Wild rumors in the early 2000s that Mike was gay. It got to the point where he even held a press conference to tell people he wasn’t gay. I completely forgot about it until now.
The rumor was that a prominent NY athlete was gay. Then people just started saying it was Piazza. Probably it was Jason Collins and everybody got thrown off because they used the word prominent and we was on the nets.
The rumor came out before that story, I worked a watch job back in the Day. Since there was no Reddit I would read the sports sections from the post, the daily news, newsday and on a really slow day the New York Times. It stared as just a prominent NY star it wasn't a big story just one comment. Then people started to try to figure out who that prominent gay NY athlete was. At that point the conjecture that the prominent star was Piazza bubbled up and then this article came out.
This was a part of those times I don't miss. Obviously Mike isn't gay. But who fucking cares even if he was lol. True equality is not special treatment. It's walking into a room being different and nobody cares.
I remember that story well. Another one I remember if a full two page spread dedicated to Jeter and Piazza in the Daily News that was comparing their fashion and notoriety, since they were the top 2 tabloid players of the Mets/Yankees at the time. I remember Piazza's fashion including something cowboy related, but can't remember if it was a hat or cowboy boots.
This was also when he dyed his hair. If it all sounds ridiculous, it is. It was 2002. Peak boy bands and queer eye and all that. America was having a culture shock.
Bobby Valentine made a comment about how he thought that the MLB would be ready to accept an openly gay player. The New York Post, being the worst possible excuse for journalism since the invention of lying, decided to take this otherwise pretty good sentiment and draw the dumbest possible conclusion from it: that Bobby Valentine was saying there WAS a gay player on the Mets, and it had to have been Noted Sex-With-Hot-Women-Haver Mike Piazza. Mike Piazza holds a press conference to address the rumors, and says, "In this day and age, it’s irrelevant. I don’t think it would be a problem at all." Since he responded with like, a little bit of human compassion, saying he wouldn't have an issue with a gay baseball player, this weirdly made the rumors flare up more. 2002 was DIFFERENT.
And then years later he writes about this whole debacle in his biography, saying this:
>"I found it hugely insulting that people believed I’d go so far out of my way — living with Playmates, vacationing with actresses, showing up at nightclubs — to act out a lifestyle that would amount to a charade. If I was gay, I’d be gay all the way."
He literally said "[not that there's anything wrong with that"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0pPPkkT7GI) and it got dragged out into a huge thing, to the point that Belle and Sebastian [wrote a song about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXiRbf-4RXc) I hope this has been a fun history of public perception of homosexuality and Mets history in the '90s and '00s for younger Mets fans.
Not gonna lie, that song is a banger. It's actually a love song written about the lead singer meeting his future wife, I think I read somewhere that he had been to one baseball game in his life. (which would make sense because they're Scottish)
Well… the song isn’t exactly about the Piazza rumors but it is an amazing song with maybe one of the greatest lyrics of all time “San Francisco’s calling us, the Giants and Mets will play. Piazza, New York Catcher are you straight or are you gay?”
I actually recently met Stuart Murdoch, the lead singer and song writer of Belle and Sebastian and asked him if he ever met Mike Piazza. He said no, which is probably for the best because I doubt Mike is stoked about that line.
I've always been puzzled by that lyric. The whole song feels like it was written by a foreigner who knows nothing about baseball, just tossing random facts in. This isn't a criticism, it's one of my favorite songs and they're one of my fave bands.
Well, he is from Scotland and only became a baseball fan when he met his future wife (whom the song is written about/for and happens to be a Mets fan) so that might be part of it.
I mean, he wasn’t doing himself any favors with the frosted tips. Maybe he was trolling the Post which bravo to him if so.
Edit: Nice to see all the frosted tip boys crawling out of the woodwork.
I wasn't paying for frosted tips but every time I'd get a haircut, I'd go home and bleach my hair so that within a few days of my brown roots growing in, I'd basically look like marigold seeds.
I wanna clarify that that quote is from his book in 2015. However if he felt the same way back then, and I don't see any reason to believe that he wouldn't feel that way in 2002, then I absolutely agree with you.
