I went out for the team and had the time of my life. I loved it. I loved the competition and the pressure, and the knowledge that whatever I did was done on my own. I highly advise any kid to wrestle, as I learned more about being a man during one season on the mats than I had in the seventeen previous years put together. A lot of athletes won’t go out for wrestling because of the potential ego and image damage it can do. Who wants to lose or, worse yet, be pinned in front of his friends, especially if he just ran for touchdowns a month earlier on the football team?
I was moderately successful right from the start, as I defeated and pinned bigger and more experienced opponents with my unorthodox style I had learned in the Foley living room. One match in particular sticks out in my mind during my time in the green Melville singlet. I was sick as hell one night and was not even scheduled to wrestle, but the meet was close and it would be decided by the final match. Coach McGonigle looked at me, and I looked back, and without saying a word, I started warming up. I looked across the mat at Artie Mimms, who was a big muscular black guy with an imposing Mohawk that made him look like Mr. T. Remember this was back in early 1983, before Mr. Tended up in the “where are they now” file. Mimms was ranked second in the county. I put on my headgear, and I walked over to Coach McGonigle, who patted me on the back and said, “We need a pin to win, Mick, a pin to win.” I nodded and went out to get the job done.
Actually this is one of those “good news/bad news” stories. The good news was, there definitely was a pin. The bad news was, I wasn’t the one doing the pinning. I put up a hell of a fight, but my “double underhook into a body scissors” backfired, and I ended up throwing myself on my back at the very start of the third period, after nearly two minutes of fighting the inevitable. I tried to breathe, and no air entered my lungs. A moment later, I heard a slap on the mat and I was done.
I looked up at the crowd and saw a few of my friends with sadness in their eyes. I spotted a few girls whom I had actually lusted over, and guessed that they weren’t lusting over me. I got up slowly and shook Mimms’s hand. I then walked over and shook his coach’s hand. I then walked over and shook Coach McGonigle’s hand, as he put his arm around me. “It’s all right, Mick, ya know why?” he said, as I smiled a disappointed smile. “It’s all right because that’s the best I’ve ever seen you wrestle. I was laughing to myself, because I couldn’t believe how well you were doing against that guy.” I walked away disappointed but proud. I continued walking down two flights of stairs to the wrestling room where we practiced under hot conditions. Only during meets did we venture upstairs to the gym. I sat down in the empty room and I cried my eyes out.
I hadn’t cried in almost three years-when I found out that Renee Virga was going to the junior high prom with Chris Lenz instead of me. It would take seven more years, after the death of my brother’s cat Snowy, until I shed tears again. Nowadays, forget it, I cry during the Christmas episode of Happy Days-the one where Richie spots Fonzie heating up a can of ravioli by himself on Christmas Eve. Yeah, and I cry at the end of Old Yeller also.
John McNulty came into the room as I was about all tapped out, and he made me laugh at some of his weak humor. I got dressed and drove my brother’s old Mustang II home. My parents were visiting my brother in Indiana and so a few friends came over to cheer me up. I actually had a good time, and I remember that night with friends warmly. Conspicuous by his absence, however, was John Imbelliosio, who skipped out on his distraught buddy to see Taboo II at the Rocky Point cinema with the Renee Virga-stealing Chris Lenz. What a guy. The sequel to my all-time favorite Kay Parker film and he leaves me hanging.
I finally did get to kiss Renee Virga at John Imbelliosio’s wedding in 1989. I saw her recently and told her she was going to be in my book. I also asked her if she’d seen the Chris Lenz issue of TV Guide.
I really only had one problem with wrestling. I simply liked it so much that I lost my desire to play lacrosse. I had been a big pro wrestling fan for a long time, but I never considered it as a career option. Now, however, with a little bit of amateur background behind me, I began to see the possibilities. I began studying tapes of my favorite wrestlers. I became obsessed with the sport/art form, and began to believe I could actually do it. In June 1983, I attended my first match at Madison Square Garden to see Jimmy Snuka battle Don Muraco in a bloody double disqualification. I was hooked. I didn’t need lacrosse anymore-I had pro wrestling.
