The Hardcore Diaries (8 page)

But I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what she actually said. If you were voting for “Who’s John Irving?” you’d win the prize.

I tried to jog her memory by listing Irving favorites that had gotten the Hollywood treatment—
The Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meaney
—but Candice wasn’t biting. She really did think it was nice that I wrote to children overseas. Somehow, I ended up asking if she would like me to write her a letter. She nodded enthusiastically before turning back around, leaving me to finish my Irving letter without Candice’s world-class distractions.

“I have come to realize,” I wrote to Irving, “that the importance of the name dropped depends in great part on the company it is dropped in.”

I actually did write that letter to Candice, and gave it to her as we boarded the plane for the return trip home. About an hour later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Candice Michelle, with tears in her eyes. She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I love your letter,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

For all her beauty and physical assets, it is actually Candice’s gentle nature and free spirit that have made the greatest impression on me. She reminds me of some otherworldly creature, like a fairy or an elf—floating around, flapping her wings, dropping in occasionally to dispense liberal doses of warm hugs and infectious laughter.

For all my fawning over the Divas, I actually have made it my policy not to look at any of the sexy stuff they do. I won’t watch the videos, or look at their special magazines. It just seems like a breach of trust. Sure, sometimes I get curious, and wonder what harm a little peek at Torrie Wilson or Candice Michelle’s
Playboy
edition would really cause. Probably none. Looking at naked picture of my friends would just feel a little wrong.

Besides, just knowing that I know bona fide
Playboy
cover girls, and knowing that they like me, is good enough for me.

Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steeler James Farrior.

Courtesy of the Foley family.

A Blurb from Batman

It’s amazing how easily a WWE performer can function in so many cross-sections of society. For all the talk about demographics, I find our presence is accepted and appreciated in so many circles of entertainment.

Pro athletes are a standard front-row presence on
Raw
and
SmackDown!
and I’m always interested to see which famous actors are hanging out backstage at our L.A. shows. So I always seethe a little when I hear or read a news show or article that takes a potshot at what lousy athletes and actors we are. Oh, yeah, why don’t you ask the certifiable athletes like Shaquille O’Neal, Ben Roethlisberger, or Charles Barkley who stop by our shows? Or award-winning actors and directors like Nicholas Cage, Michael Clarke Duncan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rob Reiner, and Jenna Jameson—okay, maybe the last award Schwarzenegger won was Mr. Olympia, and Ms. Jameson’s performances won’t send tingles of envy down Meryl Streep’s spine, but I think you get the point. Other entertainers really seem to like what we do.

WWE just seems to fit in everywhere. I think about the places I’ve done autograph signings over the last few years. Wrestling conventions? That’s easy. Monster truck shows? Yep. Muscle car shows? Same thing. A wrestler at a horror convention? Yeah, that seems to work. A comic book or science fiction show? No problem. Minor-league baseball, basketball, and hockey games? Sure. It all seems to work. Card shows, libraries, universities, even the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Okay, so maybe that last one wasn’t all that well attended.

I enjoy meeting the stars from all these different walks of life, and have compiled quite an autograph collection along the way. Whether it’s talking with “Incredible Hulk” Lou Ferrigno, telling Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer how nice he was to me when I was a ten-year-old kid, or getting to meet Barbara Eden, it’s one of the small perks of WWE fame. I even got to meet Sybil Danning on a recent UK sci-fi exposition. Sybil is something of a B-movie queen, who made quite an impact on me with her 1983
Playboy
. I even had a poster of her on my wall as a college freshman. Obviously, things had changed significantly by the time I met her. No longer an awestruck eighteen-year-old, I was now an awestruck forty-year-old. The girl on my wall, live, in front of me.

Reggie Jackson made quite an impact on me. I’ll say this for Reggie—he still draws quite a crowd. I’ll say something else for Reggie—his line of questioning can be a little inappropriate. Following a signing in northern Virginia, which consisted of seven Hall of Fame baseball players, beloved Redskin lineman Joe Jacoby, boxing great Joe Frazier, and me (yeah, I felt a little out of place), I found myself sitting in front of Reggie on our flight out of Washington, D.C.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Reggie, the man whose three mighty blasts in game six of the ’77 World Series made him a legend for the ages. “Hey, how much you weigh?” he asked.

I was a little surprised by the question, but felt, due to his Hall of Fame status, that a reply was in order. “Around three-ten, three-fifteen,” I said.

Reggie nodded his head, and I went back to reading. I turned back around. Momentarily. Tap tap. I turned back around. “How much you make today?”

Hey, it was Mr. October, I had to be honest. Even if I felt a little strange about telling. But back then, right after retiring, I was commanding pretty big bucks. Reggie raised an eyebrow, obviously impressed, although I doubt my fee was even in Reggie’s league.