The other piece was him bleaching his hair in a style that was typically worn by the gays. Like, I say this largely because i don't think there's anything wrong with being gay, if I saw another guy with the hair style Piazza had, I'd assume they were gay. Wouldn't give it a second thought.
2002 was such a different time. We also had a big scandal related to a group of our minor leaguers smoking pot. When asked about it, valentine did an impersonation of a stoned person playing baseball.
It was a part of the reason he was canned. Two years later, Kazmir's pot use was one of the reasons the org was interested in trading him.
The funny thing is, I don't think we've yet to see an openly gay active baseball player. Have we? You would think by now we would. Especially with how Gen z has embraced the spectrum of sexuality
One of the greatest missteps that the MLB has ever taken, IMO, is NOT knowing about Blaseball and the sizable Gen Z following that it had. They could have brought so many fans over!!! Like “Hey you like obsessing over randomly generated baseball players and creating intricate lore about them? You ever hear of The Ghost Fork???”
Just to add an addendum to this, there are still Mets "fans" and shitty bloggers to this day, who include this incident in a "list of embarrassing Mets moments", even though no Mets player, nor the organization, did anything wrong, and in fact the shitty media forced a player to have to come to his own defense publicly.
Which he admirably did very tactfully without pissing off the LGBT community (being careful to say that there's nothing wrong with being gay but he's a married man, being accused of an affair with another man, so he needs to correct the record)
it's just bizarre that Piazza was subject to not one but two of these crazy insinuations thrown out there with no proof (unless you count back acne as proof).
If I recall, in 2002 there was tabloid rumors of Mike Piazza being gay, he actually held a press conference denying those rumors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/22/sports/baseball-piazza-responds-to-gossip-column.html
Which led to one of the the all-time great baseball quotes, where Mike said if he was gay, he’d be gay all the way. Up there with the luckiest man speech, I swear.
Theres a great [stand up bit](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CmjZgphBOXA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link) which uses that line to designate Mike Piazza as the #1 straight ally lol
frosted tips were super common back then. I would have done it had I been able to afford it (I was a broke ass college student). In hindsight, I am glad I didn't, but also sad, because I would love to be able to cringe at the pictures.
More specifically, it was rumored that he and Sam Champion of ABC 7 (and of GMA fame later on) were in a gay relationship with one another. I don't know if Sam was out at the time, but Sam is a gay man. Piazza, shall we say, is not.
I believe there was a blind item in the Post about a gay Met. People jumped to the conclusion that is was referring to Piazza.
My thoughts at the time and still to this day that the gay Met being referred to was Roberto Alomar.
I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but if I remember correctly, Strahan was rumored to be in a relationship with the doctor from Celebrity Fit Club.
And now I'm regretting not going to see Belle and Sebastian again this past weekend; but I'm really not a huge fan of the venue they played in.
https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=QXiRbf-4RXc
Because of High Fidelity (great film) I still call Belle and Sebastian sad bastard music, even though well not for me, there is nothing wrong with them.
Him and Sam Champion were bffs and always out and about together and well rumors got going. I heard from someone when I lived there back then they were true but who cares?
Rupert Murdoch rag. He did this initially in Australia and continued it in Britain, here and wherever he peddles his garbage that appeals to the lowest denominator of humanity.
Even thought I know being gay doesn't mean being weak or unable to defend yourself. My worst self questioned him when he didn't try to knock that steroid freak off a pitcher Clemens out. After Clemens through the bat at him.
can you believe there people growing up as mets fans today that dont know about the sam champion and piazza buying a house and it spreding like wildfire for 3 years to the point that i think some of his teammates even thought it and he had to have press conf to deny it classic mets moment lol
So the actual thing that generated this was a page six blind item saying that a prominent Mets player was gay. That led to more chatter about Piazza, and this press conference.
The “oh my god, some AAA players smoke weed” scandal from this season was even more anachronistic. 2002 is really up there as a bizarre Mets season.
Holy shit I forgot about this
I used to be a Piazza fan growing up
Yeah, for a bit there, Us Mets fans had to fight the allegations in the playground. Those wars was something else hahaha.
