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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Why Not Just Follow Piazza To The Bank?

Bill Plaschke Sporting News

Mike Piazza’s leadership is not the issue. With his stats and his stamina, how can the Dodgers let him get away?

The baseball cynics say none of these guys is worth it. Mike Piazza is worth it.

They say there is not a player alive anymore who can carry a team for an entire summer. Mike Piazza has done it.

They say it is impossible to find a big star today who understands about paying the price. Mike Piazza understands.

In 1988, after being drafted by the Dodgers in the 62nd round as a favor to family friend Tom Lasorda, the 19-year-old Piazza went to the Dodgers’ baseball academy in the Dominican Republic.

He wasn’t ordered to go. He wasn’t even supposed to go. The camp is only for young Dominicans. He went anyway, paid his way, stayed two months, sleeping in cramped dorms, getting sick on strange food, living like a pauper so he could learn about the game’s riches.

“I still think about that sometimes,” he says.

Baseball cynics say owners will balk before making someone the first $100 million player. Half the teams would sign Mike Piazza for that much money right now if he were available. And in seven months, he could be.

Meet baseball’s hottest property, sizzling across America this summer with his shampoo-commercial hair and Popeye arms and trend-setting mustache. Meet that rarest of baseball commodities, the person who defies all stereotypes about the modern star.

Mike Piazza is so good, he is the anti-cynic.

And if you don’t think that is worth something, just watch.

While his main job involves catching for the Dodgers, this year, Piazza will have another task, that of holding both leagues hostage while he figures out his future.

If the Dodgers don’t re-sign him before the end of the season, he will become a free agent.

If Rupert Murdoch doesn’t officially buy the team and get his act together before then - a growing possibility with each day - then Piazza will not be re-signed.

Which means he hits the market this winter. Which means an event previously matched in California only when a bunch of old bearded guys heard someone yell, “Gold!”

The only teams interested in him would want someone containing a little bit of what Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. and Larry Walker and Frank Thomas can do … while spending 140 games a year crouched behind home plate. In other words, just about everybody.

Only one National League player, Barry Bonds, has more MVP votes than Piazza in this decade. And Piazza has never won the award.

When he is not on the disabled list, he will play 150 games a year. He has four consecutive non-strike season totals of at least 32 home runs and 93 RBIs.

And last September, when many other Dodgers were contributing to their annual collapse? Piazza was hitting .406 with eight home runs and 27 RBIs.

But that leads to the question that Murdoch’s people will soon ponder: Why give $100 million to someone who hasn’t led his team to a World Series … or even one playoff win?

Some feel Piazza lacks proper leadership qualities, sometimes worrying about his own statistics ahead of the team’s. He has been accused of ruining victory celebrations by bemoaning his own poor play. And your point is … ?

If you can get a catcher to play that many games and drive in that many runs, why can’t we just let him do that? Why can’t the leader be somebody who doesn’t have the team on his back and his head in a mask?

If the Dodgers don’t sign him because they are worried about his leadership, then they deserve their probable post-Piazza finish of last place. If Murdoch doesn’t plan on re-signing Piazza for any reason, then he shouldn’t complete the purchase of the team.

“You lead according to your personality,” Piazza said after an early spring game. “Guys can smell a fake. For me to be a rah-rah guy, that’s not me. I lead other ways.”

Piazza had just caught nine innings, without complaint, in the third exhibition game. Some stars don’t play nine in any spring game. Piazza had just eluded hordes of autograph seekers, not to pose for some photo layout, but to run wind sprints with the minor-league catchers.

“Snuck out again,” said a cynical fan.

Fooled ‘em again, said the catcher’s smile.