Never mind Mike Piazza's status as the greatest hitting catcher of all time. The 427 home runs and lifetime .308 batting average.
Pay no attention to his part of an incredible streak of Rookie of the Year winners for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Or his role in history as part of a battery with Hideo Nomo, the first Japanese-born Japanese import to break the ice here in the United States.
No need to dwell on his playing in two of the spiciest cities in the world, Los Angeles and New York. Or his legendary impact on the Mets, resulting in a World Series berth (Subway Series), and permanent cachet in this city as one of the all-time great Mets.
And surely you could care less that his career spanned the steroid era; or that over the course of it he got to experience both the feeling of baseball rock stardom as one of its best and most marketable players, along with the downside of hanging on to faded glory and after bouncing around, retiring with barely anyone noticing.
None of those things are going to get you to pick up Mike Piazza's autobiography.
No, you want sizzle, and the steak to go with it. And that means you care about only two things: what happened with Roger Clemens and the case of the Thrown Bat. And, of course, his historic achievement as the only major league baseball player to hold a press conference specifically to declare his sexuality (spoiler alert: he's not gay!).
Now I don't say this because I'm an expert on people, book publishing, and/or demographics. I say this because the esteemed folks at Simon & Schuster, obviously feel this way based on the press release announcing Mike Piazza's autobiography to be published in 2010.
"His time with the Dodgers and Mets was marked by enormous popularity with fans and national controversies –- notably the 2000 World Series incident when Roger Clemens threw a shattered bat at Piazza, and the press conference he held to deny rumors that he was gay."
These are the "notable" story lines in the narrative of the greatest hitting catcher of all time? Excuse me, I meant the greatest hitting heterosexual catcher of all time?
Well in lieu of people actually caring about, uh, baseball, I guess we can root for him to call it, "How To Win Friends and Influence People Who May Or May Not Think You're Gay", and to include some nice color pictures of Mike and his Playboy model/Baywatch Babe girlfriends. That would be a no-doubt-about-it home run for Simon and Schuster.
Copyright NBC Local Media / NBC Washington
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