We continue the 25 greatest Dodgers of all time countdown with one of the best hitting catchers in history.
Piazza’s final Dodgers numbers: a .331 average, 177 home runs and a .572 slugging percentage.
The Dodgers and Piazza had a strained relationship for years, but that melted some when Piazza thanked the Dodgers during his Hall of Fame induction speech in 2016, when he said, “It truly was an honor and privilege to be drafted, signed and developed by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mr.was a wonderful owner, was a tremendous family man who prided himself in the best possible atmosphere to play baseball in an otherwise quiet town of Vero Beach. I will always be eternally grateful for the opportunity.
Baseball dominated Piazza’s thoughts when he was a child growing up. He constantly hit baseballs off a tee in the basement of the house he grew up in, hitting them into a mattress set up by his dad,to visit Mike, when Mike was 13. Williams watched him hit for a few minutes and said “I guarantee you, this kid will hit the ball. I never saw anyone who looked better at his age.” He gave Mike a copy of his book, “The Science of Hitting.
Piazza hit .442 in high school, but drew little interest from scouts because he was a terrible fielder. He went to a community college in Florida and hit .364. He was mainly a first baseman, but Lasorda convinced him he needed to focus on catching to make it to the majors. Lasorda told the Dodger scout who signed him that he was a catcher. Piazza volunteered to go to the Dodgers’ baseball academy in the Dominican Republic to improve as a catcher. He was the first U.S.
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