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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Photographs

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix

  Bibliography

  Index

  This book is dedicated to my incredible family.

  To my mom, who gave me a firm foundation and the gift of faith; my dad, who believed in me even more than I believed in myself; and my brothers, Vince, Danny, Tony, and Tommy, whose support was unfailing

  and unconditional.

  To my wife, Alicia, the most beautiful and generous person I ever met.

  And to our daughters, Nicoletta and Paulina, to whom I say: words cannot describe the love I feel for you. I pray that you will find peace and love in your lives always.

  God bless you.

  PROLOGUE

  Including Pudge Rodriguez, who was dressed for work in his Detroit Tigers uniform, the greatest living catchers were all gathered around, unmasked, on the grass of Shea Stadium. From the podium, where my stomach tumbled inside the Mets jersey that I had now worn longer than any other, the Cooperstown collection was lined up on my right. Yogi Berra. Gary Carter. Johnny Bench, the greatest of them all. And Carlton Fisk, whose home run record for catchers I had broken the month before, which was the official reason that these illustrious ballplayers—these idols of mine, these legends—were doing Queens on a Friday night in 2004.

  I preferred, however, to think of the occasion as a celebration of catching. Frankly, that was the only way I could think of it without being embarrassed; without giving off an unseemly vibe that basically said, hey, thanks so much to all you guys for showing up at my party even though I just left your asses in the dust. I couldn’t stand the thought of coming across that way to those four. Especially Johnny Bench. As far as I was concerned, and still am, Johnny Bench was the perfect catcher, custom-made for the position. I, on the other hand, had become a catcher only because the scouts had seen me play first base.

  Sixteen years after I’d gladly, though not so smoothly or easily, made the switch, the cycle was doubling back on itself. Having seen enough of me as a catcher, the Mets were in the process of moving me to first. It was a difficult time for me, because, for one, I could sense that it signaled the start of my slow fade from the game. What’s more, I had come to embrace the catcher’s role in a way that, at least in the minds of my persistent doubters and critics, was never returned with the same level of fervor. As a positionless prospect who scarcely interested even the team that finally drafted me, catching had been my lifeline to professional baseball—to this very evening, which I never could have imagined—and I was reluctant to let it go. To tell the truth, I was afraid of making a fool of myself.

  It was a moment in my career on which a swarm of emotions had roosted, and it made me wish that Roy Campanella were alive and with us. Early on, when my path to Los Angeles was potholed with confusion, politics, and petty conflict, Campy, from his wheelchair in Vero Beach, Florida, was the one who got my head right. Back then, I hadn’t realized what he meant to me. By the time I did, I was an all-star and he was gone. I surely could have used his benevolent counsel in the months leading up to my 352nd home run as a catcher, when detractors who included even a former teammate or two charged me with overextending my stay behind the plate in order to break the record (which I ultimately left at 396).

  That, I think, was the main reason I wanted to understate the special night. If it appeared in any fashion that I was making a big thing out of passing Fisk, it would, for those who saw it that way, convict me of a selfish preoccupation with a personal accomplishment. Jeff Wilpon, the Mets’ chief operating officer, had gone beyond the call of duty to put the event together, and had assured me that it would stay small. At one point, as the crowd buzzed and the dignitaries settled in and my brow beaded up, I muttered to Jeff, “So much for a small ceremony.” General Motors, the sponsor, gave me a Chevy truck. (Maybe that’s why my dad, a Honda and Acura dealer, was wiping away tears up in our private box.) Todd Zeile and Braden Looper had graciously mobilized my teammates, and, on their behalf, John Franco presented me with a Cartier watch and a six-liter bottle of Chateau d’Yquem, 1989, which will remain unopened until there’s a proper occasion that I can share with a hundred or so wine-loving friends. Maybe when the first of our daughters gets married.

  Meanwhile, the irony of the evening—and, to me, its greatest gratification—was that, in this starry tribute to catching (as I persisted in classifying it), the center of attention was the guy who, for the longest time, only my father believed in. The guy whose minor-league managers practically refused to put behind the plate. The guy being moved to first base in his thirteenth big-league season. The guy whose defensive work the cabdriver had been bitching about on Bench’s ride to the ballpark.

  But Bench understood. So did Fisk. “This is a special occasion for us catchers,” he explained to the media. “Only we as catchers can fully appreciate what it takes to go behind the plate every day and also put some offensive numbers on the board.”

  Fisk had kindly called me on the night I broke his record, then issued a statement saying that he’d hoped I’d be the one to do it. That had made my week; my year. “I’m blessed,” I told reporters. “I’ve lived a dream.”

