When Mike Piazza was traded to the Marlins in 1998, there’s no Dodgers fan, anywhere, who was happy about it, and it still stings thinking about the best hitting catcher in baseball being sent east in the prime of his career.
Sure, Piazza was set to become a free agent, contract negotiations were at a standstill, and the team acquired a fierce slugger in Gary Sheffield, but this was not how Dodgers fans were used to the team doing business. Homegrown talent wasn’t supposed to end up on the trading block, especially a player who had grown up in the organization under godfather Tommy Lasorda.