Preface

YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ one of the wildest autobiographies ever written by one of the greats of any game. It's honest and funny and at times more than a little ribald, but when you're done you'll appreciate and admire Phil Esposito for not having hired a PR agent or a spin doctor to help you decide he is perfect in every way.

He could have done that. He also could have spent half this book writing about his many accomplishments on the ice. And he would have been justified. Esposito was the greatest center ever to perform in the National Hockey League. A hulking presence, he would plant himself in front of the goal, wait for a shot or a pass, then muscle the defenders out of the way as he wristed the puck into the net. The image of Esposito lodged in front of the net waiting to strike, endures like that of Bobby Orr charging up the ice or Wayne Gretzky stickhandling around a defender. Phil is the standard by which all other centers are measured.

During his Hall of Fame career, Espo hit the back of the net a remarkable 717 times. When he retired at the end of the 1981-82 season, he was the second-highest scorer in the history of the National Hockey League, behind another legend, Gordie Howe. His 873 assists were third-highest at the time of his retirement.

Esposito, the first player to score more than 100 points in a season (126 in 1968-69), was at his peak during the 1970-71 season, when he set the NHL record for most goals scored in a season. The old record, held by Bobby Hull, had been 58. Esposito astounded the hockey world by scoring 76 goals and also getting credit for 76 assists to break the season points total with 152.

It was during this historic season that the bumper sticker, "Jesus Saves, But Esposito Scores On the Rebound," became popular around Boston and northern New England.

His prowess was no fluke: in the next four years Esposito scored 66, 55, 68, and 61 goals. During one ten-year period, Espo averaged an incredible 54 goals a year. He was an NHL All-Star eight years in a row.

In 1972 Esposito gained immortality when Team Canada took on the Soviet national hockey team. When the Soviets took a lead in games at the beginning of the series, it was Esposito who inspired his teammates to restore the honor of Canada.

After a blockbuster trade to New York in 1975, he led the Rangers into the finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1979. He retired after playing 1,282 games in eighteen seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins, and New York Rangers. In the spring of 2002 Canada Post issued a postage stamp in Phil Esposito's honor.

But in preparing this book, aside from a few of his more memorable goals, Phil didn't want to talk about his hockey accomplishments nearly as much as about the fun he had putting on the skates and the equipment and playing the game. Being a player meant belonging to a team, hanging out with the guys, chasing the girls, heading for the bar. Phil loves to talk about his teammates. You'll get a look at his Blackhawks, Bruins and Rangers as never before. Phil Esposito has always lived life to the fullest, and it is this that makes him most proud - and most interesting.

After he retired as a player, he became a broadcaster, the general manager of two NHL teams, and an owner for a short time before the deep pockets screwed him out of his ownership position. Phil happily provides details of all the drama, triumphs, and setbacks that have marked his career as an NHL executive.

After he was fired as GM of the Rangers in 1989, he was successful against long odds in founding the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey franchise. It remains his proudest accomplishment in the game.

Phil's intention in writing this book was to give hockey fans a bang for their buck.

"I intend to talk about everything," he told me the first time we met. Phil is a natural storyteller. Little is sacred to him, and if the joke is on him, so much the better.

His fans are sure to be enthralled by what he has to say about teammates, opponents, agents, team brass, and the NHL in general.

"I may never get another job in hockey," says Esposito. "but I don't care."

And yet hockey, whether it knows it or not, needs Phil Esposito. In a sport where most of the executives are almost invisible, Espo brings color, Sturm und Drang.

"The game should be exciting," he says.

No one could love the game more. Espo exhibits that fierce passion for it every single day. Shamefully, he no longer has an executive role with his baby, the Tampa Bay Lightning, but his thoughts are often with the team. He plots how he could make it better. The Bolts will always be Phil's team. He feels about it the way proud parents feel. New ownership has hired Phil to do the color for Lightning broadcasts, but he is like Napoleon at Elba, a general in exile.

Working with Phil this past year has been one of the pleasures of my career. As great a player as he was, that's how humble and decent and caring he is. I am honored to have had the privilege of knowing him.

I want to thank Mike Rees, my longtime friend and ally in the Little League wars, for introducing Phil and me. Since Phil lives in Tampa and I live in St. Petersburg, Mike figured the geography made for easy access. Mike also thought we'd make a good team. I also want to thank Henry Paul for his friendship and input and Peggy Sills and Ellen Brewer for their diligent tape transcriptions. It goes without saying, many thanks to editors Jonathan Webb and Mitch Rogatz for being so supportive throughout the entire process, and to copyeditor Peter Buck for his careful attention to detail.

