by Mick Foley
Not a thing. Not a peep. Not even the slightest sign of interest. If there had been nineteen thousand more like him, it would have resembled a Garden crowd during a Test match.
I had a single ace up my sleeve. One last chance before admitting defeat, acknowledging to my son that I was just a normal dad, albeit one with his own action figure and a distinctive missing ear.
“George, it’s me, Mick Foley.”
With that, the Yankee boss, one of the most famous names in sports, wheeled around, his eyes sparkling, his mouth open in a joyous smile. Dewey’s mouth was wide open as well, but I believe it was due to shock, not joy. How did his plain old ordinary dad know George Steinbrenner?
The answer was simple: I had previously had a top-secret meeting with Mr. Steinbrenner at the 2002 “Old Timers Day.” I guess someone had pointed me out in the crowd, and as a longtime wrestling fan (he even wrote the foreword to Dusty Rhodes’s autobiography), George had summoned me to the office. But Dewey didn’t know that—as I mentioned, the meeting was top-secret.
All he knew was that the Yankee boss patted him on the back, chatted amiably, and signed a baseball before heading back to the business of berating, intimidating, and firing employees—just kidding. Actually, a friend of mine, Stanley Kay, a longtime Yankee front-office man, shared a story with me that showed Mr. Steinbrenner in a different light.
“I’ll tell you,” Stanley said. “When I was sick, Mr. Steinbrenner took care of everything. Everything. I can’t say enough nice things about that man…so he yells a little.”
Well, it looks bad for the Cavaliers in this one. Down by fourteen, three minutes left. Rasheed Wallace had guaranteed a Pistons sweep, and was on the verge of eating some serious wordage when the Cavs took three in a row. But now it looks like Rasheed’s prediction is safe.
I met Rasheed in Portland, and procured a quick autograph as the Trailblazers star forward was making his way to ringside for a front-row viewing of Raw . While taking in the WWE action, Rasheed received a call on his cell, letting him know he’d been traded to Detroit. So, it is quite possible that I have in my possession the last official Rasheed Wallace Portland Trailblazers autograph.
I visited John Grill in the hospital a few days ago. John is the young man who was paralyzed during his first-ever pro wrestling match a short while ago. I was very apprehensive about the visit. Usually, when I visit someone, I can always count on a mutual love of wrestling to guide me through the experience. In this case, due to the circumstances surrounding John’s injury, I feared that wrestling itself would have been seen as the culprit. So I showed up at the hospital, armed with a new WrestleMania DVD and very little confidence, for a visit that really should have taken place a month or so earlier.
To my relief, the visit was a pleasure. John’s attitude was great, and he had far more use of his arms than I had previously believed. His mother didn’t seem to blame either me or wrestling, although no one seemed thrilled by the referee’s decision to push the seriously injured wrestler out of the ring instead of simply calling for the bell and stopping the match immediately.
But I do remember when I was much younger, and had the heartfelt belief that every match was of utmost importance. Poka, West Virginia, in front of twenty-six fans? It might as well have been WrestleMania . Every match was that way. John kept talking about his next match, challenging me and Raven to take on him and his partner. “Okay,” I said. “But Raven’s taking all the bumps.” It’s the least he can do for corrupting my poor mind.
As I was leaving, I spoke to a few nurses, who remembered my last visit to the hospital, about two years earlier. They remembered that I had not been alone that day; I had arrived with a special guest, whom I will speak about in a few minutes.
As I stepped out of the elevator, I was greeted by a face from my past—my first girlfriend, Katie McDevitt, who had sworn long ago that she was going to marry me. What’s a guy supposed to do in this type of situation? Should I ignore the past we shared, just pretend it didn’t exist? Or did I take the right course by inviting her to sit and talk for a few minutes in the lobby, to reminisce about the good old days of innocent love?
And once I finished reminiscing with my first love, should I admit the conversation to my wife? Or should I keep it hidden, secret like my meeting with Mr. Steinbrenner? That was my first instinct, but the secret didn’t last very long. Sometimes it feels as if I have Jiminy Cricket hanging around me 24/7, pooping on my party, forcing me to confess my simplest indiscretions.
