But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m dying to do storylines with all the girls, especially storylines that involve me completely sacrificing my dignity. I’m willing to do this one with Melina for three very good reasons:
She’s very talented and will be able to pull off this difficult role;
It will ensure that I do get my way in the “Terry Funk takes a chunk out of Vince’s ass” idea;
It does indeed give me a cheap excuse to call her.
Which is exactly what I did.
I was at a great place called Abilities, formerly known as the National Center for Disabilities, when I made the call. I was a guest for the media day, which precedes their fortieth annual “Sports Night,” a gala fund-raising event that regularly includes some of the biggest names in sports history. This year’s guests for the May 18 event include Jack Nicklaus, Jim Brown, Gayle Sayers, Mike Schmidt, Frank Gifford, and me. Jeez, what the hell am I doing in there?
Actually, my role is vital to the success of the fund-raiser. You see, while Sports Night might feature a bonanza of bona fide sports heroes, very few are actually willing to participate in the cornerstone of the gala—the annual play, in which former Olympic skater (as well as former wife of NFL Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw) Jo Jo Starbuck choreographs an amazing spectacular in which the students at Abilities and any willing athletes sing, dance, and act their hearts out for the entertainment of a very appreciative high-dollar crowd. Oh, and one group of people is made to look like complete fools in the process. And believe me, it’s not the kids.
I grew up idolizing people like Willis Reed and Walt “Clyde” Frazier of the New York Knicks. I always hoped that I would one day get to meet them. Now I see them every year. I guess in some ways, it’s like a dream come true. But for some reason, in my dreams, I was not singing or dressing in women’s clothing while making their acquaintance.
As a result of the unique demands of this play, not to mention the six hours of rehearsal needed to perform, Jo Jo pretty much has the same list of willing participants every year. With slight year-to-year variations, it’s usually ’69 Met Buddy Harrelson, an Olympic bobsledder whose name I can’t remember, former Islander Steve Webb, U.S. karate coach Tokie Hill, Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hughes, and me. Sarah has actually been doing the show since she was a twelve-year-old unknown, and as a result of our mutual willingness to make fools out of ourselves, we have become good friends. This year we’ll see the acting and singing debut of her sister Emily, who represented the United States in the Olympic Winter Games earlier this year. I have known Emily since she was just a kid, and look forward to her inaugural appearance at the event.
With my favorite Olympians, Emily (left) and Sarah.
Courtesy of the Foley family.
At last year’s event, I attempted something new, a brave and bold experiment in male bonding that met with mixed results. During the grand finale, a genuinely emotional number that saw the kids and athletes turn “The Impossible Dream” into “The Possible Dream,” I turned to former hockey tough guy Webb, whose face is every bit as scarred and beaten as mine, and said, “Watch this, during the chorus, I’m going to put my arm around every major-league baseball player on this stage.”
The experiment started off well enough—with a firm embrace of Harrelson, a great guy I’ve met at literally dozens of functions over the years. A Long Island radio personality once mentioned, “If you live on Long Island and you haven’t gotten Mick Foley or Bud Harrelson’s autograph, then you haven’t tried very hard.” I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere.
It was then on to Harrelson’s ’69 Met teammate, Ed Charles. Charles had been in an earlier skit with me (where I was, of course, dressed like a woman), so I felt that he’d be responsive to a hug from the hardcore legend. He was.
Now it was on to the Yankees. Jim Abbott once pitched a no-hitter for the Bronx Bombers, with the benefit of only one hand. The other one wasn’t just injured, it had been missing since birth. Abbott had seemed genuinely thrilled to serve as a role model for so many of the great kids at Abilities, so I didn’t think he’d have a problem with a friendly arm around his shoulders. He didn’t.
Only one man stood between failure and completion of this mission. Unfortunately, that one man was one of the most respected and feared pitchers to ever take to the hill—Hall of Fame fireballer Rich “Goose” Gossage. I remember Gossage beaning my idol, Yankee catcher Thurman Munson, only a year before becoming a Yankee himself. Man, he’d seemed pretty intimidating back then. Plus, he’d seemed a little hammered at the cocktail party an hour earlier.
I felt a wave of apprehension wash over me. The chorus was nearing its end. I had to make my move. I took a deep breath, gathering all the testicular fortitude I could muster. Would it be enough? Only seconds to go. Hey, I’d been through worse than this—Japanese Death matches with Terry Funk, Hell in a Cell with Undertaker, traveling with Al Snow. How bad could this be?
I made my move, shuffling over to Gossage, preparing for this record-breaking bit of human contact. I reached out and put my arm around “the Goose”—who quite honestly didn’t seem to care for the whole male bonding thing. If looks could kill, I’d have been history. If he’d had a couple baseballs in his hand, I’d have been served a healthy dose of chin music immediately. Not since the glory days of Fire Island’s Cherry Grove would a man have taken two balls to the chin with such velocity. (Well, so much for my PG-13 book.)