Lastly, I want to thank my wife, Rhonda, and my son, Charlie, for making my life as full as it is. As Phil says, As long as you're having fun, what else could a guy possible want?

PETER GOLENBOCK

INTRODUCTION

AFTER I SUFFERED a severe knee injury during the first playoff game against the Rangers in 1972-73, I was taken by ambulance to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. I had medial-collateral ligament damage. The next morning I was operated on. The surgeons transplanted ligaments from my elbow.

I remember coming out of the operation looking at the TV to learn we had lost the series to the Rangers and were eliminated.

The next day at about eleven in the morning Bobby Orr and a couple other of my Boston Bruin teammates came to see me. They said they were going to come back that night and take me to a party. I was game.

My wife at the time, Donna, said to me, "How are you going to do that? You can't walk."

I said, "Don't worry. These guys just had a few drinks. They aren't going to do anything."

But I was very wrong about that.

That night, around seven-thirty, the door to my room flew open, and there in a hospital gown, mask, and cap stood Bobby Orr. With him were Wayne Cashman, Kenny Hodge, Dallas Smith, Freddie O'Donnell and our trainer, Johnny "Frosty" Forristall.

Bobby said, "Wappo, we're taking you to a party."

"Whaaaaaat?" I said. "How are you going to do that?"

He said, "Don't worry about it. We're taking you."

I was in a full cast from my groin to my toes. My leg was in traction, up in the air in a sling. I was wearing only a hospital johnny and a sheet.

"Are you crazy?" I said. "What are you guys doing?"

Donna kept repeating, "What are you guys doing?"

They said, "Relax."

"Hon, it's okay," I said.

You might ask how they planned to get me out of there. Bobby had a friend who was a private detective. His job was to create a diversion. He went to the nurses' station and flashed a badge and said, "Where is the guy who got shot?"

The nurse said, "Nobody on this floor got shot."

He said, "Somebody got shot. I want to see him." So while the boys came for me she was preoccupied making phone calls trying to find out if someone on the floor had been shot.

They wheeled the bed, levers, ropes, and all, into the hallway. There was an elevator across from my room, and when it opened, they pushed me in. They bribed the elevator operator, who was looking at us wide-eyed, to take us down to the basement.

When the elevator doors opened, they pushed my bed into the corridor. They pulled the sheet up over my head. Only my leg was visible. Donna was running beside me, and I could hear her saying, "Oh my god. Oh my god. Are you all right, Phil?"

I kept saying, "Yeah, yeah," and Bobby was saying, "Wappo, we got you. Don't worry. No problem." From under the sheet I could hear people in the corridor say, "Hey, that's Bobby Orr."

When we reached the exit, the guys couldn't get the bed through the doors because a metal post ran down the middle, so Dallas Smith, Kenny Hodge, and Freddie O'Donnell began rocking the post, and they ripped it right out of the cement! They wheeled me onto the street and into the cold Boston night.

Off we went toward a club Bobby owned called the Branding Iron, which was about a half a mile from the hospital. It was early April in Boston, and I was freezing my balls off. As they wheeled me down the middle of Cambridge Street, I could hear horns beeping. Donna was trying to keep me covered with a blanket as we flew along.

Bobby kept asking, "Are you all right, Wappo?" I said, "Yeah, are we there yet?" Bobby said to me, "Wappo, put your left hand out. We're making a turn." Like an idiot, I put my hand out. I said to myself, What am I doing?

By the time we got to the club, one of the wheels of the bed had broken, so the guys had to carry the bed inside and up twenty stairs to the party. I could see the veins sticking out of their necks, because the bed was heavy and I was not a light guy. But they got me up there and set me down in the middle of the bar.

Bobby yelled out, "Okay, the party can start now!"

They put bricks under the broken wheel, Bobby gave me a beer, one of the other guys gave me another beer, and Eddie Johnston grabbed a stinky provolone cheese and put it right between my legs. Guys would come over, cut off a slice of the cheese and eat it.

Meanwhile, the TV was on in the bar, and there was a news flash that said, "Phil Esposito has been kidnapped from Mass General Hospital."

Bobby said, "I guess I better call the doctor."

I said, "Yeah, Bobby, you better."

So he called Dr. Carter Rowe, the man who had operated on me, and told him I was okay.

Dr. Rowe said, "Listen, Phil has to get back. He just had a very serious knee operation, and if he falls he may never walk again, let alone play. We'll send an ambulance."

