Piazza puts Phoenixville back on the big stage
It was a hectic weekend, indeed. Nevertheless, it was one well worth it and one I will never forget for the rest of my life.
I was able to witness one of Phoenixville Area High School’s best athletes, Michael Joseph Piazza, get inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Photographer Barry Taglieber and I were fortunate to be able to watch his entire career in youth baseball as he grew up in Phoenixville. We watched him clear the fences with home run blasts at PECO Field (now Vic Marosek Park) in Little League (now Youth Babe Ruth League), deSanno Field for Babe Ruth League and finally at the high school field (now Doc Kennedy Field) with the fence that lines the City Line Avenue portion of the diamond. Many of his long home runs went across that street and onto the backyards of houses where people lived.
We watched his prowess as a baseball slugger and saw him develop on his way up the ladder and on into the professional ranks, culminating in Sunday afternoon’s Hall of Fame induction with the Class of 2016 as a New York Mets catcher after beginning his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was enshrined along with Ken Griffey Jr., the slugging center fielder of the Seattle Mariners and son of Ken Griffey, a member of the famous Cincinnati Reds “Big Red Machine” of the 1970s that I watched while growing up as a Philadelphia Phillies fan in these same suburbs where I live now.
Through it all, Piazza has remained a humble, down-to-earth. He has maintained close friendships with former Phoenixville teammates like Joe Pizzica and John John Nattle. There was also Robbie Thompson and many more.
I remember some of his other teammates at Phoenixville, many of whom were fine players in their own right while playing for the Phantoms’ head coach, John “Doc” Kennedy.
There was Mike Fuga, a second baseman who continued his career with Division I Temple University. Joe Weber was a fellow pitcher/infielder who grew up with Piazza. His father, another Joe Weber, served as a coach in the Phoenixville Little League and then again as a Babe Ruth coach and finally alongside Kennedy with the Phantoms.
There was also Tony Roberts, another infielder who shared Piazza’s high interest in music. Roberts later became a member of a band with Peter Criss, the drummer with Kiss, a heavy favorite as a rock band.
When he first entered high school, Piazza was a backup first baseman to Joe Godri, who went on to become a head baseball coach at nearby Villanova University for 15 years. There was also Brett Smiley, the second of the four Smiley brothers who played baseball in Phoenixville and sons of former community coach Joel Smiley.
The oldest was Scott Smiley, who is still a teacher and coach at Phoenixville after becoming a solid catcher himself. There were also Matt Smiley and Nate Smiley, a pitcher in the fine group. They were all cousins of former big league
pitcher John Smiley, who played his scholastic baseball at Perkiomen Valley High School.
Piazza played for the Skippack Skippers in the popular Perkiomen Valley Twilight League for adults after playing American Legion baseball in Phoenixville. That was all a long time ago when Piazza was still toiling in the bat-
ting cages for hours and hours and hours and hitting baseballs over and over and over.
That work ethic and determination helped make Mike Piazza a special athlete. And once he settled on becoming a catcher in the minor leagues after playing numerous other positions while growing up, he became a solid player.
And, now, after all that labor for the love of baseball, Piazza is immortalized in the National Base-
ball Hall of Fame at the very top of the game.
There are five athletes from Phoenixville Area High School who have entered the professional ranks in baseball and football, and I have been able to report on them all during my long career in local sports journalism, most of it spent covering Phoenixville area athletics.
In baseball, there were Andre “Thunder” Thornton, one of the all-time great home run hitters
as a first baseman/designated hitter for the Cleveland Indians; and Creighton Gubanich, who had a short stay with the Boston Red Sox and ripped a grand slam home run for his first Major League Baseball hit, one of only four men to accomplish that feat.
Those three players, along with pro football linebackers Neal Olkewicz and Rick Kraynak are enshrined in the trophy case outside the gymnasium at the new Phoenixville Area
Middle School. That is quite a high number of pro athletes for a small town and small high school that was always considered one of the smallest in the old Ches-Mont League, when Piazza played, and now the Pioneer Athletic Conference.
You could also add the many professional boxers who have come out of Phoenixville, beginning with the late “Irish” Joe Rowan and Tommy Marchegiano in the 1950s and continuing in modern
times with Jimmy Deoria, who now serves as executive director of the Phoenixville Area Police Athletic League (PAL) program while serving as a police officer in Schuylkill Township. As a youngster, Mike Piazza attended Schuylkill Township Elementary School.
These are all men who, along with many other outstanding teammates, have put the name of Phoenixville on the large scale of athletics across the United States.