So Mike Piazza admits to having used greenies, andro, Vioxx, Dymetadrine and Ephedra! LET’S THROW HIM OUT OF THE HALL OF FAM...oh, wait.
He would get his chance in October — when the upstart Mets met their crosstown rivals in the World Series. The coming confrontation between the Mets’ 12-time All-Star catcher and the Bombers’ hard-case hurler was the talk of the city.
The climactic moment came at Yankee Stadium, during Clemens’ fourth pitch to Piazza in the first inning of Game 2. The sizzling fastball sawed Piazza’s bat into three pieces, with a shard flying toward the mound. Clemens picked up the splintered barrel and, inexplicably, chucked it in Piazza’s direction as the hitter ran down the first-base line.
“What the f—k is your problem?” Piazza, still holding the handle of the broken bat and walking toward the pitcher’s mound, asked Clemens. But Piazza went no further — and never realized his dream of revenge.
“There were complications,” he recalls. “The least of them was the realization that Clemens was a big guy, and I stood a pretty fair chance of getting my ass kicked in front of Yankee Stadium and the world. That was a legitimate concern.”
It was a decision over which he still beats himself. “It was not only possible but — circumstances be damned — it was in order,” he said. “It was the story of the Series. I couldn’t deliver a punch.”
Repoz
Posted: February 10, 2013 at 11:04 AM |
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1. Ray (RDP)This was also amusing, I guess just because it didn't happen to me:But wow, does this strike me as a tremendously stupid thing to say, much less publish in a book.
And, yeah, that "weird Hispanic conspiracy" bit is incredibly strange. I get the sense that this book is legitimately honest, especially for a celebrity autobio. An honest take on a less-than-examined life is often fascinating but rarely without uncomfortable moments.
When you're a gay,
Be gay all the way
From your first #*()*&^
To your last dying @%#$!#
MCoA nails it, I think.
This isn't going to stop the gay rumors.
There is and has always been a tension between the latin and non-latin players, especially in the minor leagues. Not exactly breaking news. That Piazza feels there's a specific conspiracy against him may be a little extreme.
Many caucasion players believe the latin pitchers are cowards because of their perceived propensity to be headhunters without having to deal with potential retribution at the plate. (I assume the overwhelming number of them are relievers.)
The battle between Mota and Piazza was as racially based as anything else.
Until you can't field--then you sign as an A
New York Times' version, which fills in the blank:
Later in the book, he refers to this teammate as Gilberto Shalomar.
It sounds like it is a book I would gladly read if I found it in the library, but would not buy.
Piazza got to later catch Clemens in the 2004 All-Star game, and I suspect was able to get a measure of satisfaction (if not outright revenge) as the Rocket gave up 6 runs in a single inning of work. I have a feeling Piazza is too much of a professional to tell the hitters what was coming next, but I wouldn't hold it against him if he did.
In my subjective experience, NE Irish-Americans are more conservative but less worked up about immigration (perhaps because more of them have direct or imagined connection with ongoing waves of immigrants, a good number of whom don't have papers) while Italian-Americans are less conservative but much more worked up about immigration.
* - We should keep it real, and from now on refer to this as La eMe.
** - With the exception being union rep Brett Butler against scab Mike Busch.
Funny; I like him less. Not that it matters.
How do people see his andro/amps confessions hurting him? That can't help him, and will probably serve as final evidence to some that he used steroids. But to me, once a player uses amps, the issue of whether he has used steroids is rendered moot since amps are a performance enhancer also. Of course, I don't care whether a player used PEDs at all, but that's how I see the more narrow issue of amps vs steroids.
Completely unimportant but a strange phrasing. Generally there's only one Halloween night per year and this one happened in the year he broke up with a "famous" girlfriend. I mean I could see "One Saturday night" but this should just be "On Halloween". Maybe they mean a night near Halloween.
Dunning came over with a pumpkin and her dog
Bestiality is one thing but squashophilia is just sick!
You can't have it both ways. Its as if you want the guy not only to tell you what he really thinks, but to think in the way you want him to.
i admire that in a culture. the ability to maintain a grudge
if piazza got the brand of anti-whatever that wasn't going away any time soon. like never.
Well you kind of can. "I like that guy, he expresses his thoughts honestly. That one thought of his seems kind of silly." Doesn't seem to me to be an unfair pair of statements.
EDIT: I should add that I mean that in a broad sense. I have absolutely zero knowledge of Piazza-Hispanic relations, though it certainly sounds like he's been involved in his share of intra-team tensions.
