Piazza’s Desire For Success Powered Him From Late-Round Afterthought To Cooperstown

Though folks doubted him as he was growing up outside of Philadelphia, Mike Piazza always had a Hall of Fame work ethic.

His father put up a temporary building in the family’s suburban backyard, outfitted it with a heater and a pitching machine and little Mike was hitting diligently by age 10.

“It kept me out of trouble,” Piazza said, laughing.

In the end, it kept him on the path to Cooperstown.

“The emotions are very powerful,” Piazza said after it was announced that he received 83 percent of the votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, putting him in the Hall’s Class of 2016 with Ken Griffey, Jr. “You think about the gravity of the Hall, as far as an institution. Our game is so connected to the history.

“You think of all the people who helped you, the dream of my dad, everyone who believed in me, sometimes more than I believed in myself.”

Piazza is the 17th catcher to be elected to the Hall of Fame and he built his resume with power. His 396 home runs as a backstop are the most in baseball history. He slammed 30-or-more home runs nine times. He’s the only catcher with three seasons with an OPS (on base-plus-slugging averages) of 1.000 or more. He was clutch—157 of his 427 total homers (37 percent) came with his team behind.

And he had a flair for the big moment, as anyone who can remember the home run he hit at Shea Stadium on Sept. 21, 2001 will attest. In the first sporting event in New York City since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Piazza led the Mets to a victory with an eighth-inning home run off Atlanta’s Steve Karsay, offering a wounded town a measure of distraction that still sends flutters of feeling through Piazza to this day.

But years ago, no one would have predicted Piazza was headed for enshrinement. He was a 62nd-round draft pick by the Dodgers in 1988, chosen 1,390th overall on the recommendation of Tommy Lasorda, who was a friend of Piazza’s dad, Vince. Piazza is the lowest draft pick ever to reach Cooperstown, a distinction that may forever be his.

“He was instrumental in getting me to focus,” Piazza said of his father.

Piazza’s first contract in the Dodgers’ system was for $850 a month. In his third season, he hit 29 homers at Class A Bakersfield. By the end of 1992, he got called up to the majors and he exploded the next season, bashing 35 homers and batting .318 to earn the National League’s Rookie of the Year Award and the first of 12 All-Star nods.

He quickly became one of the game’s best hitters. He finished second in the NL MVP voting in both 1996 and 1997, losing to Ken Caminiti and Larry Walker. The Dodgers made the postseason in ’95 and ’96, but lost in the first round both times.
Everything wasn’t great, though. Ultimately, Piazza and the Dodgers clashed over his contract, something Piazza calls “Maybe a combination of egos and bad timing.

“It just wasn’t meant to be. We couldn’t work out an extension there, so I guess the powers that be there just decided to trade me.”

First he was sent to the Marlins, but he was only there for five games before the Fish flipped him to the Mets, a deal that would have long-lasting reverberations on Piazza’s career. And the Mets, too, for that matter.

“We felt like things were coming together there, but you were constantly in competition with the Yankees, who were winning titles,” said Piazza’s Mets teammate, pitcher Al Leiter. “We didn’t have our superstar. We didn’t have the guy you’d see in a commercial.

We needed that. When you finally get that, it absolutely legitimizes where the team is going.”

Leiter, now an analyst at the MLB Network, started Piazza’s Mets debut on May 23, 1998. Piazza was flying to join the team, so he missed Leiter’s warmup and the two had an impromptu meeting in the dugout to discuss Leiter’s repertoire. “OK, dude, got it,” Leiter’s new catcher told him.

Leiter threw a four-hit shutout against the Brewers. Piazza’s first Mets hit, a fifth-inning double, knocked in a run to give the Mets a 2-0 lead.

“That was a pretty cool debut,” Leiter said.

Those Mets finished second in the NL East and then earned a wild card berth in 1999. Piazza became the driving force of their lineup and Mets fans fell in love.

The Mets were good again in 2000, winning another wild card berth, and Piazza led the way, hitting 38 homers with 113 RBI and a .324 average. He rampaged through the postseason, too, amassing a 1.045 OPS and four homers in 14 games, though the Mets fell to the Yankees in a true “Subway” World Series.

He played for the Mets through 2005, navigating an awkward shift to occasional play at first base. He finished his career with one year each in San Diego and in Oakland, retiring at age 38.

“When Mike would hit a home runs, he’d make an ugly face and you knew he got it when you saw that face,” Franco recalled. “He’d come back to the dugout and say, ‘I just tapped it.’

He “tapped” them all the way to Cooperstown.

Anthony McCarron covers the Mets and Major League Baseball for the New York Daily News