Daily Distractions: Mike Piazza writes a book; PEDs, PEDs and more PEDs!

"<strongAre rumors of performance-enhancing drug use tarnishing your reputation? Write a book!

Worked for Lance Armstrong, right?

Mike Piazza is co-authoring a book with Lonnie Wheeler in which he denies using PEDs, according to Newsday. Earlier this week Piazza was denied election to the Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot, collecting 57.8 percent of votes, short of the mandatory 75 percent.

How much of that is due to PED suspicions is unclear, but it will be interesting to see if Hall voters are affected by Piazza’s tell-all.

Hope you’re in the mood for some performance-enhancing bullet points …

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My failed romance with Baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Bert Blyleven

Bert Blyleven has been accused of being Dutch and giving up a lot of home runs, but not of taking performance-enhancing drugs. (Associated Press)

Some kids want to be astronauts, firemen, architects, or all of the above.

I wanted to vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

That’s embarrassing to admit, because I should have known better. Architects make good money. They are also able to work with numbers that don’t lie. If Edgar Kaufmann’s house in rural Pennsylvania (better known as Fallingwater) didn’t have enough weight resting in the rest of its structure, its cantilevered deck would collapse into the waterfall below. There’s no ambiguity about those numbers.

I’m not a Hall of Fame voter; I don’t have the required 10 years’ tenure in BBWAA. But I know that my voting colleagues can’t place the same confidence in their numbers. Not when those numbers are statistics compiled by steroid users in a country that considers steroid possession illegal, in a game that didn’t enforce the same rules as its government.

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