I think it's also possible that the "tremendously stupid" comment was referring to the fact that Piazza makes his claim about saying the onus is on Spanish-speaking players to learn English, not for him to learn Spanish and then ruminate on a "weird" (presumably he means something akin to inexplicable) Hispanic conspiracy against him.
Sure but you also have to expect what the end result of pairing those statement together will be which is bland "celebrities" that explain nothing and say nothing of value.
the link was amusing. the call me maybe spoof was ok as well.
i miss the cookie monster around here. fun poster
I like it a lot, actually. To the extent that HoF voters are willing to engage substantively with reality, it's a push in the right direction.
"Theoretically if people cared about something in the way I would care about it if I cared about it, they would react in this way."
A few decades ago, the phrase was "friend of Dorothy."
"Psst! Ichiro! Fastball!"
I so wanted this to be true. Still do.
aka Derek Jeter
Different ways one could read that headline.
While Piazza's views on immigration and race relations may not be as enlightened as some here might like, I can see where it might be frustrating for a Native English speaking catcher who does not speak Spanish to function properly if working with a number of latin pitchers with limited English, especially if he perceived those pitchers he was working with were resistant to improving communications in English. Sorry, but if you decide to immigrate to a primarily English speaking/educated country, and you need to work with primarily English speaking people, it's a good idea to learn the language and not feel entitled to the point that you feel everyone should be bending over backwards to communicate with you in Spanish. I don't know if that was the case, but from reading the excerpts and the thread, I get the sense that this is the way Piazza perceived things. Why that is, I don't know of course.
I'm gonna get killed for this post, aren't I ?
More broadly, I agree with you that it seems sensible for people who move here to learn English, and luckily recent waves of immigrants have done exactly that at basically exactly the same rate that Piazza's Italian immigrant forebears did. People who are older have slow learning curves but pick up some, people who are children pick up a lot, children of immigrants born here are as fluent as the rest of the population.
When you get to baseball, though, your statement gets fuzzy because of the statement "not feel entitled." They're major league baseball players! Of course they feel entitled! They aren't waiting outside a Home Depot to get cash work; they didn't sneak across the border. They were brought here by huge corporations to make those corporations rich and themselves rich.
Obviously, that's a huge "if," and I doubt that Piazza was nearly so tactful about it. It is pretty rude to say, "Hey, bud. You're in an English-speaking country. I ain't gonna bother spending the time to learn Spanish, so you'd better work on your English." He really would have been better off at least offering to meet them somewhere in the middle, as a sign of respect if nothing else. When you want to improve your relations with a group of people, it usually isn't productive to proclaim that the onus is entirely on them to put in the effort. If you offer a reasonable compromise, you will probably be met quite receptively, and the relationship should turn much less frosty. Then again, with the massive egos and machismo generally found in clubhouses, I'm not quite sure how well these normal rules hold up. Perhaps being willing to compromise is interpreted as a sign of weakness. In that case, I'd posit that the manager and other non-players need to lay out in explicit terms what each group needs to do.
Edit: I also wonder if perhaps poor experiences when he was the lone gringo intruding at the Dominican academy contributed to any conflicts he had later on.
Piazza vs. Clemens, career: 25 PA, 4 HR, 10 RBI, 1.395 OPS. That's pretty punchy.
The vast majority come to the USA as teenagers and rattle around the minors for a few years though. There are exceptions of course, like the cuban defectors. But the norm is what was certainly the case with the Martinez brothers. They didn't get off the airplane and go straight to the majors to become stars.
Absolutely. If Piazza offered to spend an hour a day teaching English to the pitchers he worked with, imagine how different things might have been.
BTW, I have spent 24 of the last 34 years, more than 2/3 of my adulthood living in a foreign country with a difficult language to learn, and many dialects to deal with. I learned the language early on, and couldn't imagine how crappy life would be here if I didn't. I have also spent a lot of time during my busy career working with people to help them improve their English, regardless of my position or standing in the companies I've worked at. It's amazing how appreciative people are when you reach out to help a non native user of the language draft a difficult e mail or letter . (Our business is conducted mostly in English, and 100% when dealing with the USA offices of course).
So while I'm not a star baseball player, I've experienced what it's like to not know the language where I chose to live and work, and I overcame it. It's doable, and just because a guy is a talented baseball player is no excuse not to do it as early as possible. OTOH, I'm sure Piazza could have handled things a whole lot better.
You are history's greatest monster.
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