Catching up with Mike Piazza: Mets legend on Pete Alonso, Subway Series and life abroad

Mike Piazza is now headed to college. The 55-year-old father is visiting schools on the East Coast with his oldest daughter, Nicoletta, who is 17. She wants no special help from her father and no good word from a school administrator. Piazza enjoys family time, but like all parents, he realizes it’s her life, not yours.

“Everyone has their own standards,” Piazza said recently on the phone. “I firmly believe that you get to where you belong.”

Piazza spends most of the year in northern Italy with his wife, two daughters and son. They have been renting in Parma but are planning to build in Rimini on the east coast of the Adriatic. Their daughters go to school in Switzerland and the children are fluent in several languages. Citizens of the world.

For Piazza, broad horizons are a way of life. Growing up near Philadelphia, he played everywhere he could – the Dominican Republic, Mexico – after getting his chance as a professional player in 1988 as a token draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ten years later, a contract dispute took him via the Marlins to the Mets, the team he represents in the Hall of Fame.

The Dodgers blew their chance to keep Piazza by trading him in May 1998, only to sign free agent Kevin Brown to baseball’s first $100 million contract in December of that year. By that time, Piazza had already signed a long-term deal with the Mets, completing a rewarding but arduous process that he still describes as traumatic.

Given that history, it’s worth hearing Piazza’s take on Pete Alonso on the eve of the first edition of this year’s Subway Series, which sees the Yankees come to Flushing for a two-game series starting Tuesday. Alonso is now like Piazza was in 1998: a 29-year-old slugger, former Rookie of the Year and perennial All-Star, without a new contract from his original team and with a big payday as a free agent.

As an ambassador for the Mets – the team named a street in spring training and Citi Field after Piazza at the club level – Piazza wants Alonso to stay.

“I hope they get this cleared up,” he said, “because I think he means a lot to us here.”

But that’s the opinion of the fan in the Piazza. The former baseball player, who waited for the right deal and briefly set a new contract record (seven years, $91 million) in an environment where he could succeed, takes a more moderate stance on Alonso.

Mike Piazza (left) with Pete Alonso (center) and Francisco Lindor (right) during Mets spring training 2021. (Vera Nieuwenhuis / Associated Press)

“First of all, I think it’s his decision,” Piazza said. “I would never come between a player and what he thinks he deserves. Everyone has the right to go out there and get what he thinks he deserves. I mean, people do that in business, people do that in the workplace, and he’s no different.”

“I know emotions are running high because he represents a lot for the Mets and rightly so. He came here and hit 50 home runs as a rookie. And on the other hand, I don’t write checks either. As an owner, I’ve learned that the easiest thing in the world is to spend other people’s money. So I tell people, ‘Look, man, these are big numbers and big investments and everyone deserves or at least expects a return on investment.’ You know what I mean?

“With that in mind, I just hope for the best and think a player has to look into his heart, consider everything and then make a decision – and not look back. Because I just don’t think you should live your life with a rearview mirror.”

Piazza’s experience as an owner comes from Italian football and his 2016 purchase of a majority stake in AC Reggiana 1919, a Reggio Emilia team that was languishing in the third division of Serie C. It was a small team – in fact, it cost €10 million to buy from Pittsburgh – and by the summer of 2018, the team was bankrupt.

“You know what it was?” Piazza said. “It was an impulsive thing, and maybe in a moment of self-awareness I should have done more due diligence. I liken it to owning a racehorse. I didn’t realize how volatile this business is at the lower levels and how capital intensive and speculative it is. You spend money to get to the higher levels.”

Piazza had hoped that the team would be promoted to Serie B after its first season, which would have meant higher television revenues. That didn’t happen. As losses grew and the partners resisted a capital call, Piazza dissolved the board and tried to run the team together with his wife Alicia. That didn’t work either.

Piazza calls it “a successful failure,” a costly but instructive chapter in his life that he does not regret.

“I still love football and watch it, but it’s like the girl who broke my heart,” he said. “You have to look at things organically and realise how difficult it is to make money. Sometimes as an athlete you think you have the magic touch and you feel like everything you touch turns to gold, but then you realise it’s not that easy. As frustrating as it was at times – because you never want to be associated with something that isn’t successful – it’s something that makes you appreciate what you have. We tried to do the right thing, obviously it didn’t work out, and you just have to lick your wounds and move on.”

Piazza said that now, as far as his sport goes, he is proud of his role as head coach of the Italian Baseball-Softball Federation’s national team. Piazza played for the Italian team in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006 and has remained closely involved since then. He hopes to help Italy qualify for the Olympics when baseball returns for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

In the U.S., Piazza remains a household name in Philadelphia, where any driver stuck in traffic has surely noticed his last name on a license plate frame. Mike’s late father, Vince, made a fortune in car dealerships, and the family has dozens of branches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Piazza doesn’t run the company, but flies back for quarterly meetings.

Although Piazza’s reputation is great in Philly – he was courtside for Dr. J’s famous “Rock the Baby” dunk at the Spectrum – he’s not a favorite son. As you may know, the city really hates the Mets.

“I went to the Passyunk (Avenue) bar in London, which is the Phillies bar, and people were booing me, of course, because I’m a Met,” said Piazza, who stopped by when the Phillies and Mets played in London this month. “A couple people were like, ‘You’re from Philly!’ (but) I guess from a Mets fan’s perspective, they kind of rejected my whole Philly identity.”

Piazza found his people in New York, of all places. He said he always appreciated how warmly Mets fans welcomed him, especially after his emotional home run in the first game in New York after the September 11 attacks. The hit was so meaningful that it is mentioned on Piazza’s memorial plaque in Cooperstown.

It was a Mets moment that touched all New Yorkers, much like the Yankees’ comeback in the World Series that fall. For the most part, though, the Mets and Yankees live in separate spheres, except when their subway cars collide twice a year.

For Piazza – who had a .311 batting average with 10 home runs against the Yankees, including the 2000 World Series – these encounters were unforgettable days in an incredible career.

“I always enjoyed the stories of the divided families, like the Civil War in New York – this family member is a Mets fan, that family member is a Yankees fan,” Piazza said. “As players, that was very intense for us and we really enjoyed it. I loved getting up for those games.”

(Top photo of Mike Piazza in London at the Mets-Phillies series earlier this month: Vera Nieuwenhuis / Associated Press)