May 23, 1998: Mike Piazza makes his Mets debut

Mike Piazza’s first look at Shea Stadium as a New York Met may have come from a thousand feet up as his flight from Florida made its approach to LaGuardia Airport. Ever since the ballpark’s opening in 1964, pilots had used it as a landmark when visibility was clear enough,1 and if Piazza had a window seat, he could have looked down upon cars pulling into the parking lot and fans lined up to buy tickets to see the Mets’ new catcher.

The day before, Piazza reported for the Florida Marlins’ home game against the Pittsburgh Pirates and was told he had been traded to the Mets for three prospects: outfielder Preston Wilson and pitchers Ed Yarnall and Geoff Goetz. Writing in his autobiography that he had every intention of starting his Mets debut, rather than watching from the bench and making a pinch-hit appearance as he did a week earlier in his first Marlins game, Piazza flew out of South Florida on Saturday morning. He arrived at LaGuardia with just over two hours2 until the scheduled 4:10 P.M. first pitch of the Mets’ Saturday game against the Milwaukee Brewers, and quickly realized just how different the direction of the Mets was from that of the Marlins.

“Immediately, I was dumbstruck by the difference between arriving there and arriving in Miami,” Piazza wrote in his autobiography. “A crowd was actually waiting for me at the airport. ‘Yo, Mike! Go get ’em, Mike!’ It was crazy and phenomenal.”3

Piazza met his new teammates and changed into his white home uniform, the blue-and-orange script “Mets” with his familiar number 31 – a gift from veteran reliever John Franco, who gave it to Piazza without prompting4 – accented with a black drop shadow.

When he took the field, a crowd of 32,908 cheered his every move. That attendance was 14,000 more than the Mets had averaged to that point in 1998, nearly all of that difference (12,908) the result of tickets sold following the announcement of the trade.5 Among those in the stands was comedian Jerry Seinfeld,6 who nine days earlier had appeared on The Tonight Show to mark the final episode of his eponymous NBC sitcom,7 airing the same night that Piazza played his final game as a Los Angeles Dodger.

Piazza got to work right away, catching the ceremonial first pitch from a young girl before warming up the Mets’ starter that day, left-hander Al Leiter – another former Marlin, who had come to New York in a February 1998 trade for prospects.8 Before the game, pitcher and catcher had conferred with manager Bobby Valentine and pitching coach Bob Apodaca to discuss their approach to the Milwaukee hitters, but for the most part the plan was to “depend on veteran instincts,” Piazza wrote in his memoir. “It was complicated, highly technical stuff: when I walked out to the mound in the second inning, Al pointed out where Jerry Seinfeld was sitting. I told him that he’d probably develop some whiplash from shaking me off so much.”9

Leiter retired the first two Brewers before Jeff Cirillo lined a single to center, but a foul popup off the bat of Jeromy Burnitz capped a scoreless top of the first.

Right-hander Jeff Juden, a 27-year-old journeyman playing for his sixth team in seven big-league seasons, started for the Brewers. Brian McRae led off the bottom of the inning with a single before Matt Franco struck out.

Piazza, batting third, walked to the plate to a loud ovation. He took the first pitch low for a ball as McRae stole second, then swung through the second offering from Juden. On the third pitch, Piazza hit a two-hopper to shortstop José Valentín, who looked McRae back to second before getting Piazza by a step.

The fans applauded Piazza’s hustle, which turned a routine groundout into a close play at first.10 John Olerud then drew a walk but Carlos Baerga grounded out to end the inning.

Marquis Grissom and Marc Newfield started the top of the second with singles off Leiter, who allowed base hits to three of the first six Brewers he faced. But Valentín grounded into an around-the-horn double play and Bobby Hughes ended the inning with a groundout to third, the first two batters in a string of eight in a row retired by Leiter.

The Mets did nothing with a one-out double by Bernard Gilkey in the second and had two outs and nobody on in the third when Piazza batted for the second time. He took the first two pitches for strikes before laying off ball one, high and outside. Juden’s fourth pitch did not induce a swing, either, but home-plate umpire Larry Poncino called it strike three.

The game was still scoreless when Olerud and Baerga started the bottom of the fourth with singles and Butch Huskey lined out to right field. Gilkey then hit a ball to Cirillo at third base that was scored a base hit, Olerud coming around from second for a 1-0 Mets lead. Juden limited the damage by getting Rey Ordóñez to hit into an inning-ending double play.

Newfield led off the top of the fifth with an infield single to short in what was the last hit allowed by Leiter. Valentín and Hughes struck out before Juden hit one in front of the plate, fielded by Piazza for the third out.