Bobby said, "No, we took him. We'll bring him back." And Bobby and the guys carried that bed all the way back to the hospital.

They got me back to my room and, to make a long story shorter, it cost me over $3,800 for a new bed and a new entrance door.

A little while later Bobby said, "Did you pay the bill?"

I said, "Yeah, I paid it."

He said, "What a great party, huh?"

I said, "You asshole."

And he left, laughing.

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I have had one overriding philosophy in my life, which is to have as much fun as possible. When I played for the Boston Bruins during the glory years when we were perennial Stanley Cup contenders, most of my teammates felt that way. The spirit of fun and craziness, as much as anything else, made us the team we became. We were devil-may-care. We never held anything back, on the ice or off.

I remember one time when Wayne Cashman, my linemate and friend, was pulled over by the cops in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, for driving after having had a little too much to drink. When they gave Wayne his one phone call, he used it to call a local Chinese restaurant!

I lived nearby. One of the officers called me. He said, "Phil, we have Wayne here."

I said, "I'll come and get him."

He said, "He's pretty drunk, so we're going to leave him here in the tank for a while."

I went over to make sure Wayne was all right, and when I walked in, he was sitting in a cell with two officers eating Chinese food.

I asked, "What's this?"

One of the officers said, "We told him he had one phone call, and he called Kowloon." This was a great Chinese restaurant on Route 1 where we all went. He had ordered forty dollars' worth of food, and he and the cops were sitting there eating it.

Wayne said, "Espo, come on in and have some Chinese food." So I sat with them, and later I took him home. The cops were great that night. They protected us. Wayne was a sick bastard! We had so much fun.

Another time Wayne and I were in Oakland and we went into a sex shop, where we bought some toys. Wayne bought a doubleheader dildo. It was about three feet long, and he put it in his pants and went into a bar. The girls were sitting there watching, and he pulled up his cuff pretending he was scratching his leg like it was itchy, and that big dildo was sticking out at the bottom.

One girl screamed, "Oh, my God!" and we all broke out laughing.

Cash said, "It pays to advertise."

As we rode on the bus from Oakland to the San Francisco airport, Cash decided to get rid of it, so he threw it out the window at a passing car. Can you imagine what the driver must have thought when that thing hit the windshield?

I asked him, "Why didn't you take it home to your wife?"

Wayne said, "Shit, no. She'll throw me out and keep the dildo!" We were so young and crazy.

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When Peter asked me if I was interested in writing a book about my life, I told him I didn't know if we could print some of the things I did and some of the things that happened. He said that if I told the truth, I could tell it all. I said, "That's the way I want to do it. I don't know how to do it any other way."

After beginning my life in a small town in Canada, I went on to become at one time the all-time single-season goal-scoring leader and the all-time single-season points leader. I was hired to run one NHL franchise, and I founded (and managed) another National Hockey League franchise, the Tampa Bay Lightning.

But I've also suffered disappointments and defeats. As a player I was traded, a shocking, humbling experience at the time, from my beloved Boston Bruins to our hated rivals, the New York Rangers, and twice I was fired as a general manager, first by the Rangers and then by the Tampa Bay Lightning. I was also divorced twice. Nothing, however, hurt me more than my having founded the Lightning and having the fat cats with more clout, power, and money take my team away from me.

Through it all, though, I feel if I can have fun every day, I have succeeded in life. I have lived a full life - several lives, in fact, as you will see, and in this book I will try to tell you about it as honestly as I can. If I have offended anyone, tough shit. I'm not sorry.

I'm now going to order in some Chinese food. Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.

CHAPTER 1

I WAS BORN IN SAULT STE. MARIE, Canada, where three Great Lakes, Michigan, Superior, and Huron, join. When I was a young boy Sault Ste. Marie was a small town, and we never left our neighborhood. In those days we lived in the all-Italian west end. My friends in the neighborhood were Gino Cavacuello, Donny Muscatello, Clem Giovanatti, and Ross Hryhorchuk, an honorary Italian. Their relatives came from Italy to Ellis Island, and somehow, from there, they got on a boat going up the St. Lawrence, and wherever they found work, they stopped. Some of them stopped in Toronto, some in Hamilton, because it was a steel town, and some in London, but my relatives kept on going until they got to Sault Ste. Marie. It's a twin city to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. We used to throw rocks across to the American side. Little did I know I'd be spending my whole life in the United States and loving every minute of it.

