Would his memoir contain revelations that he had used performance-enhancing drugs? Was he waiting until the voting was over, and he was possibly elected, before making such an admission?  In the end, there were no such bombshells in Piazza’s book, “Long Shot” (Simon & Schuster), which was written by Lonnie Wheeler and was scheduled to be released this week. But there are a good number of intriguing disclosures as he recounts his improbable rise to stardom, pushed every step of the way by the support and insistence of his father, Vince.  Piazza writes that he was a brat at times during his baseball career, selfish, moody and immature. He says that he was occasionally a poor teammate, aloof and entirely too consumed by what was going on in his world. He says that when he received his biggest payday — a seven-year, $91 million deal with the Mets — he was frightened to the point of paralysis.  The book is Piazza’s way of walking back in baseball’s front door, at least for the moment, after five years way from the spotlight. He now leads a relatively quiet life in Miami with his wife, Alicia, and their two young daughters, Nicoletta and Paulina, with a third child due this summer. But things will become noisier this week, with Piazza back in New York to publicize the book and, no doubt, to answer questions about it.  In the book, Piazza describes how he rose from the 1,390th pick of the 1988 amateur draft to become one of the greatest hitting catchers in the history of baseball. Along the way, he encountered a number of difficulties, all of which he recounts in the book. There were his frustrations over his relationship with his first team, the Los Angeles Dodgers; his rivalry with the Martinez brothers, Pedro and Ramon; his paranoia that Latin players were against him.  He writes of his mixed feelings about the former Mets manager Bobby Valentine, with whom he went to the World Series; his bitter war with Roger Clemens, who beaned him while he was with the Mets; the rumors that he was gay; and, most significant, the suspicions that he used performance enhancers, which he denies.  “It shouldn’t be assumed that every big hitter of the generation used steroids,” Piazza says in the book. “I didn’t.”  But there is little in the book that would have given pause to any Hall of Fame voters had it been released before the ballots had been handed out. Still, Piazza said he delayed the release of the book because he did not want to be seen as campaigning for votes.  “I said we need to be respectful of the process and let it run its course,” Piazza said last week in a telephone interview, “and afterward, it was appropriate.”  As it was, Piazza did not gain entry into the Hall. He earned 57.8 percent of the votes (329 over all), still a distance from the 75 percent needed for induction. He appeared to have been caught up in a swell of antidrug sentiment from voters who emphatically rejected the candidacies of Barry Bonds (36.2 percent) and Clemens (37.6), even though Piazza has never been linked to a positive drug test or to any investigation into the use of performance enhancers.  Piazza says in the book that election to the Hall of Fame would validate his career. As a lifetime .308 hitter who holds the record for most home runs by a catcher, 396, and who hit 427 over all, his numbers seem to warrant entry. But if Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio did not make it on their first ballots, Piazza says he is in no position to complain.  “I won’t deny there is some disappointment, but I understand it’s a process,” he said in the interview, which marked his first public comments since the Hall of Fame vote was announced Jan. 9. “All things considered, I got over 50 percent, and a lot of people were very supportive. I mean, there’s what, almost 600 voters? That’s a lot. I’m on my homeowners board. I know how hard it is to get six people on the same page, let alone 600.”  Piazza’s last game came Sept. 30, 2007, with the Oakland Athletics. He played in 83 games that season and hit .275. He turned 39 that season, and he was done. “I was just tired,” he said in the interview.  Since then, he has not been involved with Major League Baseball, although he has been active with the Italian baseball team, which he will help coach in the coming World Baseball Classic. He has also traveled extensively to Italy and other parts of Europe to help develop the game.
In âLong Shot,â Mike Piazza, the former Mets catcher, admits that he used androstenedione before baseball banned it, but says he did not rely on steroids.