MLB History: Five Hall of Famers Who Took Unexpected Detours
By Tim Haberin
Mike Piazza – Florida Marlins (1998)
Let’s start with one of the latest inductees into the Hall of Fame. If you blinked at any point in the 1998 season, you might have missed Mike Piazza‘s stint with the Florida Marlins. The word “stint” almost seems too substantive, as the catcher’s tenure with the team lasted just eight days and five games.
Unsure they would be able to re-sign Piazza as a free agent the following season, the Dodgers shipped him and Todd Zeile to Florida on May 15 in an absolute blockbuster. The Marlins, engaging in their post-championship fire sale, sent Gary Sheffield, Charles Johnson, Bobby Bonilla, Jim Eisenreich and Manuel Barrios to Los Angeles in exchange.
The future Hall of Famer barely had time to catch his breath upon arriving with the Marlins, but he did manage to make an impression over a mere 18 at-bats. In his first plate appearance, he drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, one of five RBI Piazza would collect with the Fish. Overall, he went 5-for-18 (.278) with no walks or strikeouts and a run scored. His lone extra-base hit was a triple on May 18, one of only eight he would hit in his career.
Piazza’s stay with the Marlins was always going to be a short one, but few could have predicted just how brief it would be. Only a week later, the New York Mets acquired him for prospects Preston Wilson, Ed Yarnall and Geoff Goetz. After back-to-back All-Star seasons, Mets starting catcher Todd Hundley was in the middle of an ugly season, posting a .527 OPS in only 53 games. Aiming for a postseason berth, GM Steve Phillips pulled the trigger on the deal to bring in arguably the league’s finest backstop.
The rest, as they say, is history. Piazza inked a seven-year, $91 million deal to stay in New York the following October. He slashed .296/.373/.542 with 220 home runs and 655 RBI in eight seasons with the Mets, leading the franchise to a World Series appearance in 2000. A year later he famously provided the city a cathartic moment by hitting an eighth-inning homer in the Mets’ first game back in New York after 9/11. To commemorate his time there, he’s depicted wearing a Mets hat on his Hall of Fame plaque.
Piazza did end his career with one-year spells with the Padres and A’s in 2006 and 2007, respectively, but his cameo appearance for the Marlins has to stand out as one of the real oddities of the game’s recent history. Most will remember him as a Dodger or a Met, but for a week he was a Florida Marlin.
Next: Traded for Dinner