I couldn't wait for the wintertime and the snow to come so I could play hockey. When I was four and my brother Tony three, my dad would make a little rink in our backyard, and we'd skate around. My old man put double runners on my shoes and pushed me out there.

I wish I could talk to my dad now, because there is so much I'd like to ask him. My dad told me he got kicked out of hockey because he punched a referee, and that it was during the Depression so he couldn't play any more, couldn't go to school any more. My old man was in the twelfth grade at age thirteen. He was highly intelligent. But he had to quit school to get a job.

He got a job at Algoma Contractors, which was owned by my mother's father. It was a company that collected the excess slag from the steel plant and took it to be recycled.

My grandfather, who was about six-foot-four, 280 pounds, was a huge man and a mean, sadistic bastard. He once put a clothespin on my penis. He held my hands and laughed. My grandfather would put dollar bills on a clothes-line, and we'd jump and try to get them, and he'd pull them away and laugh.

One time he got some glue and put it on his best friend's bicycle seat, and when the guy stuck there he had to take his pants off to get off the bike.

Even though my father worked for his wife's father, he started as a welder. He had a job. That was it. He was just a common employee. You have to fend for yourself in life. My dad had a job. But he was very smart, and he designed the separating plant, which had this huge magnetic belt that all the leftover steel would stick to, and he also designed the crushing plant, where the stones would go on and get separated into half-inch slag and three-quarter-inch slag.

My dad wasn't an alcoholic, but sometimes he drank, and I thought it had a lot to do with the fact that he was working for my grandfather and then for my uncle and my mother's brother, and my grandmother was a pain in the ass too.

We called her Mamone. I'll never forget one time, when I was about seven years old, my grandmother came over to the house and in Italian started yelling at my dad. I didn't understand what she was saying. But my father told her, "Leave this house now. And if you don't fucking leave, I'm going to throw you the fuck out of here." He turned to my mother and said, "I am so tired of your family. I have had it." And when she began defending her mother, he said, "Why can't you defend me?" That started a knock-down, drag-out fight between the two of them.

My dad could be mean, and when he got drinking, he would get more mean. I remember once he threw an ashtray at my mom, and then he started going after her. I jumped right on his back and held on to his neck, and he was trying to fling me off. My feet were flying, but I wouldn't let go. I was shouting, "Stop it! Stop it!"

I don't want to paint my dad as a bad guy, because he wasn't. He and my mother sacrificed a lot so Tony and I could play hockey. Dad came to every one of my hockey games. He never said a word, until the end of the game, when if I scored he'd say, "You should have had two." To my last game, he was never satisfied with anything I did. At least he never told me he was.

____________

Since the time I was a little boy, my old man gave me every opportunity to play hockey. I remember waking up at three in the morning, and Tony and I would look out the window and there he was flooding the yard to make a rink or shoveling the rink to get the snow off. I have fond memories of him doing that. He'd go back to bed and get up again at six to get ready for work at seven. As he was leaving to go, Tony and I would be out skating on the rink.

Tony and I got along pretty well. I always was the kind of kid who wanted to go outside to play. But he would say no.

"Why not?"

"I just don't want to."

I love the guy to death because he's my brother, but his ways sometimes just pissed me off. I remember during the summer we'd get a broomstick and one of my mother's Tupperware cups, and we'd play home-run derby. If it was a windy day, that cup would go all over the place, and if I beat him, he wouldn't play with me for another week or so. But that's Tony. If he couldn't win, he didn't want to play. He had to be the best.

That's why he doesn't play golf. It's why he won't play in Old-Timers hockey games. If he can't play his best, he doesn't want to play at all. But he was a goalie, and there is a difference. A lot of goalies won't put the pads on and play in these charity games.

I'm entirely different. I know I was a good player, so for me to play in a charity hockey event, what's the difference how well I play? Tony asks me, "Don't you feel like an old fool?" My answer is, "Tony, it's fun to go out and skate and play these charity games. Nobody's going to get hurt."

So sometimes I don't understand him. He gets stubborn. And for Tony, nothing is ever good enough. And I don't understand that.

When we got older, we'd wake up and skate until our mom yelled out, "It's eight-thirty." Then we'd come in and get dressed for school, which was right across the street. At dinnertime, which in America is called lunch, we'd have an hour and a half, and we'd eat as fast as we could and skate the rest of the time. We fooled around with a puck and stick. I always skated with a stick. I don't even know whether I can skate without one. You get a balance with a stick, like a third leg. And we'd go back to school, and after school we'd skate again until my dad would whistle us for supper at five o'clock. We'd come in, and Mom would put newspaper on the floor, and we'd eat with our skates on.

