Piazza slipped away quietly, but he'll never be forgotten

Mike Piazza didn't reach the majors until age 24, but he made an instant impact with the Dodgers and their fans. Jonathan Daniel/SI Related Links SI VAULT: A Piazza with everything (07.05.93) SI VAULT: Trade of the century (05.25.98) Jonah Freedman's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Jonah. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

When Mike Piazza announced his retirement from baseball on Tuesday, there were no tears shed on camera. There were no reporters or exploding flash bulbs. There was no backdrop featuring a Mets logo, nor a general manager offering a heartfelt introduction.

Instead, the greatest hitting catcher in the history of the game had his agent send an e-mailed statement to the media, declining to give specifics or interviews. And in a way, it was fitting: Piazza simply disappeared into the obscurity from which he emerged 16 years ago.

It makes me a little sad. To a degree, I feel like a scout who discovered Piazza before the rest of the baseball world did, and now my discovery -- and for a time, my favorite player -- is being discarded. Let me explain.

In the summer of 1991, my dad and I took a weekend road trip 111 miles north of our home in Los Angeles to take in some Class A ball in Bakersfield, home of the Dodgers Class A affiliate. We didn't expect much from them -- maybe just some old-fashioned, Bull Durham-pure baseball. The actual game itself wasn't remarkable. To be honest, I can't even remember the opponent.

What I do remember was the announcement over the P.A. that a catcher by the name of Mike Piazza was coming up to bat. The guy was wiry and baby-faced, but had a clean swing. When he connected, it was a spectacle that would make me pay attention for the next decade. The 23-year-old Piazza took a 3-and-2 fastball deep over the left field wall.

Now, I don't know if it was because Sam Lynn Ballpark was so small or because Piazza hit it so hard. All I know is that the ball cleared the advertisement-covered fence by a good 20 feet. My dad and I turned to each other with mutual looks that said, "Who the hell is this guy?"

And then my dad was the first to speak after Piazza crossed home: "This guy may make it as a first baseman, but he'll never be a catcher."

Piazza finished that season in Bakersfield -- his only year in A ball -- with a .277 batting average, 29 home runs and 80 RBIs in 117 at bats. The next year, Piazza bashed his way through Double A San Antonio and Triple A Albuquerque and earned a September callup with the Dodgers.

In 1993, Piazza became a Dodger Stadium sensation, exploding for 35 home runs and 112 RBIs on his way to N.L. Rookie of the Year honors, the second of five straight Dodgers to win the award. His catching skills were merely average and his throwing left a lot to be desired -- good luck if you were a Dodger pitcher trying to hold a runner on first -- but fans latched onto Piazza in a big way, almost the way they did Fernando Valenzuela 12 years earlier.

Piazza's meteoric rise was as implausible as it was unexpected. He was selected No. 1,390 in the 1988 draft by the Dodgers, mostly as a favor by Tommy Lasorda to Piazza's father (Lasorda was godfather to one of Piazza's brothers) and struggled through his first two professional seasons in 1989 and 1990, never hitting higher than .268. Yet beginning with that 1991 season when I first encountered him, he began hitting like the guy who would become an instant fan favorite in L.A.

He was certainly my favorite. I grew up on a steady diet of dependable, rock-solid Dodger catchers who could call a great game, had expert defensive skills and hit, at their best, in the .280 region: guys like Mike Scioscia and Steve Yeager. Piazza wasn't like those guys. He was a threat at the plate who was a danger to hit it out every time at bat. His walk-up music was always AC/DC or Metallica, the stuff that got the fans pumped up, especially when runners were in scoring position. He was a celebrity catcher, not the blue-blooded backstops I was used to.

My freshman year in college, his poster adorned my dorm-room wall (next to one of Rocket Ismail, but that's another tragic tale). I came to rely on Piazza to spark the Dodger offense, even as the team couldn't win a single playoff series. During his five full All-Star seasons in L.A., Piazza hit .336 with 167 home runs and 526 RBIs.

And then, my senior year, it all came crashing down. Piazza's contract negotiations had stalled out, and the O'Malley family had just sold the team to Fox. When I first heard the new, callously corporate owners had simply unloaded Piazza to the Marlins that May -- even going over the head of then-GM Fred Claire -- I was in disbelief. Sure, the guy wanted a lot of money -- wasn't he worth most of it? -- but the Dodgers jettisoned their most popular player, my guy, in perhaps the worst trade in franchise history.

At first, I simply tried to justify it. How else would you react? I argued Piazza wanted too much money, and getting players like Bobby Bonilla, Gary Sheffield, Charles Johnson and Jim Eisenreich in return from Florida gave the Dodgers more lineup flexibility. I even naively wrote a column in my college paper claiming as much. But really it was all denial. I knew the Dodgers had made a fatal error, one from which it might take them years to recover (and, in fact, after making the playoffs in two of Piazza's last three seasons, the Dodgers didn't make it back to the postseason until 2004).

I moved to New York that fall of 1998, as Piazza was winding down the first of what would be 7½ years with the Mets. In a way, I was reunited with my guy -- the indie band I discovered before they went platinum. But it wasn't the same. Piazza had moved on, won over a whole new legion of fans with his talent and work ethic and found more success than he did with the Dodgers, making the World Series in 2000.

As his career neared its end, Piazza eventually went back West with single-season stints in San Diego and Oakland. He was still effective, but was never the dominating slugger he was in his prime. Eventually, no one would take a flyer on him. The game moved on with new stars, and I slowly came to the understanding that Piazza would never be a Dodger again -- not even on his eventual plaque in Cooperstown.

In the end, neither the Dodgers nor the Mets offered Piazza a one-day contract to let him retire in the uniform of one the two teams with which he spent his best years. He simply realized his days were done, retreated to his home in Miami and had his agent fire off his retirement announcement.

Somewhere in my mind, I still see a wiry 23-year-old bashing low fastballs out of Sam Lynn Ballpark in Bakersfield, a tribute to a time long gone. Like Piazza, I have no choice but to move on.