According to Andrea Torres of The Miami Herald, Major League Baseball's best-hitting catcher, Mike Piazza, made his debut in Richard Rodgers and George Balanchine's Slaughter on Tenth Avenue with Miami City Ballet on Friday night.
While the Mets' No. 31 didn't dance a beat, Torres reports that the Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts was festooned in "sexy red," and that the dancers "moved with aggressive sensuality."
The six-foot, three-inch Hall of Fame hopeful eschewed both tights and tutu--Piazza opting instead for houndstooth, a dark fedora...and a fake pistol.
You see, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue occurs near the end of Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's 1936 Broadway musical, On Your Toes. This ballet-within-a-play tells the star-crossed tale of a hoofer who falls head over heels for a dance hall girl, only to end up murdered by her jealous boyfriend.
Naturally, said hoofer then shoots the boyfriend.
The ballet is integrated into the musical's plot by having a gangster witness the story unfold from the theater's box seats.
In Miami City Ballet's production, Piazza's gangster meta-character was hired by a disgruntled dancer to shoot the protagonist.
In the end (as you can see in the picture above), Piazza's thug was thwarted.
It would seem being back in the limelight has stirred up some old feelings for the Miami Beach resident, who played eight seasons with the Mets.
"I haven't had this much attention since I hit two home runs in one game or played in the World Series," Piazza stold Newsday after Friday afternoon's dress rehearsal. "When I get up there, it's almost like a flashback and a déjà vu feeling. But I don't have to worry about a 90-mile-an-hour fastball coming at me anymore."
Mike Piazza's real reason for joining the show, though?
His six-year-old daughter, Nicoletta, is a student at the Miami City Ballet.
Finally, as Torres claims, Christian Slater was in the audience for Friday night's performance. In fact, he and girlfriend Brittany Lopez were among the first out of their seats when the Miami City Ballet received a standing ovation.
Piazza, a 12-time All-Star who retired from the big leagues in 2007, holds the record for most home runs by a catcher with 427.
As for Balanchine, here's a scene from On Your Toes excerpted from the Frank Langella-narrated American Masters documentary of 2004.
(FYI: Eddie Albert had to have a dancing body double.)