“Watch this,” he said as he got up from his seat and approached the flight attendant. Reggie asked a quick question, and then
appeared,
and I do stress the word
appeared,
to be blatantly looking down the young lady’s blouse. He even turned and winked at me during the process.

But I got the better of Reggie Jackson on that day. During the course of the trip, his agent or manager set up an odd trade, the kind that a big-league manager would get fired for—a dozen signed Reggie Jackson baseballs for a dozen signed Mick Foley baseballs. Even up. A few days later, I received two dozen baseballs in the mail. The Reggie Jackson baseballs were beautiful; each in its own collector’s box, each signature accompanied by Reggie’s most prominent stat, his 563 home runs. It was known as the stat ball. Street value of maybe $75 each.

I signed my twelve balls and sent them back. No collector’s box, no stat—although, come to think of it, I may have written “300 stitches” on one and “Missing right ear” on another. Street value of maybe $10 each.

Obviously I got the better of that deal. But what the hell was I going to do with twelve balls? I know what Al Snow would do with them, but these are baseballs I’m talking about. So I started giving them out to my friends. One of my buddies would come over to watch a game, and he’d walk away with a Reggie Jackson stat ball.

Apparently, my son Dewey mistook my gestures of friendship and deduced that the Reggie balls were appropriate for giveaways of all varieties. At his eighth birthday party, I couldn’t help but notice that the goody bags the kids were leaving with seemed a little bulky. Care to guess what was in there? You got it. In addition to the 18-cent pontoozlers, the 9-cent lollipops, and the absolutely worthless Test trading cards, these particular third-graders were going home with a $75 Reggie Jackson stat ball.

No matter how old I get, there’s nothing like the feeling of catching a foul ball for your kid at a major-league game. I remember when my dad snagged a Bob Oliver foul back in ’71 when the Yanks played the Royals at the original Yankee Stadium—the house that Ruth built. I was the happiest kid in the world.

Man, how I love being able to do the same thing for my kids. Except I never quite have. Sure, I’ve brought balls home for them. But those have been given to me, I didn’t really earn them. I did catch a foul ball at the World Baseball Classic, though, an opening-round game at Disney’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando, which saw Venezuela take on the Dominican Republic.

What an incredible atmosphere, like a huge springtime party for fifteen thousand eager revelers, with flags of both countries being waved with great pride. Some of these people, I knew, had traveled great distances to support their team. I imagined great sacrifices had been made by many of the fans. So when I snagged my first-ever foul ball, I found myself in a dilemma. What should I do?

Okay, first things first—I didn’t really snag the foul ball. Unless “snag” means picking up a foul ball that has bounced, rolled, and come almost to a dead stop right by my feet. I didn’t trample over a kid to get it either, like that inconsiderate S.O.B. who practically clotheslined a six-year-old in order to secure the prized booty for his horrified girlfriend. I still remember the call of the announcer, “Congratulations…you JERK.”

No, this one was mine, fair and square, and my kids were going to love me for it. But I wasn’t sure I would love myself. After all, my kids already had quite a few baseballs, including one signed by George Steinbrenner. I looked into the crowd and saw thousands of children who would never know the thrill of going home with an official foul ball. I looked into the eyes of an adorable child, five, maybe six, big smile—a child who would cherish such a gift. Then I looked into my heart, before walking across the aisle, ball in hand, saying, “Would you like this?” Unfortunately the boy, who was nestled on his grandmother’s lap, spoke no English, nor did she. “Presente?” I said, and the woman said, “Gracias,” prompting the child to take the ball from my hand.

I returned to my seat, proud of myself, as I watched the young boy roll the magnificent prize in his tiny hands.

“That was really nice of you,” the man next to me said.

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Just trying to do the right thing.”

The guy nodded appreciatively, then said, “Do you know who that kid is?”

“No, who is he?”

The guy laughed. “You just gave your baseball to Miguel Tejada’s son.”

“Really?” I said. “Wow, he’s probably already got a few.”

At least he should. Miguel Tejada is a former American League MVP, and at over $11 million a year, he’s one of the highest-paid players in the game. Yeah, I’ve got to believe his son’s got a few baseballs laying around the house. His dad can probably afford to pack Reggie Jackson stat balls in his son’s goody bags.

Early last spring, I was walking around my backyard, cleaning up branches, trying to get the Foley place looking its best. Each year we do some work on the house and think about selling it, moving to some part of the country or world where the dollar goes a bit further. Then each year we admit that we love it, and decide to stay for a while.