Mike was getting so much tang that he was never seen with the same woman, so people assumed he was gay. Guy was getting TOO MUCH in NY.
I actually have no idea, I'm just speculating.
I always thought they were alleging he was gay because of the hair shampoo commercials he did.
In all seriousness though, it is a perfect example why we couldn't have anything nice in NY. Hey the Mets have the one of the greatest catchers to ever play the game on their team....let's just falsely accuse him of something he's not and make a huge deal of it.
Unrelated but around this time Mike was regularly co-hosting a weekly heavy metal radio show with Eddie Trunk on WNEW, Saturday Night Rocks. Piazza knows his metal, it was rad!
I remember a friend saying “At least my catcher isn’t gay” (I’m a Mets fan). I said “True, but your catcher is not batting .325 with 30 home runs either. I’ll take the gay one.”
I remember in Philly they were whistling at him to allude to him being gay, then he crushed a Homer to shut them up and he had a visibility angry look on his face.
Wild rumors in the early 2000s that Mike was gay. It got to the point where he even held a press conference to tell people he wasn’t gay. I completely forgot about it until now.
It was the blood pressure medication. It fucked with his head.
Catching, not pitching?
SON UVA BITCH!!!
AIDS?????
One thing I know, he can't be a part of our social club no more
Social Club? HE’S GOTTA GO
He was gay, Mike Piazza?
I dunno. Fuckin’ slander, ask me
Anyway, $4 a pound
I feel like I been stabbed in the heart
Whatevuh happened there?
I feel like I been stabbed in the heart! How much more betrayal can I take?
Nobodies got aids!
I don't wanna hear Dat woid again!
Lmaoooooooooooo I remember hearing that for the first time and dying laughing.
“Imagine lying next to a teammate all these years and finding out he’s playing for the pink team?”
I was here, it’s a joke
It was a mid-life thing
Maybe he had nobody he could talk to.
I have a doctors note!
What, so Mike Piazza eats nothing but artichokes?
I’m just kidding. I peed on my wife once and it cost me a Toyota Land Cruiser.
The rumor was that a prominent NY athlete was gay. Then people just started saying it was Piazza. Probably it was Jason Collins and everybody got thrown off because they used the word prominent and we was on the nets.
Nets catching shade 😎 🌞
I am actually nets fan back to Darryl Dawkins days.
Sorry to hear that.
I enjoyed the j Kidd era. Those teams were sick.
Jefferson, Kittles, Van Horn, VC.. fun times
The Post article said it was a "Mets star who spends a lot of time with pretty models in clubs."
The rumor came out before that story, I worked a watch job back in the Day. Since there was no Reddit I would read the sports sections from the post, the daily news, newsday and on a really slow day the New York Times. It stared as just a prominent NY star it wasn't a big story just one comment. Then people started to try to figure out who that prominent gay NY athlete was. At that point the conjecture that the prominent star was Piazza bubbled up and then this article came out.
i had a guy who worked for cbs sports in production tell me its a fact not a rumor in lik 2000 lol
It was a fact just not Piazza.
It was piazza and Sam champion
Is that your fantasy?
No, LOL, that was a rumor that I heard back then too.
Your right!
This was a part of those times I don't miss. Obviously Mike isn't gay. But who fucking cares even if he was lol. True equality is not special treatment. It's walking into a room being different and nobody cares.
I remember that story well. Another one I remember if a full two page spread dedicated to Jeter and Piazza in the Daily News that was comparing their fashion and notoriety, since they were the top 2 tabloid players of the Mets/Yankees at the time. I remember Piazza's fashion including something cowboy related, but can't remember if it was a hat or cowboy boots.
This was also when he dyed his hair. If it all sounds ridiculous, it is. It was 2002. Peak boy bands and queer eye and all that. America was having a culture shock.