Leiter, who batted just .085 in his 19-year career that ended in 2005, started the bottom of the fifth with a groundball single to center, one of only six hits he’d record all season. After McRae flied out to center, Matt Franco reached on a fielder’s choice: a grounder to first base, with Leiter retired on a force at second.

Piazza came up for the third time. After watching four pitches while striking out in his previous at-bat, this time he jumped on the first offering from Juden. The pitch was about thigh-high on the outer half of the plate, and Piazza lined it over the second baseman’s head into right-center field.

The cheers from the crowd intensified as the ball bounced across the dry Shea Stadium turf until it ricocheted off the bright blue wall, just to the right of a well-placed advertisement for The Gap. With two outs, Franco was off on the swing and was waved around by third-base coach Cookie Rojas as Burnitz played the carom.

The throw to the plate was too late to get Franco, and Piazza slid into third ahead of the relay from the catcher Hughes. Piazza stood up, called for time, and dusted the dirt off his pants to an extended standing ovation.

Now ahead 2-0, Leiter set down the Brewers in order in the sixth, and the Mets gave him another run in the bottom of the inning. Baerga led off with a single – one of six times in eight innings the Mets’ leadoff batter got a hit – and Huskey sent him home with a double to center for a 3-0 lead.

Piazza’s fourth and final at-bat came in the seventh. Leiter again led off with a single to left – one-third of his season’s six hits coming in this game – and took second on an error by Newfield. McRae struck out and Franco grounded out to second, allowing Leiter to take third. Piazza swung through the first pitch before taking two balls outside. He fouled off Juden’s fourth and fifth pitches before whiffing on a changeup to end the inning.

The only batter to reach base against Leiter in the final three innings was Newfield, who walked with two outs in the seventh. In fact, Milwaukee’s left fielder was the only Brewer to reach base after the second inning and proved to be Leiter’s toughest out of the day, getting two hits and a walk in his three plate appearances. The rest of the Brewers went 2-for-28, striking out seven times in Leiter’s first shutout since his no-hitter with the Marlins on May 11, 1996.

The Mets were ebullient after the game. “I feel like a movie star, a rock star,” Piazza said. “I’m amazed at the reception. I’m honored.”11

“I thought he did a fine job,” Leiter said. “And I’m kind of tough to catch. For one, I don’t know where the ball’s going.”12

The win was the Mets’ third in a row, a streak that eventually reached nine – with eight of them coming after the trade for Piazza was announced. Though New York wouldn’t get any closer than five games behind National League East leader Atlanta, the NL wild-card race was another story. Trailing the Cubs by 2½ games (and a game behind the Giants) before Piazza’s arrival, the Mets took over the wild-card lead after their ninth straight win and remained in the race until the final day of the season.

The Mets had found the missing piece of their offense and Piazza, for the first time all season, knew where he’d be playing through September.

“This is the East Coast; this is where I’m from,” the Pennsylvania native said. “It’s good to get back to my roots. Change is good. Change is great. … I really feel at home right now.”13

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play. The author also used a pitch-by-pitch description of Piazza’s at-bats printed in the New York Daily News, May 24, 1998.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1998/B05230NYN1998.htm

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN199805230.shtml

Notes

1 Michael S. Schmidt, “To Pilots, Shea Is Less Ballpark Than Landmark,” New York Times, September 25, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/sports/baseball/26pilots.html.

2 Mike Piazza and Lonnie Wheeler, Long Shot (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 186.

3 Piazza and Wheeler, 186.

4 Piazza and Wheeler, 186.

5 “Piazza by the Numbers,” New York Daily News, May 24, 1998: 99.

6 “Piazza by the Numbers.”

7 “John F. Kennedy Jr. & Jerry Seinfeld in 1998 (evening of final Seinfeld episode),” https://youtu.be/65SJy7jjxYk, accessed March 28, 2022.

8 “Welcome to the Big Apple, Mike Piazza,” https://youtu.be/Do4DZVOaIQ4, accessed March 28, 2022.

9 Piazza and Wheeler, 187.

10 “Welcome to the Big Apple, Mike Piazza.”

11 Thomas Hill, “Piazza Debuts with RBI & a Roar,” New York Daily News, May 24, 1998: 95.

12 Jason Diamos, “Piazza Swings a Bat and Suddenly It’s the 80’s,” New York Times, May 24, 1998, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/24/sports/baseball-piazza-swings-a-bat-and-suddenly-it-s-the-80-s.html.

13 Hill, “Piazza Debuts with RBI & a Roar.”