The absence of lacrosse as a factor brought about a problem of its own. I had applied to colleges with the intention of playing goalie, and now that intention was gone. I really had no desire to go to the schools that had recruited me: Salisbury State, in Maryland, or Western Maryland in, well, Western Maryland. Instead, I settled on Cortland State University, which was located in between Syracuse and Binghamton in upstate New York.
Upon enrollment, I immediately began a quest with Scott Darragh, my old B.P. buddy, to be an amazingly average student. And in that quest, I was successful. I was on course to achieving straight C’s across the board when I went home for fall break. Fall break presented a tricky schedule problem. I was supposed to return to school on Sunday, October sixteenth, in order to be at classes on Monday. This would be a direct conflict to the highly anticipated rematch between the Superfly and Muraco, which was scheduled for October seventeenth. I considered my options. On one hand, I had sociology class with John Alt. On the other, I had my favorite wrestler and his bitter rival at the most famous arena in the world-inside a steel cage, no less. I thought about John Alt, who had lost me the moment he said, “Let’s talk about narcissism, or more simply, narcissistic self-proliferation.” Then I thought about Snuka and his dive off the top of the cage a year ago in a matchup with Bob Backlund. It was no contest. John Alt and his vocabulary that was so ridiculous we were required to carry a dictionary with us to tests had lost out to the man who Vince McMahon had declared was “no less than phenomenal.”
Yes, I was going to the matches, but that was still a problem. My dad would never buy a cage match as an excuse to miss college. No way. He was going to drive us to the Greyhound bus station twenty minutes from our house, drop me and Scott off, and continue with my mom on to Indiana for a visit with my brother. I saw an opening and devised my plan. It was pure genius. I would go with my mom and dad to the bus station and be dropped off as scheduled. After all the goodbyes, we would wait until my parents drove away and then hide in the woods and await the arrival of John Ambrionio, who was attending a local college. The three of us would take the train to New York City the following day, and then feast on the buffet of bloodshed that the Superfly and the Magnificent One would surely serve up.
The plan was taking effect. We were in the car on the way to the station and my parents were chatting amiably to us. I got the slightest twinge of guilt in my throat as I thought about the people I was planning to lie to and deceive.
Chapter 3
My Father Jack Foley The Original Cactus Jack-was a true legend in the field of athletic administration. After starting out at the Setauket High School, which is now an elementary school, my dad went on to become the director of health, physical education and recreation for a school system that was made up of five elementary schools, two junior high schools, and Ward Melville High School, a place so nice that it could pass for a college campus.
In addition, he was the chairman of basketball and lacrosse in our county, was host to the yearly county wrestling championships and the Special Olympics, and was a member of so many groups and organizations that I can’t count them all. For his efforts, he was selected as the athletic director of the year for the entire nation in 1988-which is kind of like a World Wrestling Federation title belt for ADs. Upon his retirement, the ultimate honor was bestowed upon him, when the Ward Melville Gymnasium was officially renamed the Jack Foley Gymnasium.
I recently asked my dad if he’d been by the gym to see the plaque honoring him as the gym’s namesake. He replied that he had, but that he’d had to move
a soda machine in order to see it.
My mom was the first member of her family to attend college, earning a degree in physical education from Brockport State in upstate New York and later a Masters from Stony Brook. She became a phys-ed teacher at the Setauket school, and it was there that she fell for the vaunted Foley charm. After giving birth in 1964 to my brother, John, she gave up teaching to become a full-time mom. It’s funny, my dad has the doctorate, but any time I had a question, I always went to my mother. She had a thirst for knowledge that made her almost like an encyclopedia-or a Jeopardy! contestant. My mom would take college courses just for the hell of it-if she wanted to learn more about a certain subject, she’d just sign up. She’d then come home from class with her notebook and proceed to copy her notes directly into another notebook-again, not to pursue a degree-just to pursue knowledge. That is something I always found admirable … or a little sick-I’m not sure which. Even to this day, my mom will still polish off at least two good-size novels a week.
