Perhaps the best moment of Mike Piazza’s career was his home run in the New York Mets‘ first home game post-9/11.
With his Mets down 2-1 to the Atlanta Braves, Piazza drilled a no-doubt two-run homer that proved to be the game-winner.
It’s now considered one of the greatest home runs in Mets history, allowing New Yorkers to forget for just a moment the tragedy that hit their city 10 days earlier.
However, the former catcher’s roots run deep in Italy.
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Piazza’s grandparents immigrated to the United States from Sicily, and he serves as manager of the Italian national baseball team, a squad he played for in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. He also purchased a majority stake in an Italian soccer club in 2016.
The Hall of Famer attended the Italian American Baseball Federation Cigar Dinner in Bayside, New York, recently and spoke to attendees about being “authentically Italian and … authentically American.”
The Mets icon said “new immigrants” can learn “everything” from Italian Americans.
“I’ve been asked in political circles, ‘What can the new immigrants that are coming to our country today learn from the Italian Americans?’ And I said ‘everything,'” he said. “Because you can be authentically Italian and be authentically American.
“So, they have a lot to learn from us, because we are proud Americans. We love this country. We love the fact we are able to achieve our dreams here. And we brought our families here probably with shirts on their back, and we worked our a–es off.
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“The one thing we’re really, really sh–ty at is complaining. We’re not good complainers. And that’s a good thing. Because we work hard, we love God, we love our country, we love our countries. And this is something special that we have, and it couldn’t be achieved without our incredible pride.”
Piazza was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame in 2016, the same year his No. 31 was retired by the Mets.
His 396 home runs as a catcher (he hit 31 more at other positions) are an MLB record, which he accomplished while hitting .308 with a .922 slugging percentage.
Piazza is one of three players to win 10 Silver Slugger Awards. The others are Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez.
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