Long Shot by Mike Piazza, Lonnie Wheeler

dialogue with Doc Mainieri. I think he might have been a little annoyed at being put on the spot. He wanted to accommodate Tommy but didn’t know the first thing about me. Kind of grudgingly, Doc said, “Well, I’ve got some pretty good players down here, but come on down.”
    By then I’d finagled a car out of my dad, a red Honda Prelude, so I drove south to the beats of heavy metal and took a one-bedroom apartment on Sans Souci Boulevard in North Miami, directly across the bay from Bal Harbour. I’d walk over the bridge to Bal Harbour, stare into the windows of those fancy stores, and think, I’m never going to be able to shop here. I couldn’t even eat lunch in that neighborhood. Every day, I’d have one meal in theschool cafeteria and gobble down a Subway sandwich for dinner. I knew the Subway lady by name. Once I had tuna sandwiches two nights in a row and she said, “You on a diet, big boy? You’re eating a lot of tuna fish lately.”
    We started right off with fall practice, and it was evident from the outset that I was in a great environment for baseball. The first time we took infield, I thought we looked like a pro team. We had kids from Hialeah, Miami Lakes, several Cubans—no shortage of talent, including a good catcher, Pete Gonzalez, who was of Cuban descent and would become a teammate of mine in the minor leagues. There was something pure about the program. Miami-Dade was a fun place to play. I was encouraged.
    That, in fact, was by design. Doc Mainieri maintained a climate of encouragement, and I got some more of it from his son, Paul, who was coaching at St. Thomas University and eventually won a national championship at LSU. Before a practice game against Florida International, Paul gave me a perfect pep talk. He knew I’d been disheartened by my experience at Miami and told me that there’s simply no way of knowing how things will play out in baseball; you’ve got to just keep plugging. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I’d expected everything to come fast and easy, and Paul was educating me to the hard fact that sometimes— most of the time—the game doesn’t work that way. By the time spring came around, I was in good shape, physically and mentally, and it showed.
    At one point, Doc actually scheduled an exhibition game with Miami, and as I was taking batting practice, Ron Fraser walked up to my dad—it was amazing how many games Dad was able to make—and said, “He looks pretty good.” The way my father tells it, Fraser’s assistant, my old nemesis Brad Kelley, strolled by at just that moment and muttered, “Yeah, he’s a five o’clock hitter.”
    Later in the day, Fraser made a point of asking my dad where I’d be going to school the next year and mentioned that he’d like to have me back at Miami. Dad told him he wanted to talk to Tommy about the chances of getting me drafted. Fraser shook his head and said, “I don’t think he’s ready for that yet.”
    I probably wasn’t, but my father was undaunted and unremitting in those days. He was like the Wizard of Oz back there behind the curtain, pulling the strings. In the fall, through Tommy, he had arranged a day for me at the Orioles’ Instructional League camp in West Palm Beach. The connection was Tommy’s (and his) buddy Eddie Liberator’s, who was now scouting for Baltimore after a long career with the Dodgers. They fed me some soup and an apple—I thought, man, is this what they get in the minor leagues?—gave mean Orioles hat, put me in an Orioles uniform, and stuck me in one of their instructional games. I didn’t knock anybody’s socks off. No matter: when my dad came down in the spring, he was at it again. This time he packed me into the car and took me around the state on the Tommy Lasorda Tour of spring training. The first visit was Port Charlotte, where the Texas Rangers trained. Their manager was Bobby Valentine, who was a protégé and favorite of Tommy. Bobby pitched to me in the cage, which went