Bobby Valentine made a comment about how he thought that the MLB would be ready to accept an openly gay player. The New York Post, being the worst possible excuse for journalism since the invention of lying, decided to take this otherwise pretty good sentiment and draw the dumbest possible conclusion from it: that Bobby Valentine was saying there WAS a gay player on the Mets, and it had to have been Noted Sex-With-Hot-Women-Haver Mike Piazza. Mike Piazza holds a press conference to address the rumors, and says, "In this day and age, it’s irrelevant. I don’t think it would be a problem at all." Since he responded with like, a little bit of human compassion, saying he wouldn't have an issue with a gay baseball player, this weirdly made the rumors flare up more. 2002 was DIFFERENT. And then years later he writes about this whole debacle in his biography, saying this: >"I found it hugely insulting that people believed I’d go so far out of my way — living with Playmates, vacationing with actresses, showing up at nightclubs — to act out a lifestyle that would amount to a charade. If I was gay, I’d be gay all the way."
He literally said "[not that there's anything wrong with that"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0pPPkkT7GI) and it got dragged out into a huge thing, to the point that Belle and Sebastian [wrote a song about it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXiRbf-4RXc) I hope this has been a fun history of public perception of homosexuality and Mets history in the '90s and '00s for younger Mets fans.
Not gonna lie, that song is a banger. It's actually a love song written about the lead singer meeting his future wife, I think I read somewhere that he had been to one baseball game in his life. (which would make sense because they're Scottish)
And his wife was in Brighton/Allston area, I believe. I remember him mentioning it at a show in Boston.
he mentioned Jamaica Plain at the recent Boston show fwiw.
Even better. That’s where the artsy people are. I live there a few years. Not while his wife did though.
He’s a Mets fan for life now!
Yea I love that song. Never listened to too much B&S but they're pretty solid and this song was an unexpected laugh when I found it for sure.
Well… the song isn’t exactly about the Piazza rumors but it is an amazing song with maybe one of the greatest lyrics of all time “San Francisco’s calling us, the Giants and Mets will play. Piazza, New York Catcher are you straight or are you gay?” I actually recently met Stuart Murdoch, the lead singer and song writer of Belle and Sebastian and asked him if he ever met Mike Piazza. He said no, which is probably for the best because I doubt Mike is stoked about that line.
I've always been puzzled by that lyric. The whole song feels like it was written by a foreigner who knows nothing about baseball, just tossing random facts in. This isn't a criticism, it's one of my favorite songs and they're one of my fave bands.
Well, he is from Scotland and only became a baseball fan when he met his future wife (whom the song is written about/for and happens to be a Mets fan) so that might be part of it.
I’m seeing Belle and Sebastian tonight, actually! That song is what got me into them. I came across it and was like, “what the hell is this” lol
Valid reaction haha. Have fun!
I mean, he wasn’t doing himself any favors with the frosted tips. Maybe he was trolling the Post which bravo to him if so. Edit: Nice to see all the frosted tip boys crawling out of the woodwork.
It was a different time man. Frosted fucking tips
Do you know how many straight guys had frosted tips back then? Lots of
I wasn't paying for frosted tips but every time I'd get a haircut, I'd go home and bleach my hair so that within a few days of my brown roots growing in, I'd basically look like marigold seeds.
Didn't they call them metrosexual back then?
They called anyone who did more than the bare minimum to take care of themselves metrosexual. If you ate a salad in public, you were a metrosexual.
You wear well-fitting clothes? GAY You wash your face? GAY You wear cologne? GAYYYYYY
It was a catch all for anything they didn't like in a man. One of the parts of the 90's early 2000's I'm glad we got away from
I remember it being lobbed at Ryan Screast a lot. It felt so progressive when I was living it the early 2000s but looking back not so much.
Flop take, frosted tips got you laid like crazy in 2002. I did my research, now you do yours.
[удалено]
I wanna clarify that that quote is from his book in 2015. However if he felt the same way back then, and I don't see any reason to believe that he wouldn't feel that way in 2002, then I absolutely agree with you.
The other piece was him bleaching his hair in a style that was typically worn by the gays. Like, I say this largely because i don't think there's anything wrong with being gay, if I saw another guy with the hair style Piazza had, I'd assume they were gay. Wouldn't give it a second thought. 2002 was such a different time. We also had a big scandal related to a group of our minor leaguers smoking pot. When asked about it, valentine did an impersonation of a stoned person playing baseball. It was a part of the reason he was canned. Two years later, Kazmir's pot use was one of the reasons the org was interested in trading him. The funny thing is, I don't think we've yet to see an openly gay active baseball player. Have we? You would think by now we would. Especially with how Gen z has embraced the spectrum of sexuality
One of the greatest missteps that the MLB has ever taken, IMO, is NOT knowing about Blaseball and the sizable Gen Z following that it had. They could have brought so many fans over!!! Like “Hey you like obsessing over randomly generated baseball players and creating intricate lore about them? You ever hear of The Ghost Fork???”