My dad also liked to read, but his reading had a dark side to it. No, I’m not talking about stacks of porno magazines at the Foley house-Im talking about newspapers. Lots and lots of newspapers. I’m convinced that somewhere in his childhood, my dad must have had a traumatic episode involving a newspaper, because he had an obsession with the damn things. Two papers every day. Two local papers every week, and four-count them-four newspapers every Sunday: Long Island Newsday, the New York Times, the Daily News, and the Long Island Press. Sometimes he’d bring home a New York Post just for the hell of it.
Most of the time my dad was so busy that he would leave for work before we woke up, and he’d return when it was just about bedtime. I would go downstairs to get him a Schmidt’s of Philadelphia and he’d knock off a few pages of Newsday while swigging down what many would consider the worst-tasting brew of all time.
Now Sundays were a different story. That was paper day. With the accompaniment of either a Yankee, college basketball, or pro football game in the background, depending on the season, my dad would launch into a day-long quest to devour the news. It didn’t matter that much of the news was damn near a week old, he’d read it anyway. Not just read it, but underline the important parts-I’m not kidding. A small correction here-if the Sunday reading sessions fell between November 25 and December 24, the audio of the ball game would be turned off and would be replaced by the soothing sounds of classic Christmas music, cracking and popping on our antique turntable. I still to this day carry at least one Christmas CD with me on the road at all times. There’s nothing like “White Christmas” on a hot July afternoon, even if old Bing did beat the crap out of his kids.
Unfortunately for my dad, he would usually run out of time before he’d run out of papers. But he couldn’t bear to part with them. Instead of throwing them out, he would stack them in the garage, where over the course of time they resembled many pulpy, musty leaning towers of Pisa. By the time my mother gave him an ultimatum last year, my dad had papers dating back to the early seventies, swearing up to that horrible day the commercial Dumpster arrived that he would one day find the time to read them all. My brother said it was quite a sight to watch my dad getting rid of over twenty-five years of treasures. He couldn’t just throw them out, he had to look through them first-a fighter till the end.
The reason I dwell on the papers so much is that, other than that one particular peculiarity, my dad was the straightest guy you could ever meet. I mean, he has looked basically the same for the last forty years: crew cut with sport coat and tie-or when he’s relaxing, golf shirt and shorts with green or black socks pulled up as high as they’d go, and a pair of loafers to complete the ensemble. That’s my dad. No photos of embarrassing pork chop sideburns to hide, no leisure suits or medallions hanging on a bare chest to try to explain to my kids. No, times may change, but my father never will. Come to think of it, my own look hasn’t changed a whole lot since I was eighteen, give or take a tooth or an ear.
I probably attended more sporting events than any other kid in Three Village history. As athletic director, my dad was always checking out the various teams, and he would bring me and my brother with him. In addition to the big ones-football, basketball, and baseball-we caught everything from bowling to wrestling to women’s field hockey to volleyball. But of all the sports, baseball, or more accurately its little cousin wiffleball, was the one I liked best.
Wiffleball was practically a religion to the neighborhood kids on Parsonage Road. Our backyard was the original stamping grounds for the Parsonage Pirates: Tom and Matt Dawe, Joe Moose Miller, Brett Davis, Marc Forte, and the Foley Boys.
My dad was more than happy to feed our baseball hunger. We were frequent spectators at the old Yankee Stadium-the house that Ruth built. He’d even pick us up from school early so we could stand outside the lot where the Yankees parked and wait for autographs. Remember, this was the early seventies when ballplayers still did that type of thing. I’ll never forget the day that I received my hero Thurman Munson’s autograph. It was my birthday, which also happened to be Munson’s, and he must have felt the cosmic connection, because he passed by all the kids but me and jotted down his John Hancock.
