Recent Major League Baseball Hall Of Famer and legendary New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza spoke with Rolling Stone about his other main passion aside from baseball - heavy metal. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

What was your first concert?

Piazza: “If you can believe it, it was Billy Squier and Ratt at the Spectrum (in Philadelphia). I was a big Ratt fan, not just "Round and Round" but some of their other records. That was my thing in high school. I was blessed that my mom let me do that stuff. It was really cool going to the Spectrum and seeing those 30 tractor-trailer trucks with all the equipment, those big tours in the '80s, all the lights and fireworks and pyrotechnics and confetti. That's where my love of music was hatched.”

Why did you gravitate to hard rock?

Piazza: “It was just the music I identified with. It fit my personality. I like the aggressiveness of it. I used it to inspire me to play.

Once you became a big league star, you must have gotten to meet a ton of musicians. What was that like?

Piazza: “We get spoiled. We get backstage passes. And I found many times that musicians some are frustrated baseball players and baseball players are sometimes frustrated musicians, so we always had this sort of cross-aspirations. I always thought I could be a rock star and then obviously my singing the other night in the bar, I realized that I'm glad I did the right thing. I've met so many great guys in bands. I remember going to a Dokken show. I was a huge George Lynch fan, and I met him backstage and got to check out his guitars. Zakk Wylde, I'm actually godfather to one of his kids, Hendrix. Maybe less than a year ago, Whitesnake was playing at the Hard Rock in Florida and I said hi to David Coverdale. [Drummer] John Tempesta is a very close friend of mine. He was with the Cult and White Zombie. I've made some really cool friendships.”

Has any musician made you particularly star struck?

Piazza: “I've always had a reverence for Eddie Van Halen. I played golf with him one time. He was very knowledgeable about baseball. I wanted so bad to go, "You want to hang?" but I stopped. I just got cold feet.”

Read more at Rolling Stone.