When Matt Daily took the head coaching gig at Menlo College, a Northern California private school with a total enrollment of around 745, the baseball program did not have a radar gun or a tarp. They possessed two bases, so a bucket top covered third base until Stanford lent the Division III team one of its practice bases.
To raise money, Daily, his staff and their guys worked security at sporting events. They’d be at a Stanford football game one day, an Oakland Raiders game the next. Such is life for schools without a large athletic department or a ton of boosters pumping money throughout the programs.
Chris Mazza, Menlo’s most recognizable baseball name, fit right into that. His father, Bob, is a brick mason carrying on the family business. The cracks in his hands can be felt with one handshake, Daily said. When Daily first met Bob, he immediately realized Bob understood hard work.
Chris showed up at Menlo the same way. He was competitive and knew nothing would be given, especially because people had doubted him at every turn of his life. He respected a day’s work.
“That, I think, is something you can’t coach,” Daily said. “I think that’s layered in why he’s stayed with the game so long — because he’s understood and doesn’t take for granted what it meant to work hard and get after it.”
Why 29-year-old Chris — currently with Triple-A Syracuse — is still playing baseball might be the most intriguing part about a guy whose grandmother was a cousin of Joe DiMaggio.
Mazza spent eight long years in the minors before debuting for the Mets earlier this season, then spending more time with the club recently. With all we hear about long bus rides, low pay and the other drawbacks of that not-so-glamorous life, it seems incredible that someone would do it for so long.
Prove them wrong
The news left Mazza shocked, angry and searching for answers. He looks back on it as the lowest low, the point in which he could have quit if he had wanted.
“I’m just going to be straight up with you, because I don’t know how else to go about it,” Jacksonville manager Randy Ready told Mazza in his office. “But the organization is going to release you.”
Mazza finally felt like he had started to figure it out with the Miami Marlins’ Double-A Jacksonville team in 2018, three years after the Minnesota Twins released him. He told his parents the news, packed his bags and headed for his hometown of Clayton, California, an hour east of San Francisco.
When Bob spoke to his son, the conversation centered around one question: “Are you done?”
Chris had always said he would give it until he was 30 years old to make the big leagues. At this time, he had just under two and a half years left in the hourglass. He had to decide whether to keep at it or to walk away having never achieved a dream.
In his younger days, Bob wanted to be a professional golfer. That eventually went out the window and he joined his dad in business. In the Mazza family, Bob said, you were taught to chase your dream until you no longer could.
“I’m a true believer that if you quit before you’re ready to quit,” Bob said, “you’re going to regret that for the rest of your life.”
Chris is noticeably careful when speaking about quitting and experiencing doubt. To be clear, he said he never actually pondered quitting. The only doubts he has felt are the questions that often ran through his head.
Will I ever make it there? Will this ever happen?
Some guys, Chris said, let the doubts accelerate a downward spiral. Not him. When asked why, he made it sound like he didn’t have much of a choice.
“Mostly because I’ve been told I couldn’t do something my entire life,” Chris said.
On an island
Many coaches told him he was too small or not good enough. He entered high school at 5-foot-1 and 92 pounds, which seems unbelievable because he’s now 6-foot-4, 180.
His size didn’t keep him from another sport that his father believes paid dividends: wrestling. Bob coached baseball for a long time and said he would tell kids that baseball is a “team sport with a bunch of individuals.” Wrestling, too.
“You had to fight for everything you got,” Bob said of wrestling. “It is a one-on-one scenario.”
And baseball?
“You’re always on an island,” he said. “There’s always something to do, but you’re always by yourself. So you always have to compete against yourself while you’re playing.”
That might be where Mazza shines. He always saw himself as the guy that would be at his best “when the lights come on.”
“I think it’s just maybe the adrenaline and everything,” Chris said. “I think it’s a competing thing. Where, in practice, you can compete but it’s hard because you’re with your teammates. But once you have another opponent, that killer instinct and competitive mentality just really comes out.”
After the Marlins released Mazza, he thought he’d wait a couple weeks for a call. But it became a couple months. “That was way longer than I expected, man,” Mazza said. Eventually, Seattle scooped him up before the Mets selected him in the Rule 5 Draft months later.
It led him to Citi Field, when he eventually took a big-league mound for the first time.
“I just like to prove people wrong,” Mazza said.
A trailblazer
At Menlo, Daily fought the stigma of a Division III baseball program. He had scouted for the San Diego Padres early in his career, ferociously attempting to get Mazza looks. Menlo players had signed with organizations, but none were drafted and the school had never sent someone to the majors.
Daily knew the righty had a future and he used his connections to put feelers out there.