Yeah, I made it back to my spot by the time the chorus ended, but it was as a beaten man. “You did it,” Webb said, but deep down, I think he knew I’d failed. Aside from the kids on stage and the great supporters in the audience, the big winner of the night was Gossage. He’d done what had once been thought impossible—he’d taught the hardcore legend the meaning of the word fear.
I think I’ll stick to the Hughes girls this year—at least I know they like me.
Okay, back to the Melina phone call. The media day went pretty much as I’d expected—lots of attention from the kids, none from the media. That’s usually the drill at these things, a little something I’ve learned from constant repetition.
I was at the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Muscle Team event last year, the annual fund-raising extravaganza that brings together members of the Jets, Giants, Yankees, Mets, and Nets, when a reporter tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I’ve been standing here watching you interact with the kids, and I was wondering why all the reporters ignore you when you seem to be the kids’ favorite?”
I said, “We all play a role here. The other athletes do a great job attracting the media and the sponsors. They bring in the money. My job is to spend time with the kids.”
Once upon a time, things like that used to bother me. It didn’t seem fair. But over time, I’ve learned to heed The Rock’s advice from long ago. I know my role, and I shut my mouth.
But wait, Katie Couric’s in the media, and she likes me, right? She even wrote it in a book. But damn, now that she’s jumping ship from Today to the CBS Evening News, I’d say my days as a guest of Couric’s are over. Yes, it’s sad to say, but I believe Katie Couric has touched my knee for the very last time.
At one point in the media day, the guest celebrities went into designated areas to teach the kids a little more about the skills of their respective sports. Ed Charles taught baseball basics. Steve Webb demonstrated stick-handling, even if his main skill as an Islander was beating people senseless. The Hughes sisters demonstrated Olympic skating skills, albeit on roller skates.
And as for me, I…Wait, what did I do? What could I do? Hit a kid with a chair? Get thrown off a tall structure? I mean, teaching physically challenged kids the basics of professional wrestling might not even be appropriate, and as a long list of WWE Superstars would be willing to verify, I don’t really know the basics all that well anyway.
So I decided to take some questions. At first I
handled the usual ones. “Yes, it did hurt when Undertaker threw me off the cell. Yes, I did enjoy teaming with The Rock at WrestleMania. Yes, I do think the current administration misled the American public during the buildup to the war.” Then I heard another one, slightly different, a little more interesting. “Are you friends with the Divas?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” I said, beaming, proud of my friendship with so many of the girls.
“No, you’re not,” one kid said.
“Am too!” I shot back.
“Are not!”
“Am too!”
“Prove it,” another kid said, prompting snickers from his buddies.
In such a situation, there’s really only one way to prove that such a friendship between really beautiful girls and a dumpy, hairy guy exists—speed dial.
Up until this year’s WrestleMania I had only a couple of names in my speed dial—after all, I barely knew how to turn one of these damn phones on, let alone enter names and numbers into it. My wife was on there, as was my son Dewey and my friend Jill Thompson, who illustrated two of my children’s books. Oh, and Test was on there, too. Which of course makes perfect sense. Stacy Keibler put his number in there, back when, frighteningly enough, they were a real couple. I’ve been trying to get the damn number out ever since. But no matter how many ways I try to delete him, Test keeps coming back. I swear, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger have nothing on that guy.
But following WrestleMania, I had two new names on the speed dial. Good ones, too. Trish Stratus, a great wrestler and a good friend for many years, was one. Melina was the other.
With Chris Giordano.
Courtesy of the Foley family.
I’d utilized the Trish Stratus button a few days earlier, while watching the Backlash Pay-Per-View at my buddy Chris Giordano’s house. I actually met Chris at my first-ever Sports Night, and have probably watched about twenty Pay-Per-Views at his house since then. I went the first time because Chris, a huge WWE fan, was a young man with cerebral palsy. I continue to go, five years later, because Chris is a great guy, my kids love going, his mom and dad treat us like part of the family, and well, I get to eat a lot of free food while I’m over there.
While watching Backlash we noticed that Trish had fallen awkwardly from the ring and that her match had ended shortly after, in an unceremonious manner. It just kind of stopped. I looked at Chris’s wall, noticed a huge poster of Trish, and combining a desire to find out if she was okay with a desire to show off in front of Chris, gave the old speed dial a try. Trish didn’t answer, but Chris went absolutely crazy when he heard her on the voice mail.
It was now Melina’s turn to make me look good. I hit speed dial. “Hi, it’s Melina.” Again, just the voice mail, but the kids went crazy, nonetheless.
I waited for the beep. “Hi, its Mick Foley, and I’m hanging out with some really great kids, and they just wanted to say hello.” The kids all yelled their greetings. “Also, I’ve got what I think is a really good idea, and I really want to tell you about it. So, I’ll call you back in a couple of days, or you can call me back if you want. I’ll talk to you later.”
Keep in mind that writing a book by hand takes an enormous amount of time, especially when a completed manuscript is expected in two months. Because of the four kids running around the house, I do most of my writing at night, and subsequently spend much of the day exhausted.
I desperately need a good night’s sleep every few days, or else I just won’t have the energy to take command of the written page. In other words, the writing will start sucking. Not that it’s Pulitzer material anyway, but hey, at least it’s got energy. Right?
