On January 4, more than a dozen celebrities will be seen arriving in the desert to endure some of the toughest and most grueling challenges in the book of the actual Special Forces selection process on the show Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test . One such famous name would be Mike Piazza.
In this new Fox series, there are no votes and no eliminations — just survival for these 16 contestants — including Danny Amendola, Mel B, Hannah Brown, Tyler Florence, Kate Gosselin, Dwight Howard, Montel Jordan, Gus Kenworthy, Nastia Liukin, Carli Lloyd, Beverly Mitchell, Kenya Moore, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Anthony Scaramucci, and Jamie Lynn Spears. They join baseball great Mike Piazza – aka “The Supreme” – as they quickly learn the meaning of “No Guts, No Glory” by tackling intense training exercises led by an elite team of ruthless ex-special forces agents.
M&F sat down with Mike Piazza to learn more about the baseball icon’s family ties to the military and how a career in team sports may have worked in his favor.
Mike Piazza’s father, Vince, was a military veteran who was drafted for the Korean War, but suffered an ankle injury before he shipped out. If that hadn’t happened, the baseball Hall of Famer might never have been born because most of his father’s crew was hit hard at the Battle of Chosin Dam. When Vince’s infected ankle recovered, he was reassigned to patrol the border in West Germany. Fortunately, he made it home, and although he was devastated that many of his friends were lost in the war, he was blessedly able to carry on and raise five sons. “He talks a lot about the guys he knew who didn’t come back,” said Mike Piazza, who spent 16 seasons in the majors, mostly with the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets. “So that kind of inspired me. And, so, in my personal life, I just feel like there’s so many military people who have really sacrificed for freedom and being able to have a good life that I kind of feel a little guilty, you know? And, hopefully, this is my small way of paying tribute to them.”
Courtesy of Fox
Mike Piazza says nothing can prepare you for Special Forces
Even though Mike Piazza starred in a TV show instead of joining the military, describing his tribute as “little” could still be considered a bit of an understatement. The only way for Piazza to leave the show is to accept the inconvenience of leaving, due to failure of himself or his team, due to injury, or through force from the DS. Special Forces. “World’s Toughest Test” is the ultimate test of the actors’ physical, mental and emotional endurance, and the action begins before they even arrive at the base. So how soon after this ordeal did Piazza begin to question his judgment in signing up for such a brutal show? “Huh, I think the first day,” he laughs. “Don’t get me wrong, I did a bit of research on the show and I knew it wasn’t going to be a picnic, I knew it wasn’t going to be all craft services and smoothies, but you really don’t know until you’ve been through it. I was a professional athlete, I practiced my craft hard, and I consider myself to be in some physical shape. Even later in life I still love working out, but nothing can prepare you for that.
At the age of 53, Piazza proved he still has plenty of fight left in the game. But of course, hitting a home run is a completely different experience than running on the uneven surface of a sandy desert. “After the first few days, they hit me pretty good,” he says. “Just from playing baseball my joints were [already] a bit painful. That’s the intensity. This was the biggest eye opener for me. Just general stuff like ringworm. I’m wearing boots and I can’t take a shower. The living conditions were so brutal. On the second day, I was already peeling the skin on my feet. Man, I thought I dropped this 10 years ago!”
Courtesy of Fox Entertainment
Teamwork makes it a dream job for Mike Piazza
Fortunately, it wasn’t just Piazza’s physical background that helped him on the show, as his experience in a team environment also proved to help him mentally. “The interesting dichotomy was; the athletes on the show, those who were individual athletes and those who were team athletes,” says Piazza. “We saw right away, like with Gus Kenworthy, who as a skier, he’s an individual athlete, or Nastya Liukin, who was a gymnast, and you can tell that individual athletes are different than people who are on a team, because when you’re on a team, you have to rely on each other, you have to lean on each other, you have to embrace each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and so obviously I fit in with Dwight Howard and Danny Amendola, guys who were team athletes. We hit it off right away, while Gus and I had a little conflict on the show. I think he didn’t fully understand me and I didn’t understand him, so that’s the interesting part. And then, to see the evolution of everyone coming together as a team was really fascinating. We really got close. Now we all text and have group chat. Once you go through some traumatic experience like that and you help each other and depend on each other, our pride level and our egos are completely destroyed. It was really interesting to see all those walls come down.
Piazza was also able, through both his upbringing and involvement in baseball, to take instruction from leaders. “I immediately had this respect for authority, but some people don’t,” he laughs. While Piazza’s athletic background was certainly an asset, the hitter often found himself out of his comfort zone in Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. “Many of the tasks were terrifying,” says Piazza. “When we were going through the cables, over the crack, like 300 feet down, of course we had safety gear for that exercise, but then we just climbed up and realized if you fall, you’re dead. It’s called the weasel’s walk where we walk and the cliff is right in front of you so we were walking at more of a 45 degree angle with no safety gear. It was terrifying to me.”
So how did Piazza recover when he was starting to feel like he was losing his grip, mentally speaking? “I went back to that inner peace and prayed and meditated,” says Piazza. “I don’t see how you can go through something like that without internalizing and calming down and putting it into perspective and trying to refocus.” While some people are afraid of heights or being submerged in water, most Piazza’s greatest fear was the idea of failing for himself and his team. Without giving away any spoilers, it’s fair to say there were times when the Dodgers and Mets legend relied on this new team to help him dig deep. “First, it made me appreciate life,” Piazza reflects. “Secondly, it gave me more patience. I think as an athlete who has achieved a high level it is easy for us to be critical of people and expect them to do what you have been able to do and as a player who has achieved some things. Now I look at other players or the kids I coach and I’m more patient. I better understand that everyone has their limitations. Try to put people in a position to succeed, not in a position to fail.
Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test premieres January 4th at 8:00-10:00 PM ET/PT on FOX.
