No Way to Mask Piazza’s Prowess

Is Barry Bonds the best ballplayer on the planet? Or is Albert Belle?

Ken Griffey Jr.?

I really don’t know. But I know who the best catcher is. Not only right now but maybe ever.

That would be Michael Joseph Piazza of the Norristown (Pa.) Piazzas and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

There are as many ways to measure catching prowess as there are catchers to measure it against. The purist wants to know how he calls the pitches, how he blocks the plate, how he handles the pitchers, how many baserunners he throws out.

It’s a funny thing, but the baseball establishment usually figures a catcher who bats, say, .241 or so, most years, must by definition be a whale of a catcher. Otherwise, what’s he doing there, right?

By that reasoning, they tend to discount the receiver who hits 35 home runs, bats .346 and has a slugging average in the upper reaches of the league, over .600. His bat keeps him in thelineup, they conclude. If he hits that well, he must not be paying enough attention to defensive skills.

It’s specious reasoning. It puts Ray Schalk in the Hall of Fame with a lifetime average of .253 while Carlton Fisk may have an uphill fight. He hit too well to be trusted.

Actually, for a catcher to hit in the upper ranges is a much more extraordinary feat than, say, for a right fielder to do it. The fielder, some nights, has nothing else to do but hit. And chew gum.

You measure Mike Piazza against the legends of his craft and a light goes on in your mind. We may be overlooking something here more important than his ability to smother the forkballs in the dirt or call the changeup with the bases loaded.

Consider this: No Hall of Fame catcher in the long annals of the game ever had the start out of the box Piazza had. He has had a career already.

In his first three years, he hit 91 home runs. The closest to him is Johnny Bench with 86 in that same period. Piazza batted .327. Only Bill Dickey passed him--by .002 of a percentage point, .329. Piazza drove in 297 runs. Only Bench of the great catchers had more--320. He had more hits than all but one Hall of Fame catcher in that period--453.

There is another yardstick baseball uses to measure greatness--slugging percentage. It not only catalogs the hits, it, in a sense, measures them. Counts the number of bases per hit.

Mike Piazza had a .606 slugging average last season. That is not to be compared to Babe Ruth’s record of .847 in 1920, but it was the highest recorded by any catcher since Roy Campanella’s .611 in 1953. In other words, Master Piazza is a catcher for the ages.

You can see where these kinds of numbers cast serious doubts on his skill as a catcher. I mean, nobody’s perfect. Nobody is supposed to dominate on both sides of the ball.

It’s an attitude that annoys catcher Piazza.

“I mean, I work hard on my catching,” he says. “The position has its drawbacks. You spend your life, so to speak, on your knees. But I take a quiet pride in my catching, and in the fact our pitching staff leads in ERA.

“You have to remember, we have a staff that includes [Tom] Candiotti, who throws a knuckleball, and Hideo Nomo, who throws the ball out of a corkscrew and the forkball sometimes goes in the dirt.”

Actually, Piazza made himself into a catcher. It’s a position management historically has to hijack and/or blackmail an employee into accepting, but Piazza--get this!--thought his hitting might be suspect and his best and surest way into the big leagues was with a catcher’s mitt, not a bat.

Mike wasn’t the only one who had his doubts. The Dodgers picked him 1,390th in the draft. Out of 1,433 selected that year. He was right: If he had remained a first baseman, he might not have, so to speak, gotten to first base.

But it brings up the question anew: What’s so smart about baseball?

A case in point: The game now ponders changing Mike into an outfielder. Or an infielder.

The consensus is, this will prolong his career. And Piazza concedes, “Along about September in this position, you feel as if you’re running through hell in a gasoline suit. It’s fatiguing.”

Still, Gabby Hartnett lasted 20 years, Schalk 18, Bench 17. And Schalk had to do a lot of running. Where Piazza hits them, he can walk.

They put Bench on third base for some games in his baseball dotage, but the effect was a little like seeing Mother Teresa in a disco.

The facts of the matter are, Mike Piazza is a baseball work of art where he is, behind the plate. In the outfield, he’d be just another hired bat, coming out for defensive purposes in the late innings.

Piazza would like to stay where he is. It was the surest way to the big leagues, it is the surest way to Cooperstown.

“I’m underrated as a catcher,” he insists. “I would rather catch a shutout than hit two home runs. Catching that no-hit game of Ramon Martinez’s last year meant as much to me as anything else I did all year. That’s a catcher’s dream, calling a no-hitter.”

Every catcher in history can hear footsteps, so long as Piazza is a receiver. Before Saturday night’s game he was batting .350 for 1996 and his lifetime average was .324. For any position, that’s remarkable. For catching, it is miraculous. Mickey Cochrane had a lifetime mark of .320, Dickey .313, Hartnett .297, Yogi Berra .285, Bench .267.

Behind the plate, he can be the best there ever was. Anyplace else, just another pretty swing. Besides, deep knee bends are good for you.