Shortly before dinner, I approached Colette, ready to bare my soul. “Um, Collette, could I talk to you?”
“Sure,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know that I bumped into an old girlfriend today.”
“Oh, was it serious?” she asked, slightly concerned, as is only normal when discussing the topic of past loves. She may also have been slightly confused, as “past Mick Foley girlfriends” are something of an endangered species. Not that they’ve been killed off or anything. There were just not that many out there to begin with.
“I guess it was pretty serious,” I said.
“Oh yeah, how serious?” Now she was more than concerned. Slightly bothered.
“We used to talk about getting married.”
“How old were you when you knew this girl, Mick?”
“Three.”
“Three?” she asked.
“Yeah, it was the first conversation we’d had in thirty-seven years.” (Okay, I’m on the plane now. It’s ten minutes after seven.)
A few hours later, I made my way over to Albertson, a drive of slightly less than an hour, for the big “Sports Night” event that I wrote of earlier in The Hardcore Diaries —my annual opportunity to hang out with Olympic figure skaters and dress up like a woman for the sake of Abilities, which consists of the Henry Viscardi School, a top-notch educational center for kids with disabilities, and a job placement center for disabled adults.
“Sports Night” cast, 2006.
Courtesy of the Foley family.
Except earlier in the week, I’d received the bad news; no cross-dressing this year. Instead, I had to learn lines for my role as Howie Mandelson, complete with the worst bald wig in America, in a takeoff of Mandel’s role on the Deal or No Deal game show.
As always, the best part of the day was interacting with the great kids of the Viscardi School, not only in rehearsals of Schpiel or No Schpiel, but in backstage conversations where they actually propose possible future WWE storylines, some of which are pretty good.
I also get to get in more hangout time with my favorite skating sisters, the Hughes girls, and their mom, Amy, who gave me one of my all-time favorite compliments when she said, “I’m so glad you and Sarah are friends.” Oksana Baiul was there as well, the beautiful Russian skater who won Olympic gold in 1992, the year of the infamous Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding kneecap angle. I enjoy talking to her, but always sense an aura of sadness surrounding her; proof, I guess, that life goes on even after dreams come true. I had some difficulty dealing with the aftermath of fame, the complicated residue of childhood dreams realized, back in 2000, when I retired from full-time wrestling. But at least I was thirty-four; Oksana Bauil was only sixteen. And I’m not sure she’s figured out what to do with her life just yet.
She did, however, look great in her I Dream of Jeannie outfit, and I got a kick out of hearing her explanation of her tendency to sprinkle her sentences with frequent obscenites. “This is how I learned English,” she said. “The first words I learned were ‘Blow me.’”
Which reminds me of Lada, a lovely young Russian woman who was an invaluable help to our family, back when Mickey was just a baby. One day, Lada made a discovery and summoned Colette to survey the situation. “Colette, Colette,” she said, in her thick Russian accent. “Meekey has a scratch on his right ball.”
Damn, Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” just came on my headphones—about the heaviest, most emotional piece of music I’ve ever hear
d. I know I touched on the song in an earlier Hardcore Diaries entry, but as is the case in almost everything in life, I think a parallel with the world of wrestling can be formed.
How is it that Cash, his health ailing, his voice failing, could make such an indelible footprint on the fabric of society with a mournful Nine Inch Nails song? I think it comes down to emotion, conviction in one’s own message, and an audience’s ability to see through the hype and identify the real deal once in a while. Could you imagine Cash singing “Hurt” on American Idol ? He’d have been laughed off the stage. But can you imagine Clay Aiken singing “Hurt”? It would be a crime.