He vividly remembers a time when he offered his best pitch on Mazza to a coach who had a spot in the Alaska Baseball League, where college players go during the summer months.
The coach wouldn’t bite.
“I remember being so frustrated,” Daily said.
People mostly thought Daily was trying to oversell Mazza, an admittedly late bloomer. Mazza said he was good enough “to get by” on his high school team. He was small, so he focused on the little things, like using his speed and moving guys over.
He did not think about professional baseball. His mind only sat with trying to play somewhere, anywhere in college. He received a mailer from Menlo one day, and the school seemed like a great fit. They had a baseball program, too.
Mazza played shortstop and closed during three collegiate years. He entered as a position player, but at some point the coaches got a radar gun on him — Daily doesn’t remember where, because the program didn’t have a gun — and Mazza sat from 88 to 91 mph.
After that, Daily figured Menlo needed to use him on the mound. But Mazza was also a talented shortstop, which was the reason he primarily closed. There were many games in which Mazza would play eight innings at short, then slam the door in the ninth.
Mazza currently ranks top 10 in Menlo’s record books in eight different categories: hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBI, runs scored, stolen bases and saves. Since the Twins selected Mazza in the 27th round of the 2011 MLB Draft, seven other Menlo players have been drafted.
“I think Chris was sort of a trailblazer,” Daily said. “Setting that tone that people can play professionally from a small school. You just need an opportunity.”
Before discussing his relationship with Mazza, Daily wants to make something clear: This is not your typical diamond-in-the-rough story many college coaches tell. He did not discover Mazza at some middle-of-nowhere school. He had no clue who the kid was until the season began.
The two, by chance, landed at Menlo at the same time, and grew together during Mazza’s career. Other than Bob Mazza and his wife, Sherry, Daily and his staff became Mazza’s biggest believers.
“I think everyone needs a chance,” Daily said. “They need a chance to define their own narrative. And I think Chris deserved that chance. … But I think we believed in Chris because he deserved to be believed in and he was one that earned everything that he got. But I do think, also, that he deserved to be believed in because he wanted to respond to all those that immediately told him ‘no,’ and have the opportunity to prove people wrong.”
The show
Mazza entered the visitors clubhouse in Philadelphia with a big grin while “trying not to walk in and do anything stupid to embarrass myself.” Days later, he strolled into Citi Field.
“You take a moment, look around,” he said as turned his head both ways, “and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is the real deal.’”
At times, Mazza said, it can be difficult to wake up with motivation in the minor leagues, especially when you spend so much time there. The schedule is mostly the same down there, except for the fact that you might have to wait longer for treatment because minor-league squads sometimes only employ one or two athletic trainers.
Big-league life features large clubhouses and better amenities. “You’re treated like royalty,” Mazza said. Everything is just … nicer.
When Bob and Sherry were in New York strolling to Citi Field days after Chris’ call-up, they looked at one another as if to say, “Can you believe we’re going to watch Chris pitch in the major leagues?”
Their hearts were still filled with pride for their son.
This past weekend, the Mazzas brought a group of eight to Chris’ homecoming at San Francisco’s Oracle Park.
“That was unbelievable,” Bob said of seeing Chris pitch at a ballpark where he’d grown up seeing games. He even sometimes worked security there to help Menlo’s fundraising efforts.
The Giants walked off in the 16th inning with Mazza on the mound Thursday. But that didn’t dampen the moment for the Mazzas, who were elated to see one of their own on the biggest stage.
“What you did, you’re here and pitched in the big leagues,” Bob and Sherry told him. “Nobody can take that away from you for the rest of your life.”
The Mets optioned Mazza to Triple-A Syracuse the day after that loss because they needed fresh bullpen arms. The demotions and being released are part of the business, but Bob said parents struggle with it because it’s difficult to see their kids thrown around because of the business of baseball.
When reflecting on Chris’ journey, Daily gets choked up on the phone. He pauses to apologize before offering a genuine, important reason why Mazza’s path is so special.
“I think that’s sort of the great American story,” Daily said. “I think you have a lot of kids that maybe are told no. And to have someone realize their dreams is just an emotional thing for me because, you know, I have two kids — a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old — and I want them to see that maybe someday, they can grow up to do things and defy obstacles.”
Making the bigs is a real accomplishment, Chris said, “but now the real work starts.” It takes even more work to stay up there, as he’s learned.
He’s not scared because, for his entire life, people have doubted him.
“Tell me I can’t,” Chris said. “I’m gonna.”
The original article written by Justin Toscano can be found here:
https://www.northjersey.com/story/sports/mlb/mets/2019/07/24/ny-mets-reliever-chris-mazza-takes-long-journey-prove-doubters-wrong/1810597001/