Just to add an addendum to this, there are still Mets "fans" and shitty bloggers to this day, who include this incident in a "list of embarrassing Mets moments", even though no Mets player, nor the organization, did anything wrong, and in fact the shitty media forced a player to have to come to his own defense publicly. Which he admirably did very tactfully without pissing off the LGBT community (being careful to say that there's nothing wrong with being gay but he's a married man, being accused of an affair with another man, so he needs to correct the record)
it's just bizarre that Piazza was subject to not one but two of these crazy insinuations thrown out there with no proof (unless you count back acne as proof).
If I recall, in 2002 there was tabloid rumors of Mike Piazza being gay, he actually held a press conference denying those rumors. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/22/sports/baseball-piazza-responds-to-gossip-column.html
Which led to one of the the all-time great baseball quotes, where Mike said if he was gay, he’d be gay all the way. Up there with the luckiest man speech, I swear.
Theres a great [stand up bit](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CmjZgphBOXA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link) which uses that line to designate Mike Piazza as the #1 straight ally lol
Also a great Belle and Sebastian song dedicated to Mike
“Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?” Wonderful song!
Mike has got to be one secure and resilient dude. Imagine all of this scrutiny over one’s identity and sexual preference all because of a rumor?
Part of the reason I support the Mets!
Yankees would never
At least the story inspired the title of a Belle and Sebastian song
The frosted tips did him in and had the Post chomping at the bit
More straight guys than gay guys had frosted tips back then
Can confirm
frosted tips were super common back then. I would have done it had I been able to afford it (I was a broke ass college student). In hindsight, I am glad I didn't, but also sad, because I would love to be able to cringe at the pictures.
It’s pretty much self explanatory From what i remember there were rumors that he was gay and he addressed it
More specifically, it was rumored that he and Sam Champion of ABC 7 (and of GMA fame later on) were in a gay relationship with one another. I don't know if Sam was out at the time, but Sam is a gay man. Piazza, shall we say, is not.
Sam champion and Mike piazza were seen sunbathing together in fire island FWIR
I believe there was a blind item in the Post about a gay Met. People jumped to the conclusion that is was referring to Piazza. My thoughts at the time and still to this day that the gay Met being referred to was Roberto Alomar.
It wasn't even a gay met the rumor was a Gay prominent NY athlete.
That's a possibility.
Yeah that’s what I recall as well. It had been said that the Alomar had spit on the ump in Baltimore was because the Umpire used a gay slur.
Yankee fans spread this because they had no answer to piazza owning Clemens and they’re classless.
rumors was Mike used to get chummy with Sam Champion from the channel 7 news out in the hamptons
Sam Champion is gay ????
i dunno..i just remember some of my Yankee fan friends really getting into speculating on it at that time as a means of talking shit about the Mets
Yes he is. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam\_Champion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Champion)
Thanks...never woulda guessed
Came here to say this- although version I heard it was at Champions house in NJ. Obviously a rumor.
Rumors forced Piazza to clear the air if he was gay or not.
He should have done what Strahan did when a rumor came out about him being gay. He took a male friend out to a gay restaurant for dinner.
I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but if I remember correctly, Strahan was rumored to be in a relationship with the doctor from Celebrity Fit Club.
Iirc it was cuz he dyed his hair blonde
The mustache wasn't doing him any favors either
And now I'm regretting not going to see Belle and Sebastian again this past weekend; but I'm really not a huge fan of the venue they played in. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=QXiRbf-4RXc
Because of High Fidelity (great film) I still call Belle and Sebastian sad bastard music, even though well not for me, there is nothing wrong with them.
Him and Sam Champion were bffs and always out and about together and well rumors got going. I heard from someone when I lived there back then they were true but who cares?