Sometimes it seems to be the same in wrestling—at least, I hope it is, for my sake. Hopefully on June 11 enough fans can overlook the obvious lack of athleticism and glamour in that ring, and focus instead on the emotion and conviction on display. Hopefully that will be enough. Emotion. Conviction. Oh, and maybe a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. And thumbtacks. And garbage cans. And especially the return of the ten-pound weight taped to my foot that I intend to kick a field goal with—assuming, of course, Terry Funk’s nuts play the part of the football in this match. Hey, Lada, there’s going to be more than just a scratch on the Funker’s right ball.
As I mentioned in my earlier diary entry, “Sports Night” attracts some of the biggest stars in athletic history. While very few of these stars have the time or willingness to make fools of themselves in the play, they nonetheless give up their time for a great cause, often traveling considerable distances to do it.
The first hour of the official event is a cocktail hour, where all of the stars are available for conversation and autographs. Because most guests have already paid pretty substantial money to attend the event, there is no extra charge for these autographs. As you can probably imagine, not all stars are equal in the guests’ eyes, and therefore, the line for Jim Brown (perhaps the greatest football player of all time) is considerably longer than the line for Mike Masco (the Olympic bobsledder whose name I forgot in the earlier entry).
I’m somewhere in the middle—lots of kids, some adults. But by the forty-minute mark, I was on the verge of being lonely when I was approached by two nice young ladies, in their mid-to late thirties, I guessed.
One of them, a blonde, seemed genuinely happy to meet me, saying, “Out of everyone here, my son is going to be the most excited to hear I met you.”
The three of us proceeded to chat amiably for a few minutes before the blonde said, “Well, I don’t want to bore you, so I’ll leave you alone.”
“Listen,” I said, confiding in them both. “Anyone who wanted to meet me has already met me. You can feel free to stay and talk as long as you want.”
So they did. They hung out while I expressed my concern about the “Lunch with Mick Foley” that was up for bid as part of the silent auction.
“Well, at least it’s up to $450,” I said. “At least that’s respectable, right?”
“Oh, definitely,” one of them said.
“Yeah, they asked me if I’d mind doing it, and I said ‘Sure,’ just as long as its not part of the live auction. Because I’d really be terrified that no one would bid on it, which would be humiliating, you know.”
They nodded in agreement. That would be humiliating. I then regaled them with a story from my glory days, where two people paid $32,000 each for the “Dinner with Mick Foley” package.
“Yeah, for a while, I put a dinner up at every event I went to, but that price slid down pretty rapidly, to the point where it barely covered the cost of dinner. But hey, $450 is respectable, right?”
“Definitely,” the blond woman reconfirmed. Then she said, “Mick?”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind if I introduced you to my dad?”
“Oh, of course not,” I said, thinking it was actually quite sweet that she would bring her dad out to meet all his favorite sports stars.
“Mick, this is my father,” she said.
I looked up to see Jack Nicklaus.
“No,” I said in disbelief. It couldn’t be.
She laughed and said, “Take a close look at me.”
She looked exactly like him. Like looking at a photo of him on the cover of my dad’s 1970 Sports Illustrated. I’m not a golfer, or a particularly big golfing fan, but even I understood how important Jack Nicklaus was. I was stunned.
After talking with Jack and his wife for a minute, and thanking them for supporting Abilities, I turned to the blond woman, Jack’s daughter. “Can I have your permission to tell this story everywhere I go?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said.
The main item on the live auction list was a round of golf with Jack Nicklaus, with an opening bid of $50,000—a number that was the main course of conversation over dinner. Following the cocktail hour, each athlete (or sports entertainer in my case) sits at a designated table with guests, for dinner and the grand Jo Jo Starbuck production. Of course, those foolish enough to perform leave the table immediately after dinner.
“How much do you think it will go for?” I was asked.
“Right around a hundred,” I said. “How about you?”
“One-fifty.”
“One-fifty,” I said in bemusement. “No way.”
Good thing I’m not a gambler. A round of golf with Jack Nicklaus went for $300,000—twice. A grand total of $600,000 for the honor of putting and driving with golf’s greatest legend.
