Long Shot by Mike Piazza, Lonnie Wheeler Page B

into the world of baseball scouting. The arrangement is that, as a favor, a team will devote a low-round pick to a player who’s important to someone in or close to the organization. It’s done not with the intention of actually signing the player, necessarily, but perhaps to make him more attractive to college recruiters.
    Ed Liberatore—who, by bringing Ted Williams to our house, had already blessed me with the favor of a lifetime—told my dad that maybe the Orioles would do that for me. Dad had called Eddie to advise him that I was going to be catching a game for the Skippack Skippers, the grown-up team I occasionally freelanced for, and to offer him a ride, which was accepted. Unfortunately, we were playing Norristown, a team that knew what it was doing. Norristown ran wild on me, stealing base after base. But I smoked a long home run to center field and then another one over the pavilion, and Liberatore said something like “I don’t know about his catching, Vince, but damn, that kid can hit. ”
    That’s when he mentioned about the courtesy pick. First, though, he would have to call Roland Hemond, the Orioles’ general manager, to sell the idea.
    Since my dad was the one in the middle of all this, I’ll just let him tell the rest:
I said, “Oh, Eddie, you’d do that?”
He said, “Yeah.”
So then I called Tommy Lasorda and told him I’d just talked to Eddie Liberatore and what he was going to do. And I told him about Mike catching a little.
Tommy said, “Catching, huh? Well, all right, wait till I come in [to Philadelphia, with the Dodgers].”
So sure as hell the Dodgers come in and we go down to Vet Stadium. This is a week before the draft. We go into Tommy’s office and he said, “Michael, go get set up.” You know, put on the gear. And he’s asking me, “Do you think he really wants to catch?”
I said, “Yeah, Tom.”
So Joe Ferguson was there. Tommy says, “Hey, Joe, come here. I want you to take Michael down to the field and work him out as a catcher and tell me what you think.” Then he said, “Hey, Beach.” Beach was the bullpen coach, Mark Cresse, and he was really great at hitting pop-ups.
So we go down through the tunnel and I’m sitting on the bench watching and Beach is hitting him pop-ups and he’s catching everything. Mike was doing a nice job. So they get him behind the plate and he’s throwing down to second base and they’re out there about twenty minutes. Afterward, I walked up to Ferguson and said, “Joe, what do you think?”
He said, “This kid can make it as a catcher.”
I said, “You serious?”
He said, “Yeah.”
I said, “You mind if I tell Tommy?”
He said, “Sure, go tell him.”
So I go down through the tunnel to Tommy’s office and who’s sitting on the couch but Ed Liberatore! Tommy said, “How’d he make out?”
I said, “Ferguson said he could make it as a catcher.”
Tommy stands up behind the desk, he looks at Eddie, he’s got that crooked finger, and he points that finger at him and he says, “Don’t you fuck with that kid, you understand? We’re gonna draft him!”
Then he turned back to me and said, “Fergie said that?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “Don’t bullshit me.”
I said, “No, Tom.”
So Tommy picks up the phone and dials Ben Wade, who was the scouting director for the Dodgers. He tells Ben, “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to draft Michael Piazza.”
I’m sitting there and Eddie’s looking at me and laughing a little bit. Tommy says [into the phone], “Here’s his father. He’ll give you his age and where he went to school and all of that.”
We get off the phone and Liberatore says, “Hey, can I go down and say hello to Mike?”
And Tommy says, “Yeah, but don’t you fuck with him!”
So we’re walking down the tunnel and Eddie puts his arm around me and says, “Vince, I’d rather see him as a Dodger than an Oriole.” Eddie had only been with the Orioles for about a year or so at that time. He’d