My older brother Noah and I often make jokes about Mike Piazza, the former Mets / Dodgers catcher who most likely will make the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I’ve thought a lot on what’s so comical about this seemingly ordinary pro athlete.
For starters, he comes across as this kind of stiff jock who tries his best to have as generic a personality as possible. This is, of course, the mainstay today as pro athletes do their best to be watered down versions of nothingness as to not offend anyone. But Mike is a natural at it, as if he is an empty shell off camera as well.
Also, the way that he handled rumors about purportedly being a homosexual is classic. After all, he did what most straight men would do: instead of ignoring the rumors or casually addressing them, he thought it best to formally hold a press conference where he declared his heterosexuality to the world. YA. That happened.
Anywho, the reason I bring this up is because I stumbled across an excerpt from his autobiography where he “addresses” the “issue”. I found it quite representative of him in the context of this comical visage.
“I can think of only one occasion when I felt I was being checked out by another man. It was a year or two later, when I was buying a CD in Union Square. A guy came up to me in a manner that was unusually friendly. He definitely had the gay-dar up, as they call it. But all he said was ‘I thought you handled that situation very well.’ I appreciated that.”
Can’t you just see this priceless moment? Piazza, the everyman New Yorker that he is, buying CDs in Union Square. An unusually friendly man (I bet he was smiling, that rat bastard) approaches him. Mike is sweating, frightened of a potentially awkward encounter with “ONE OF THOSE GAYS”. Yet, suddenly, instead of grabbing his ass, the man compliments Mike on his handling of the “situation”, which Mike later appreciates. You couldn’t write a better scene. It depicts Piazza as that stiff, out of touch doofus that me and my brother perceive him to be.
Who needs fiction? Real life is funny enough.