To ensure that good night’s sleep, I do occasionally take a sleeping pill. I may have made a tactical error in taking that pill right before checking my messages. Hey, a message from Melina. She would love to hear my idea. Cool! What a great voice, too. All right, I’ll give her a quick call, run down my idea, and be in bed in ten minutes.
I looked at the phone right before I hung up with her. Two hours and forty minutes! Damn. My longest phone call since I was in college and had a secret admirer, who used to call me at all hours of the evening and tantalize me with tales of forbidden lust that I had previously only read about. She would torture my innocent ears (I had both of them back then) for hours, while she simultaneously participated in solitary sex acts, which she described in great detail. It was a great relationship—not necessarily one that evoked childhood memories of Santa’s Village, but great nonetheless. Then, unfortunately, we met.
Jeez, how was I going to explain this near-three-hour call to my wife? “You spoke to who? For how long?” My wife knows me pretty well, and she knows I possess a couple of odd but charming quirks, but I’m not sure even she would believe that I talk to this exotic, beautiful, voluptuous woman because she makes me feel like an innocent kid.
Besides, as I try to piece the conversation together, I realize I started fading in the latter stages, somewhere around the two-hour mark. I know she loved the idea, or else did a really good idea of pretending she did. She also seemed genuinely flattered that I would put so much faith in her, and that I would willingly sacrifice my dignity on her behalf.
Which seemed like a perfect time to repeat the words Terry Funk spoke to me right before putting me over in the King of the Deathmatch tournament in Yokohama, Japan, in 1995: “You know, I wouldn’t do this for many people.”
A Novel Idea
I finally did write that novel. But I didn’t take Judith Regan’s offer, although it turned out to be the highest one. As a matter of fact, I took the lowest offer, which also involved the promise of the most rewriting and editing.
Let me assure you, Hardcore Diaries is primarily a wrestling book. Sure, I explore some other themes, but I will try to tie them all back in, somehow, to WWE. I am not going to make you suffer through a chapter about the creation of a novel you have probably previously chosen not to read. It’s okay, you can admit it.
But as you will find out, Tietam Brown is what eventually brought me back to my WWE family. My second adventure in fiction, Scooter , is what led to an actual return to in-ring competition. So think of the novels as an extension of my wrestling career (albeit not a very financially successful one) and then suffer through a few pages about the origin of Tietam Brown.
Steph dreaming of Honey Bunny.
I had actually thought about this book for close to a year. The idea had been on my mind for several months before the New York Times article actually came out. As far back as September of 2000, I remember sitting with Stephanie McMahon and Kurt Angle at lunch, regaling them with one of the two visions that made me think I could actually do one of these novel things.
I should probably point out that it was in June of 2000 that I wrote Tales from Wrescal Lane, a children’s book that was eventually released in 2004, following a struggle with political red tape and my eighteen-month estrangement from the company. One of the two “tales” concerned little Steph’s attempt to raise money at a yard sale for “Honey Bunny,” the doll of her dreams. Along the way, her yard-sale stuff is destroyed, and the kids from Wrescal Lane (WWE Superstars as children) learn a valuable lesson about treating people with respect and kindness.
Vince had been very enthusiastic about the idea, so I sent in the Steph story, along with some prototype “Wrescals” (part wrestlers, part rascal) that my friend Jill Thompson, the artist who did the Halloween book with me, had illustrated.
A few days later, I was on the phone with Vince when he told me Steph wanted to say hello. What followed was one of my favorite conversations; one that, even without Hardcore Diaries to document it, would be hard for me to forget.
“Hi, Mick.”
“Yeah, hi Steph.”
“I can’t tell you how much I like your story.”
“Oh, thanks. I appreciate it.”
“You know, up until I read it, I never thought that you liked me.”
“You?” I said in disbelief.
“Why?”
Now, I’m going to double-check with Steph to see if it’s all right to say this, but my recollection is that she was pretty close to tears, so unless I’m overruled by Steph or if WWE doesn’t want her to seem sympathetic, try to picture this moment as a tearful one.
She said, “Well, I always got the feeling that you didn’t respect me, because I hadn’t paid my dues. That you thought I was only here because I was Vince’s daughter.”
I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, her thoughts, which she had actually shared with Vince, were actually a long way from the truth. As it turned out, I was wrestling Triple H, who was managed by Stephanie at the time when WWE first started scripting interviews. Because I was new to this scripting process and because, to this day, I don’t completely believe in it, I was very likely to stray from the script, leaving Stephanie to interpret my actions as a personal sign of distaste for her.
“Steph. That’s really strange, because you’ve always been one of my favorite people.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
And with that one conversation, Stephanie McMahon and I became good friends, which I consider us to be to this day. In September of 2001, she took on some more responsibility, assuming the role of one of the show’s writers. But prior to that, for a few months after I returned to WWE as commissioner in June of 2000, Steph and I would talk and hang out frequently. So it was not unusual that we would be hanging out with our frequent lunch mate and good friend Kurt Angle when I first spoke of my initial vision for Tietam.