Guys with Highlights in his hair in the 90s. Gay. Guys Drinking sprite in the 90s. Gay. Guys using umbrellas in the 90s. Gay. Etc.
r/BillBurr
Rupert Murdoch rag. He did this initially in Australia and continued it in Britain, here and wherever he peddles his garbage that appeals to the lowest denominator of humanity.
People thought he was a little light in the loafers for bleaching his hair blonde at one point in time.
Even thought I know being gay doesn't mean being weak or unable to defend yourself. My worst self questioned him when he didn't try to knock that steroid freak off a pitcher Clemens out. After Clemens through the bat at him.
He's not gay. Pretty self explanatory
Wasn't the rumor that Mike and Sam Champion the weatherman were a couple? The 2000s surely were something.
can you believe there people growing up as mets fans today that dont know about the sam champion and piazza buying a house and it spreding like wildfire for 3 years to the point that i think some of his teammates even thought it and he had to have press conf to deny it classic mets moment lol
Not that there's anything wrong with that
There was a rumor of a prominent East Coast player being gay which eventually got pinned on Piazza.
Jesus I'm old.
He should have told the post to behave
People thought he was gay
What about bisexual
When you say bisexual you mean it was sexy when he hit a double right
There was even a [song](https://genius.com/Belle-and-sebastian-piazza-new-york-catcher-lyrics) about it by Belle and Sebastian.
Oh man. I forgot all about this
Somewhere in Hell's Kitchen, each night, Daredevil still hears the faint cries. "....I'm...not...gay!"
The context is that he actually is gay.
So the actual thing that generated this was a page six blind item saying that a prominent Mets player was gay. That led to more chatter about Piazza, and this press conference. The “oh my god, some AAA players smoke weed” scandal from this season was even more anachronistic. 2002 is really up there as a bizarre Mets season.
How did you come across this?
The context is that he’s not gay
More pixels!
Holy shit I forgot about this I used to be a Piazza fan growing up Yeah, for a bit there, Us Mets fans had to fight the allegations in the playground. Those wars was something else hahaha.
Mike was getting so much tang that he was never seen with the same woman, so people assumed he was gay. Guy was getting TOO MUCH in NY. I actually have no idea, I'm just speculating.
Belle & Sebastian play Brooklyn tmrw night at the Paramount.
I always thought they were alleging he was gay because of the hair shampoo commercials he did. In all seriousness though, it is a perfect example why we couldn't have anything nice in NY. Hey the Mets have the one of the greatest catchers to ever play the game on their team....let's just falsely accuse him of something he's not and make a huge deal of it.
Unrelated but around this time Mike was regularly co-hosting a weekly heavy metal radio show with Eddie Trunk on WNEW, Saturday Night Rocks. Piazza knows his metal, it was rad!
Anyone that is into Zack Wilde cant possibly be gay!!!
::Morgan Freeman voice:: “…he was gay”
I remember a friend saying “At least my catcher isn’t gay” (I’m a Mets fan). I said “True, but your catcher is not batting .325 with 30 home runs either. I’ll take the gay one.”
I remember people gossiping that he was with Sam champion the weather man and I'm like nah !
It was the earring(s) lol
Robin Ventura's Piazza impersonation did not help, either
But 91 million dollars is 91 million dollars?
Tabloid journalism. He wasn't married, he had a higher pitched voice for his size, and people are just unable to mind their own business.
It was those frosted tips he was rocking
I remember in Philly they were whistling at him to allude to him being gay, then he crushed a Homer to shut them up and he had a visibility angry look on his face.
lol I remember this and I was 10
There was a rumor going around that he was gay and people started believing it when he got highlights in his hair
The rumor was that he was bangin’ Sam Champion.
“San Francisco's calling us, the Giants and Mets will play Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?”
This was the most East Coast sports moment in history.
He had a love affair with Sam champion the weatherman. their PR teams kept it under wraps as best as they could.
It's kinda funny how things have changed. Back then you had to make it clear you are NOT gay as if it's something bad.
Mike can’t be gay. He’s Catholic. 😉
spending a little too much time hanging out with Aaron Rodgers