Mike Piazza is “Freaking Pissed Off” About the Treatment of His Soccer Team

In case you were unaware, the owner of famed Italian soccer club Reggiana used to play catcher for the New York Mets. Alright, fine. They’re not that famed—they’re only in the third division—and people pretty much know about them because Mike Piazza is the owner.

But with that said, Piazza is doing his damnedest to put his team on the map, and he wants to let you know how “freaking pissed off” he is that they’re not getting the respect they deserve. Yeah!

Piazza addressed a sore spot for Reggiana at a presser last Friday, in which he lamented that Reggiana has to pay another team for their own stadium. You see, Reggiana went bankrupt a few years after getting relegated from Serie A (Italy’s top division, for you baseball fans) in 1997—long before Piazza took over in 2016. And since then, they auctioned off the stadium to Sassuolo, and now they have to pay them. It’s almost like paying a landlord to live at your mom’s house—kind of—and Piazza is fed all the way up with the price.

Anyway, just take a look at this man as he trembles, pounds his fists, utters a stray “bullshit,” and cooks up his next impassioned thing to say in the few breaths between (impressively chill) translations for the Italian press:

Among the other moments of pure commedia dell’arte, Piazza keeps coming back to the fact that he got the New York Times publishing stories about Reggiana. THE New York Times. This probably means… not that much to anyone in Italy. Then there’s the fact that the camera shakes every time he pounds the table. Or him emphasizing, Lannister-like, that he always pays his debts. Or the part where he says repeatedly, “this team has balls!” Yes they do, Mike.

Given the patchy-at-best history of Americans buying teams in Europe, you’d think that Piazza is out of his element. (Why did he ask why Americans aren’t coming there? Doesn’t he know that’s a curse.) But just watching the man pound the desk like a sugar-amped kid on a Chuck-E-Cheese game reassures that he just might be a perfect fit. So much passion.

h/t CBS