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 show’s Special Forces selection process playbook.”Special forces: the toughest test in the world.“One of those household names will be Mike Piazza.
In this new Fox series, there is no voting or elimination – just the survival of these 16 candidates – including Danny Amendola, Mel B, Hannah Brown, Tyler Florence, Kate Gosselin, Dwight Howard, Montell Jordan, Gus Kenworthy, Nastia Liukin, Carli Lloyd, Beverley Mitchell, Kenya Moore, Dr Drew Pinsky, Anthony Scaramucci and Jamie Lynn Spears. They joined baseball great Mike Piazza – aka “The Supreme” – as they quickly learned the meaning of “No Guts, No Glory”, tackling intense training drills led by a team of elite of ruthless former 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 a team sport may have worked in his favor.
Mike Piazza’s father, Vince, was a military veteran who was drafted into the Korean War but suffered an ankle injury before he left. If that hadn’t happened, the Baseball Hall of Fame might never have seen the light of day, as the vast majority of his father’s crew were hit hard in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. . When Vince’s infected ankle recovered, he was reassigned to Border Patrol in West Germany. Luckily he returned home and although he was devastated that many of his friends had been lost in the war, he was happily able to carry on and raise five sons. “He talks a lot about guys he knew who didn’t come back,” said Mike Piazza, who spent 16 seasons in the majors, including with the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets. “So that kind of inspired me. And as a result, in my personal life, I just feel like there’s so many servicemen who have really sacrificed for freedom and opportunity for us. to have a good life that I feel a little guilty about, you know? And I hope that’s my little way of honoring them.
Mike Piazza Says Nothing Can Prepare You For Special Forces
While Mike Piazza is on a TV show, rather than joining the military, describing his tribute as “small” might still be considered an understatement. The only way for Piazza to leave the show is to own the embarrassment of quitting, failing himself or his team, through injury or the strength of the DS. Special forces. “World’s Toughest Test” is the ultimate assessment of the cast’s physical, mental and emotional resilience, and the action begins before they even get to base. So how soon after that ordeal did Piazza start to question his judgment for signing up for such a brutal show? “Ha, I think the first day,” he laughs. “Don’t get me wrong, I did some 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 don’t really understand until you go through it. I was a professional athlete, I trained hard at my job, and I consider myself to be in pretty good physical shape. Even later in my life, I still like m train, but nothing can prepare you for this.
At 53, Piazza has proven he still has plenty of fight left in the game. But of course, making a home run is a totally different experience from running on the uneven surface of a sandy desert. “After the first few days, I was pretty well banged up,” he shares. “Just playing baseball, my joints were [already] a little painful. It’s the intensity. That, for me, was the biggest revelation. Just general things like athlete’s foot. Wearing boots and not being able to shower. The living conditions were so brutal. On the second day, I was peeling the skin off my feet. Man, I thought I left that behind me 10 years ago!
Teamwork makes Mike Piazza’s dream come true
Luckily, it wasn’t just Piazza’s physical experience that helped him on the show, as his experiences 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 Nastia Liukin, who was a gymnast, and you could say that individual athletes are different from people who are part of a sport. ‘a team because when you’re on a team you have to depend on each other, you have to lean on each other, you have to embrace each other’s strengths and weaknesses and so I obviously gelled with Dwight Howard and Danny Amendola, guys who were team athletes. We hit it off right away, whereas on the show with me and Gus, there was a little conflict there. I think there didn’t quite get me, and I didn’t, and so that’s the interesting part. And then, seeing the evolution of everyone coming together as a team, it was really captivating. We’ve gotten really close. We’re all texting now and having a group chat. Once you went through some kind of traumatic experience like this, that you help each other and depend on each other, our level of pride and our ego has been completely destroyed. It was really interesting to see all these walls come down.
Piazza was also able, through his upbringing and participation in baseball, to follow the instructions of the leaders. “I had that respect for authority right away, but some people didn’t,” he laughs. While Piazza’s athletic experience was certainly an advantage, the hitting receiver often found himself outside his comfort zone on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. “A lot of the tasks were terrifying,” says Piazza. “When we were crossing the cables, above the crevasse, about 300 feet deep, of course we had safety equipment for this exercise, but then we walked up there and realized that if you fall, you are dead. It’s called the weasel walk, where we walk and the rock is right in front of you, so we were walking more at a 45 degree angle, with no safety gear. It was terrifying to me.
So how did Piazza perk up every time he started to feel like he was losing his grip, mentally speaking? “I went back to that inner peace, prayer and meditation,” Piazza says. “I don’t see how you can go through something like that without going inside and calming down, and putting it into perspective, and trying to center yourself.” While some people are afraid of heights or being submerged in water, Piazza’s biggest fear was the thought of failing himself and his team. Without giving away any spoilers, it’s fair to say that there were times when the Dodgers and Mets legend came to rely on this new team to help him dig deep. “First of all, it made me appreciate life,” says Piazza. “Second, it gave me more patience. I think as an athlete who has reached a high level it is easy for us to criticize people and expect them to do what you have been able to do and as a player who has accomplished some things. I watch the other players now or the kids I coach and I’m more patient. I am more understanding, that everyone has their limits. Try to put people in a position to succeed, not a position to fail.
Special forces: the toughest test in the world premieres Jan. 4 from 8-10 p.m. ET/PT on FOX.
