When Mike Piazza invested in Todd Zeile’s movie ...

More from Mike Piazza’s new memoir ...

Piazza and Todd Zeile were close friends as teammates in Los Angeles. When Piazza joined the Mets, he soon became close to Robin Ventura. Piazza advised the Mets to acquire Zeile, and they did. But Piazza was single, Ventura and Zeile were married, so “I was the odd man out.”

Generally, I enjoyed hanging around with married guys, because I learned from them; but it always seemed to me that married players were somehow a little less motivated -- a little more satisfied, perhaps -- than single guys. On the road, for instance, Todd and Robin might lie around by the swimming pool until the early afternoon, something I’d never do and never tell them not to do. In our case, another point of departure emerged when several of us invested in a movie, “Dirty Deeds”, that Zeile was involved with as a producer. It’s not in my DNA to take my money lightly, and I didn’t get much of a kick out of losing it. I grumbled. Mostly I was angry at myself for investing unwisely and ignoring the time-tested advice about doing business with friends. It was a teaching moment. It also made me a little more savvy, movie-wise, in a way that would later come in handy.

I’ve never seen Dirty Deeds, although the bits on YouTube make me worry that something important’s been missing from my life. Here are my two favorite facts about the movie, though, gleaned from the Internets:

1. This:

2. and this:

Zeile hasn’t done a great deal of show-business work since Dirty Deeds, but lately he’s been co-executive producing a future Peabody Award-winning television program. Seems about right. I just hope he let his old baseball pals in on the action. There’s just no way this can go wrong.