Beloved Mets catcher Mike Piazza comes out swinging in a new memoir — confronting rumors about being gay and taking steroids, detailing his romantic home runs and finally settling the score with his hated rival, Roger Clemens.
The book, “Long Shot” (Simon & Schuster) comes a month after Piazza, arguably the greatest hitting catcher of all time, fell 98 votes short of being voted into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Many think he missed because of persistent rumors he used performance-enhancing drugs during a 16-year career.
The 44-year-old makes no bones about holding a grudge against Clemens for beaning him during a July 8, 2000, game, and for the infamous bat-throwing incident later that season against the Yankees during the World Series.
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The 98-mph fastball to his helmet could have been deadly.
“I truly believe that if I hadn’t gotten my head down at the last instant, Clemens’ two-seamer would have struck me in the eye and possibly killed me,” he recalls.
The Yankees hurler called the Mets dugout to apologize during the game, but Piazza wasn’t hearing it.
“I grabbed [the phone], threw it and said, ‘Tell him to go f--k himself,’ ” Piazza said.
“Roger Clemens had near-perfect control. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if he had just brushed me off the plate — of course that’s what he said he was trying to do . . . But to stick it in my forehead, that’s another story altogether.”
Piazza tells how he mapped out a plan for revenge — taking karate lessons and visualizing the next time they would go at it.
“I would approach with my fist pulled back. I figured he’d throw his glove out for protection. I’d parry the glove and then get after it,” Piazza writes.
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.”