  I also mentioned that I might write a book someday.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I celebrated my first National League pennant in 1977, in the clutches of Dusty Baker, who played left field for the Dodgers and had just been named MVP of the League Championship Series against the Phillies. Wearing a grin and a Dodgers cap, I was hoisted up in Dusty’s left arm, and my brother Vince was wrapped in his right. My parents have a picture of it at their house in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

  It was through the graces of my father and his hometown pal, Tommy Lasorda—who was in his first full year as a big-league manager—that we were permitted inside the Dodgers’ clubhouse at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. I had just turned nine and was well along in my fascination with baseball. The season before was the first for which we’d had season tickets to Phillies games, box seats situated a few rows off third base—a strategic location that offered a couple of key advantages. One, I had a close-up look at every move and mannerism of my favorite player, Mike Schmidt. And two, Lasorda, that first year, was coaching third for Los Angeles.

  He was already something of an icon around Norristown, Pennsylvania, where he had been a star left-handed pitcher, idolized especially by Italian kids like my dad, who was quite a bit younger. But I knew almost nothing about Tommy until we settled into our seats one night, the Dodgers came t
o bat in the top of the first inning, and my father suddenly bellowed out, “Hey, Mungo!” (When they were kids, Tommy and his buddies took on the names of their favorite big-leaguers. Lasorda’s choice was Van Lingle Mungo, a fireballer for the Brooklyn Dodgers whom he mistakenly thought was left-handed.) Tommy shouted back, and it went on like that, between innings, for most of the night. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time I was impressed by my dad, but it was the first time that I distinctly recall.

  Even more pronounced is my memory of that clubhouse celebration in 1977. In addition to Dusty Baker’s uncle-ish pickup, I remember the trash can full of ice and the players pouring it over the head of my dad’s friend. I remember my first whiffs of champagne. I remember all these grown men in their underwear and shower shoes. (This, of course, was an old-school clubhouse, prior to the infiltration of female reporters and camera phones.) I remember being startled by the sight of Steve Yeager, the Dodgers’ catcher, naked. And the last thing I remember from that night is my dad driving us home to Phoenixville—it was before his dealerships had taken off and we moved to Valley Forge—and then heading back out to party some more with the Dodgers’ manager.

  In those years, my mom would hardly see him when Lasorda was in town.

  • • •

  When he was sixteen, having dropped out of school by that time, my father took a job grinding welded seams at the Judson Brothers farm equipment factory in Collegeville, where his father was a steelworker. At the end of each week, he’d shuffle into line, just behind his old man, to collect his twenty-five dollars in cash. Then, on the spot, he’d hand over twenty-four of them to my grandfather.

  That was the culture he grew up with. As a younger kid, he had a paper route and various other little jobs, and turned over most of that money to his father. Maybe he’d get a nickel back for some ice cream. At twenty, on the way to the train station, headed off to basic training after being drafted for the Korean War, my father, having nothing left of what he’d earned, asked my grandpa, “Hey, Dad, I don’t really know if I’m gonna come back . . . but if I do, what will I have to come home to?”

  His father told him, “You were put on this earth to take care of me.”

  My grandfather’s first name was Rosario, but he became known as Russell when he immigrated to the United States from the southern coast of Sicily at the age of eleven. I should probably start with him.

  I associated my grandfather with Sundays. Every week, my mom would take the five of us—all boys—to St. Ann Church in Phoenixville, and afterward my dad would say, “Let’s go visit Grandma and Grandpa.” Vince, in particular, looked forward to those afternoons, and made them better for the rest of us. He had a way of bringing people, and the family, together. We nicknamed him “United Nations.”

  Their house was in Norristown and one of the main attractions was the basement, where my grandfather kept a big wooden barrel to make wine out of grapes he crushed. Technically, it was fortified wine, a form of brandy, but we called it Dago Red. Grandpa was a handy, homey kind of guy—he kept a neat little garden out back—and on Sunday afternoons, we saw only his domestic side. There was a certain sweetness to it. But he was Sicilian to the bone, and with that came a stern, macho, controlling dimension, under which my father was brought up. You could call it a mean streak, although my dad wouldn’t. In the tradition, he considered it tough love.

  My father beat me pretty good. Maybe I was bad at the time. He had one of those cat-o’-nine-tails, with a razor strap that he used to cut in strips, and he’d have that hanging up on the wall. That’s the way he was. But I think that gave me the toughness. He put some balls on me. He used to hit my mother, and when I got to be about seventeen I said, “Hey, Pop, don’t you ever do that again. You’ve got to deal with me now.” He stopped.

  My father had his own little welding shop and used to make wrought iron railing. He even invented a thing to twist the bars. He was grinding one day with the grinder and the blade broke and hit him in the eye. He got in his car, holding whatever was left of his eye, and drove himself all the way to Philadelphia; went to the eye hospital there. Nobody knew about it until he came home. He lost the eye. My father was a tough son of a gun.

  —Vince Piazza, father

  The way the story goes in our family, the Piazzas had a pretty big farm in the Sciacca region of Sicily until a couple of workers on the farm were killed when a cart turned over. Their families sued, and my great-grandparents lost everything. That’s when they came to America, pretty much broke. My grandmother’s family was from central Italy, but she was born over here. She met my grandpa at Holy Saviour Church in Norristown. They eloped when she was seventeen.