At the edge of our woods, I saw a distinctive shape peeking out of last autumn’s fallen leaves. A baseball. Which was really no big deal, as we routinely lose a couple dozen or so over the course of a year. Sure, times have changed since my youth, where each kid on the block only had one or two, meaning every lost ball would prompt a massive search through the woods in pursuit of the sphere. I’m sure many a bad case of poison ivy was caught on these lost baseball quests.

But hell, the balls are cheap now; I can get a bag of a dozen for about fifteen bucks. Sure, they’re crappy; vinyl cover, not leather, but when they head into the woods, we don’t sweat it—we just reach for another. Actually, I still give chase, and occasionally admonish my kids for not bothering to conduct even the most rudimentary of searches.

Besides, this ball was easy. How could they lose this, no matter how cheap it was? Except this ball wasn’t cheap. As I got closer, I could see the distinctive markings of a major-league ball. A major-league ball? My kids knew better than this. These were six, seven dollars a pop. I used to sleep in motel rooms costing less. That was a week’s meal money back in Memphis.

But as I picked up the ball, I realized it was worse than I thought. It wasn’t just any major-league ball. It was signed. Slowly, sadly, I deciphered the smudged words. “Dewey and Noelle, all the best, George Steinbrenner.” How could they play with the Steinbrenner ball? How could they? Do you think they admitted doing the deed? No way. In an act that seemed to me to be every bit as clumsily orchestrated as a rare Al Snow TV win, both kids blamed Mickey. When in doubt, blame the four-year-old.

So over the years, I’ve been excited, alternately surprised, shy, and slightly dissapointed to meet some of the stars of my youth and present. But I’ve rarely been nervous. But that all changed at last spring’s Super Mega show in Jew Jersey, when I found out who was on the card: Batman and Robin—Adam West and Burt Ward in what was billed as a “rare appearance together.” That struck me as a little weird. Why would a combined appearance be rare? Didn’t they belong together? How could they be apart? That would be like the Captain without Tennille, Zuko without Sandy, K.C. without the Sunshine band, Billy Gunn without the Road Dogg.

I looked over at the line. Big. Batman and Robin, it seemed, were the star attractions on this show. My line was respectable, but nothing like the mass of humanity stretched out to meet the Dynamic Duo. Actually, there were two lines. Two separate lines to greet the duo. One for Adam, one for Burt. And truth be told, they weren’t actually “together.” Indeed, there was a barrier between them, both physical and emotional. The physical barrier was a small partition between them, meaning there wasn’t even any actual eye contact between the two aging crime fighters.

Why? As it turns out, West and Ward can’t stand each other (or maybe it would be more accurate to say, West can’t stand Ward), a hatred stemming from the Boy Wonder’s not-so-fond recollection of his time spent with West in his tell-all memoir,
Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights.
After reading the memoir, I could see why. Actually, I read both memoirs, West’s and Ward’s, putting me high up on the list of all-time superhero-loving losers. West’s offering,
Back to the Batcave
, was more of a standard, nostalgic look back on his career, focusing on his time under the cape and cowl. Sure, he wrote of his post-Batman career slump and subsequent depression, and he seemed to be a little on the psychologically delusional side when he made his case for still being Batman in the 1989 Tim Burton film. But most of it was a good-natured stroll down memory lane.

Burt’s book wasn’t so much autobiography as full-fledged sexposé, with Ward playing the role of one-man cheering section for his own performances, sexual or otherwise. Whether he was talking about fighting Bruce Lee to a draw during a sparring session, his ability to speed-read thirty thousand words a minute, or the challenge the
Batman
costuming department faced in trying to make his massive member less threatening to the television audience, the Boy Wonder didn’t pass on any opportunity to toot his own horn. But, judging by the words, he wasn’t the only one tooting it. Holy love machine, Batman! The guy had stats that blew Reggie Jackson’s away. He had, like, Wilt Chamberlain stats. No, I’m not talking about the hundred points at the old Hershey Arena either.

He didn’t exactly do West any favors in the book, either. I guess it wasn’t that bad. Aside from being portrayed as a philandering, adulterous, pompous windbag, West actually came off quite well. But that’s not the way Batman saw it. After all of those near-death experiences, those “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel” cliff-hanging predicaments, I guess West thought he deserved better. After all those occasions where Robin had slid so gracefully down his batpole, there should have been a stronger bond. After all the times Robin had played so enthusiastically in the dark confines of West’s batcave…oh, never mind. Suffice to say, Adam West had every right to be angry, even if that anger played itself out in the form of crushing the illusion of crime-fighting camaraderie that so many longtime fans had lined up to see.

The fans were really disappointed. One by one, they’d walk past my table, head down, dejected, clearly disillusioned, after their ultra-quick encounter with the caped crusader.

“What’s wrong?” I asked one particularly battered-looking batfan.