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On Rickter Scale, He Apparently Rates High

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Times Staff Writer

Mike Piazza, the former Dodger and current New York Met catcher, got married Saturday.

Under the headline “Mike’s Holy ‘Met’rimony,” the New York Post reported Piazza, 36, married Alicia Rickter, 32, in a ceremony in Miami attended by 120. Afterward, guests were transported on two yachts to a lavish reception on Fisher Island.

Rickter is a 1995 Playboy Playmate, a former “Baywatch” star and a Killian’s beer spokeswoman.

Sounds as though Piazza made a nice catch.

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Trivia time: Piazza, along with Todd Zeile, was traded by the Dodgers on May 14, 1998, to the Florida Marlins, who eight days later traded Piazza to the Mets. What five players did the Dodgers get from the Marlins in the deal?

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No Dodger representation: According to the Post, the only baseball players at Piazza’s wedding were former Met pitchers Al Leiter and John Franco and Detroit Tiger catcher Ivan Rodriguez.

Piazza’s agent, Dan Lozano, was in the wedding party, but Piazza’s godfather, Tom Lasorda, could not attend because of a speaking commitment in New Orleans.

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Slow on the basepaths: Piazza was one of Lasorda’s all-time favorite players. So was Steve Sax, who to this day is often the butt of some of Lasorda’s jokes.

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Here’s one of them:

“Saxie could memorize an entire Richard Pryor routine, but he couldn’t remember a steal sign,” Lasorda said. “One time, when our steal sign was a coach calling you by your last name, [first base coach] Reggie Smith hollered out, ‘Saxie,’ and Saxie didn’t go. He hollered it again, and nothing.

“Then Saxie comes into the dugout and says, ‘I’ve been here six years and he still doesn’t know my first name.’ ”

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A family of firsts: New Dodger J.D. Drew was selected by the Philadelphia Phillies in the first round of the 1997 draft, and so was his brother Tim, by Cleveland. That made them the first brother combination to be selected in the first round of the same baseball draft. And younger brother Stephen was selected in the first round of last year’s draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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Looking back: On this day in 1988, the Washington Redskins scored 35 points in the second quarter to overcome a 10-0 deficit and defeat the Denver Broncos, 42-10, in the Super Bowl at San Diego. Doug Williams passed for four touchdowns and a record 340 yards, and Timmy Smith rushed for a record 204 yards.

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Trivia answer: Manuel Barrios, Bobby Bonilla, Jim Eisenreich, Charles Johnson and Gary Sheffield.

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And finally: In “The Boys of Winter,” a new book about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, author Wayne Coffey of the New York Daily News reports that Olympic cleanup workers found 121 empty vodka bottles hidden in a ceiling of the Soviets’ Olympic Village headquarters.

Maybe now we know why the Soviets lost to the U.S.

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.

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