  A few years ago I visited Sicily with my mom and dad, my brother Danny, and a friend of my dad’s named Gene Messina, who speaks fluent Italian. We were searching for ancestors, and a few miles east of the town of Sciacca we came upon a church tucked into a mountainside. As we approached, a priest suddenly appeared on the steps, dressed all in white. Gene walked up to talk to him and, after a minute or two, waved us over, at which point the priest informed my father, in Italian, that he, too, was a Piazza; they were cousins. Then he led us into the church, which was gorgeous, and down some steps to a cave where, in the sixth century, a hermit named Calogero had taken refuge to pray and meditate after a long journey from Constantinople. Calogero looked after native animals in that cave, and for his good deeds ultimately became known as the patron saint of Sciacca. My dad asked how Calogero heated the place, and the priest told him to put his hand over a little hole in the wall of the cave. The air there was warm from water—holy water, the priest said—that sprang from a volcano in the top of Mount Calogero (also known as Mount Kronio). The next time my parents were at Holy Saviour, they noticed, for the first time, a statue of a priest holding a deer. It all connected.

  My grandfather actually foresaw his own death, about a year ahead of the fact. Late in the summer of 1994, during my second full season in the big leagues, he was buttoning up his garden one day while Vince was visiting. Vince asked him if he was getting it ready for next year, and Grandpa said, “Nah, I’m not going to be here next year. I’m done.”

  On the day of his funeral, I was scheduled to film a commercial for Topps at Dodger Stadium. The company was renting out the ballpark for something like forty thousand dollars, so I told my dad that I had to stay in Los Angeles—that if I didn’t, they’d get somebody else to do the spot. My father respected the dollar more than anybody I knew, and I thought for sure he’d understand. He didn’t. He became very upset with me. It was a major point of contention.

  Looking back, obviously I made the wrong decision. I was unforgivably selfish. But at the time, the business end of baseball was still new to me and I was uncomfortable with the idea of walking out on a good deal. I said to my dad, “Why are you so upset? You told me he used to beat the shit out of you.”

  I think he might have been on the verge of tears when he answered. In a voice so emotional it startled me, he said, “He made me the man that I am!”

  • • •

  I was born in Norristown, and yes, I lived there, on the sixth floor of an apartment building called Hamilton Hall, for two years, until Danny was born. But I grew up and went to high school in the Philadelphia suburb and my mother’s hometown of Phoenixville, about ten miles away on the other side of the Schuylkill (pronounced SKOO-kul) River. I consider myself a product of Phoenixville. Nonetheless, a lot of people and articles have said over the years that I’m from Norristown, which has seemed to tick off just about everybody in Phoenixville but my dad. Actually, my dad and Tommy Lasorda were the ones who more or less perpetuated that misconception. I guess the way my father saw it, he was from Norristown and I was from him, so what’s the difference?

  The other myth is that my dad and Tommy were inseparable growing up. That couldn’t have been, because they weren’t in the same age group or neighborhood. They were, however, in the general company of each other quite a bit, only
because my dad hung around the ball fields at Woodland Park, where Tommy ruled.

  My father played some ball himself, and as I understand it was about as good as a left-handed shortstop could be. He hit right-handed. Not the best combination. Didn’t have a lot of size, either. In fact, I’m the biggest person in my immediate family, by a long shot. That was the main reason why my dad singled me out, early on, as the son to make a ballplayer out of.

  The last organized baseball he played was at Stewart Junior High, not long before he grabbed a teacher and threatened to throw the guy out the window for telling him he’d never amount to anything. That hastened the end of my father’s formal education. But the fact was, he needed to get to work, anyway.

  His family was so poor that, at school, he would volunteer to collect all the milk bottles after lunch, hoping that some would have a splash or two remaining in the bottom for him to drink. For coal to heat the house, he’d scavenge the city dump, two blocks away, then comb the railroad tracks for pieces that had fallen from the hopper cars. He’d fight anybody who had their eyes on the same pieces.

  To my dad, fighting was a fundamental, necessary part of growing up. Day after day, on his walk home from school, he’d be met along the way by an older kid who had brought along somebody to finally take him down. “I’ve got a kid who’ll knock the shit out of you,” the older boy would tell him.

  “Yeah, okay,” my dad would say, before tearing into the latest foil and leaving him in tears. He claims he never lost a fight. He did, however—repeatedly—get his ass kicked by his father when he got home, for being scuffed up.

  Still, in spite of the rough stuff, the family was in it together, which meant that everybody brought home whatever they could, starting as soon as possible. Long before his job at Judson Brothers, my dad caddied at the golf course where his father did maintenance. He pumped gas at night. He got up at six in the morning for his paper route, delivering the Philadelphia Inquirer. The route took him past a neighborhood grocery where his mother was always behind on her charge account. Most mornings, the milk had just been dropped off outside the store and my father would help himself to a quart or two. Now and then, he’d see the light inside come on for just a few seconds and then go out again, so he was pretty sure that the owners, the Schmidts, knew what he was up to; but they never said anything. Later, it ate at him that he’d taken advantage of their benevolence. When he got out of the army, he planned to face them and make restitution, but they’d passed away.