What I liked about Thurman most was the little things he did that often went unnoticed. People who really know baseball are the only ones who really know how good he was. Now, as a wrestler, I like to compare myself to Munson in that way-by doing all the things that only other wrestlers notice. Thurman Munson died tragically in a plane crash when I was thirteen. I don’t think I’ve watched a dozen baseball games since. But I’ll always fondly recall my days at Yankee Stadium.
Those road trips were also educational, because it was in the car on the way to and from the stadium that I became aware of curse words. There is a line in the movie A Christmas Story where Ralphie recalls, “My dad worked in swear words like some artists work in oils or watercolors.” Well, my dad was an artist as well. Like a lot of men from that era, my dad would refuse to ask directions, no matter how lost we were or how many innings we missed. Seeing as how my dad liked to leave the game at the end of the seventh inning to “beat the traffic,” we needed to get as much game time in as we could. So when we got lost, he reached his boiling point, and he’d let it rip. “Welcome to New York City-the fun capital of the world,” he’d usually begin. And then the bad words would appear. Lots of Ss and GDs, but never any Fs. In all my life, I only heard him say the “F” word once, and that was when he was quoting somebody-so that doesn’t even really count.
But the “S” word was a different story. Old Jack could weave such a rich tapestry of “S” words as to leave a kid in awe. One night, when my cousin Doug was visiting, the Yankees were on the road, so my dad made a rare Shea Stadium appearance to see the Mets play. After the game, which was attended by only about 8,000 fans (this was back when the Mets sucked), my dad in a rare moment of weakness asked a police officer for directions. Needless to say, we wound up lost. My dad started with a few innocent observations about the men in blue. “You can always tell a New York City cop-a fat mick with a beer belly.” He then helpfully pointed out the attendance woes the Mets had been having. “And they wonder why they only draw 8,000 fans? Eight thousand assholes. Only an asshole would go to Shea!” I’m not sure if my dad was including us in that group of assholes. And then it happened. At first it was just a rumbling way down in his chest and then it gathered momentum until it became an unstoppable force just waiting to release its wrath on the three innocent kids cowering in the 1972 white Mustang. Seven “S” words in a row. Almost like a vulgar haiku: “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
My poor dad also did a lot of cursing every summer. That is when he would work on his dissertation to complete his doctorate. I don’t know if it was a real rule, or just my dad’s rule, but the papers had to be typed perfectly-no white-outs, no typos, no erasers. As a result, the sounds of summer in our house went something like this: “Click, click, click, click, click, click, click-oh shit, o
h dammit to hell, goddammit.” For me and my brother, this was our cue to run behind the house and laugh. When we did so, my mom would admonish us. “You’re father is working very hard, you’d better not let him catch you laughing like this.” I don’t know why my dad didn’t just pay somebody to type the damn thing-I guess he would have considered that cheating. If he’d only had a word processor or computer he would have saved a couple of years of his life.
Strangely, even though I was exposed to a great deal of swearing as a kid and even though half the guys in the dressing room can’t go a full sentence without an “F” word-“I shot him in the fuckin’ ropes, I caught him with the big fuckin’ elbow, and then, fuck, I made a big fuckin’ comeback”-I have escaped almost F free. One time when I was waiting on the drive-through line at McDonald’s, my son Dewey calmly asked if he could “get some fuckin’ fish.” I didn’t get mad, but just gently told him that we didn’t use that word at the house, and neither should he. I haven’t heard it used since.
My daughter Noelle is especially cute when she hears bad words. I took the family to see There’s Something About Mary without realizing all the bad language. Every time she heard a bad word, and there were plenty of them, she would turn to her mother, Colette, and give her the patented DX sign (crotch chop). Last week I mentioned that I was going to water the plants with the hose. She gasped and said, “You said the bad word.” I guess in her mind she envisioned the Godfather’s girls coming over to help me with the yard work.