard dash, which probably got me scratched off a few scorecards right there. The scouts seemed to like my arm strength, though, which was something they hadn’t seen when they watched me play first base. From the tryouts, they selected teams for the second round, and from there, guys were picked to play in the statewide east-west game in Boyertown. After my junior year, I had been invited to the first game and tryout but didn’t make it any further. My senior year, I was chosen for the next round along with my teammate, Brett Smiley, the cousin of former major-league
pitcher John Smiley. We drove together to the game—and couldn’t find the damn thing. Got totally lost. I don’t know if I’d have made the big east-west game that year, but the odds are that I would have.

I saw Mike at the Legion all-star game in Copley, Pennsylvania, right outside of Allentown. Before that, I’d seen him at the Phoenixville High School field and distinctly recall that he hit a line drive that took two seconds to hit the school building. You could see that he had the power and was not done physically maturing yet. You could see him getting bigger. He was a slow runner, but he had what we call a quick bat. He got to the ball quickly with his hands and wrists.

I typed up a report and turned in the “follow.” A follow means he’s a player and I or any scout would have interest in following him. I put down his worth at between four and five thousand dollars, and said that he’d be signable for that amount. Then I faxed it to our office in New York. My job was to make one report on a player and send it out, and then it’s up to the teams to follow my report or not.

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
any
where.

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.