Catching On : Dodger Rookie Mike Piazza Takes Shortcut to Stardom

While most of the Dodgers boarded a charter flight Sunday night to fly home to Los Angeles, Mike Piazza was hopping in his father’s jet helicopter to fly home to Valley Forge, Pa. From there, he and his family traveled to tonight’s All-Star game in Baltimore.

Piazza, the first rookie catcher to be make an All-Star team since Gary Carter in 1975, said: “I’m excited about it. This is great.”

Mike Piazza’s rise from obscurity to rookie All-Star is interesting, and his personality is even more intriguing.

Piazza’s idea of a player is Mike Schmidt or Kirk Gibson--the type of player with a no-nonsense approach to the game; one who is his own person, who will wear an off-beat haircut, walk with a swagger, shape a mustache and tell you honestly what is on his mind.

Maybe not your typical boy scout.

“People are always telling Mike that he should smile more,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda says, “but I say leave him alone. He’s fine the way he is. This is how he got here.”

Piazza admitted that he might not always be in a good mood, but his moods have nothing to do with anybody but himself.

“I’m not a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kind of guy,” he says. “People are always telling me to smile, but I will smile when I want to. What I want is to go about this in a professional way. And I would be the same way if I worked in an office.”

Piazza’s father, Vince, says his son has always carried a quiet intensity about him.

“This is the only thing Michael has ever wanted to do, is to play baseball,” Vince said. “When he was in high school and the other kids were at dances, Mike was in the batting cage, practicing. When he would finish playing a game, he would come home and practice some more.

“When he looks that way, he’s not pouting or a spoiled kid by any means. He’s just competitive. He’s keeping within himself. He wants to be the best and wants to help his team be the best.”

Piazza has batted over .300 for most of the season and went into the All-Star break with a .317 average, with 18 home runs and 58 runs batted in.

He appears headed for rookie-of-the-year honors, and says this first half of the season has been a constant adjustment. The media attention has been there all along, but it has accelerated.

Reporters now come at Piazza from every angle, trying to learn something new about him, something he has never revealed. There are always reporters at his locker or in the dugout, and Piazza has tried to accommodate them.

Radio stations call him in his hotel room, waking him, wanting his time, wanting him to be happy that so many people are wanting so much of him. They do it, even after a game like last Wednesday’s when the team played 20 innings, finished at 1:47 a.m., arrived in New York at 5 a.m. and had to be at the park by 3 p.m. for a doubleheader.

“They think because I’m a 62nd-round draft choice I should be happy and thrilled that they are calling,” Piazza said, “and I’m glad they are thinking of me. But they are only seeing the glamour of it. After a game like 20 innings, they think I should be happy to get a call. Well, I want to keep things in perspective, and the fact is that I’m here first for the team. I can’t let it all get distracting.”

There are times when Piazza is prone to outbursts that affect no one except himself and an object, usually a batting helmet. And those outbursts come out of frustration when he doesn’t deliver. They usually happen in a near-empty dugout, usually after a game.

There was the time in Montreal during the Dodgers’ recent trip, when frustrated with his performance, Piazza slammed his helmet against a wall so hard that it ricocheted into the stands. A fan grabbed it and didn’t want to give it up.

“I don’t know whether he will change, but I don’t know if we want him to change,” said his father. “He has always been competitive with such a will to win. He wants to be second to none and he wants his team to win, and when he feels like he lets them down or doesn’t do well, he may express himself with an outburst.”

Piazza has 82 of the team’s 87 games, a grind that is difficult to understand and harder to explain, says All-Star catcher Darren Daulton of the Philadelphia Phillies.

“It’s like talking about having babies, you can’t really explain it until you have your own,” Daulton says. “It’s a grind, day in and day out. You are doing more than any other position. People don’t realize the running you do. Every ground ball, you have to back up first base, and over the season that’s a lot of sprints.

Daulton says he has high respect for Piazza, whom he said is on the way to superstar status.

“He’s still young, but you’re talking about Johnny Bench or Gary Carter numbers that he is posting,” Daulton said. “For a guy to step in there and take over after Mike Scioscia was there for a lot of years must give their organization a lift.

“This guy has a lock on rookie of the year, and it’s great to see.”