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Port St. Lucie - All his stuff has been moved out of his famous Manhattan Beach, Calif., bachelor pad. And the pad itself is up for sale.
Mike Piazza says his Hollywood image, particularly the starlet thing, was overplayed. A little overplayed, anyway. Whatever, it's all over now. He is on the East Coast for good. He has a seven-year deal and plans to go to Cooperstown as a Met. He even has a house in the suburbs.
What's next, PTA meetings?
Piazza looked long and hard in Brooklyn but eventually settled on a house in secluded Cresskill, in Bergen County, N.J., away from the action but closer to his mom and pop in Valley Forge, Pa. Home Improvement's Tooltime Girl (Debbie Dunning) and other former Piazza dates probably wouldn't be caught dead in Cresskill.
"I had fun out there. But I always felt like I was on vacation," Piazza said of Los Angeles. "I didn't really feel like I was going to ever sink roots back there, not that I'm looking to do that right now. But it's nice to be close to my family. It's a good situation all around. It's so funny that it happened at this stage of my career, maybe a little bit before halfway.
"It's kind of a reverse Lewis and Clark thing. It was a lot of fun but I think it was a good time in my life to move back."
That forlorn face of last summer is gone now, replaced by a perennially contented look that appears ready to break into unrestrained laughter. He said he felt at times last year "like a man without a country."...