The show, as usual, was a blast, even if someone forgot to tell Irish tenor Ronan Tynan that the adults are supposed to embarrass themselves with bad acting, humiliating costumes, and Ashley Simpson–esque lip-synching. So instead, Tynon went out there and had to ruin it with “God Bless America” and some Rogers and Hammerstein tune that wowed the crowd. How the hell was I going to follow that with a bald wig and some overacting worthy of Vince McMahon?
Uncle Dee
Brian Hopkins has been a friend of mine since somewhere around the end of 2000, about the time I moved back to Long Island. Somewhere around that time, I called up my local Make-A-Wish, asking if they knew of any wrestling fans, who might want to hang out, kind of like a bonus wish for a kid who loved wrestling, but might wisely choose a Disney vacation or trip to Hawaii over a chance to meet a guy in tights who pretends to fight.
Yes, I was told, they had two “wish” kids who had listed WWE as their second choice. Hey, I don’t mind being second—I’m just flattered to be in the top hundred. I was given the numbers of both kids, and was told that as long as I initiated the contact, any meeting I set up would not be considered a “wish.”
One child was facing serious back surgery. Despite what some people may think about “wish children,” not all of them are terminally ill. I think by definition they are kids under eighteen facing life-threatening illnesses or procedures.
The other one, Brian, suffered from cerebral palsy, and was brought into the world under the most trying of circumstances. He was one of twin boys. His brother, Jerry, was born without any physical complications. Their mom, unfortunately, died during childbirth, leaving a grief-stricken husband and two newborns without a mother.
Following our initial meeting in late 2000, I became a sporadic guest at the Hopkins house for random Raw or SmackDown! viewings. Watching the shows seemed like a fun way to spend time with a great kid who’d endured more than his fair share of hardships along the way. I would bring my older kids, eat for free, exaggerate tales of my wrestling past, and never have to worry about leaving my comfort zone. As long as a WWE show was on, I could show up, have some fun, make a little bit of a difference, and never have to worry about addressing difficult issues.
But I feared that eventually some kid would pose a question that didn’t deal with Hell in a Cell or teaming with The Rock; a query that might actually involve some insight or knowledge on a subject I was not completely comfortable with. It’s one thing for me to say “I don’t know” to my kids—they hear it all the time from me. It’s another for a kid who h
as faced serious challenges to hear the same thing. Granted, twenty years in the world of sports entertainment, traveling the globe, experiencing the highs and lows of human nature on a regular basis, has been an invaluable education in its own right. But it hasn’t necessarily prepared me for questions of life and death, or qualified me as a provider of comfort or dispenser of wisdom.
I wanted to change that. So in the winter of 2002, I took a seven-hour workshop entitled Good Grief, offered by the American Cancer Society, that dealt with the emotional consequences involved in death and life-threatening illnesses and conditions. I found the course to be invaluable, especially in emphasizing what I took to be the workshop’s main theme—people want to talk about what’s troubling them.
Wow! This was the complete antithesis of the Mick Foley SmackDown! visit. No, no, no, my job was to show up, eat, watch TV, tell an amusing anecdote or two, and then leave without ever even acknowledging a kid’s physical limitations. Wheelchair? What wheelchair? Those types of things were simply out of my area of expertise. So I ignored them.
But shortly after the Good Grief workshop, I received a phone call from Brian, in which he asked if I would like to go to an Islander game with him before he underwent serious spinal surgery. Brian’s cerebral palsy, it seemed, was causing him to lean to the side of his chair, twisting his spine and causing a domino effect of subsequent health problems, all of which combined to cause him a great deal of pain.
So I drove my Chevy Impala over to Brian’s house in Lindenhurst (hometown of Pat Benatar) and had his dad take us the rest of the way to the Nassau Coliseum in their wheelchair-accessible van. He dropped us off like we were on a big date, and after making our way to the special handicapped section, I realized that I felt woefully out of place.
The skates, the ice, the Zamboni—it was all foreign, like a huge audience reaction in a Test match. So, after watching warm-ups in a state of near silence, I fumbled for words that might make me sound like a little less of a loser than I was actually feeling like.
