In today's New York Times Book Review review of Mike Piazza's memoir, I come out as a lifelong Mets fan and get to use this Piazza quote: "If I were gay, I'd be gay all the way."
He admits he wasn’t the clubhouse leader the team may have needed. He was a prickly, conservative, Catholic metalhead, and all he wanted to do after hitting those homers was lift weights, play air drums, go to Mass, date pretty actresses and be left alone. He was, he says, “too moody, too brooding, too consumed, too unlikable” to be a good teammate, much less a mentor. “I was,” he says, “more of a see-the-ball-hit-the-ball kind of guy.”
Read the whole review here.
I talk to editor Sam Tanenhaus on the New York Times Book Review podcast here.
The Belle & Sebastian song "Piazza, New York Catcher" is here.
And here I am as Keith Hernandez for Halloween in 1986.
