Will Leitch excerpts Jeff Perlman’s book, The Rocket That Fell to Earth: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality on Mike Piazza.

As the hundreds of major league ballplayers who turned to performance-enhancing drugs throughout the 1990s did their absolute best to keep the media at arm’s length, Piazza took the opposite approach. According to several sources, when the subject of performance enhancing was broached with reporters he especially trusted, Piazza fessed up. “Sure, I use,” he told one. “But in limited doses, and not all that often.” (Piazza has denied using performance-enhancing drugs, but there has always been speculation.) Whether or not it was Piazza’s intent, the tactic was brilliant: By letting the media know, of the record, Piazza made the information that much harder to report.

What? All you have to do is tell a report the truth off the record to keep it secret? Bonds really missed his opportunity with Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. Imagine what could have been:

Phone rings. Lance Williams answers.

“Crap, there goes my book deal!”

Who knew it was so simple!

Note that the passage says harder to report. Maybe those reporters who knew should have found a way.