My dad came home at four, and every day we ate at five, because he'd be really, really furious if the food wasn't on the table after he came home. He would be like a bear.

My dad had a temper. I remember one time Tony was pushing his spaghetti away with his fork. He said, "Aw, spaghetti again?" My old man was holding his fork, and he threw the fork at Tony and it stuck in his forehead. As my brother pulled the fork out, my father said, "If you ever, ever push food away again, that will be the end of you, pal. Don't you ever do that again. Now sit down and eat your damn spaghetti, and eat it now!" Holy Christ, he was miserable when it came to food.

Truth be known, my dad was a foodaholic. He died because he ate so much food. He was very overweight. Later on, after he had a stroke - he had it at fifty-five and died at sixty-two - he would hide salami and pepperoni in the couch. My mother would never know, and when she left the room he'd take it and bite into it, and he'd say to me, "If you squeal, you're in trouble." He couldn't even walk then.

But let me tell you what my dad did when I was nine years old: There was a guidance counselor at school by the name of Mrs. Cunningham, and every month she would ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I'd say, "I want to be a hockey player." That went on for months, and finally she got really angry with me. She sent a note home demanding my parents come and see her.

The three of us went into her office. I was petrified. I figured my father was going to kill me because I wanted to be a hockey player, and I had gotten in trouble for it.

Mrs. Cunningham said, "All the other children want to be doctors or lawyers or work in the steel mill. Phil says he wants to be a hockey player."

My father said to her, "So what's the problem?"

"Your son refuses to tell me what he wants to do when he grows up," she said.

He looked at me. "Is that true?"

"No, Dad," I said. "I want to be a hockey player."

"See what I mean?" she said. "Hockey is a sport, but it's just a sport. What does he really want to do?"

She looked at me again.

"I want to be a hockey player," I said.

My dad looked at her and said, "May I ask you a question?"

"Sure," she said.

"What is wrong with him wanting to be a hockey player?" he asked.

My father rose dramatically in my estimation. He could do little wrong after that. He could bust my face up if he wanted to.

"That's not realistic," she said.

My dad said, "Why not, if that's what he wants to do?"

"I think that's terrible," she said. And she never asked me about it again.

I didn't like school to begin with. I could not understand why I was learning about the fifteenth century. "Who gives a shit about what happened then?" I said.

One time I was playing baseball. I could really hit the ball, and during a game I hit a ball and broke a window of the King Edward School. I was called in and scolded by one of the teachers for breaking the window. I told him it was an accident, that I had broken it during a game, but he didn't care. I got a reprimand.

I was so angry at the teacher that at night I and the rest of my gang, who were called the Skulls, went out and threw stones at the school and broke about twenty windows. They all knew it was me, and this time I got myself in real serious trouble.

My dad had to pay for all the windows. He wasn't very happy with me. But after I did it, I told him why I had done it. I never asked Dad how much the windows cost. All I remember was that he didn't give me a beating. And that taught me a lesson. If I ever got in trouble, I was going to tell him right away.

At school they gave me the strap. You put your hands out, and the principal took this big horse strap, fourteen inches long and thick, and whacked your hands. I got ten on each hand. Goddamn, he hurt my hands. They were all swollen.

I was always the leader of the pack. The Skulls were the same guys I played sports with, Gino Cavacuello, Donny Muscatello, Nicky Kutcher, and Benny Greco. (Not Clem Giovanatti, because he was a brain, a smart guy, all the time better than us in school.) We wore black leather jackets, Elvis Presley was just coming in.

We weren't bad, nothing like the gangs of today. Mostly it was harmless fun. On Halloween one of the things we used to do was turn over garbage pails. I don't know why we did that.

We had a neighbor, an old guy, a miserable son of a bitch who was always yelling at us. One night we put dog shit in a paper bag, put it on his porch, and set it on fire. He came out, and he started stomping on it, and the shit was squirting all over the place. It was gross, but we were laughing like crazy.

He said, "I'll get you, Esposito. I know it's you."

I figured I'd better tell my old man, because if I didn't, the old guy would come to the house and I would really be in trouble. I told him, and because I told him, Dad was okay with it.

When I was fourteen years old, I finally did something I couldn't talk myself out of. There was an alley that ran behind our house, what we called the laneway, and one day I borrowed my dad's truck, and I drove Tony up and down the laneway.

Then we decided to get a little braver. One night after my parents left for the movies, Tony and I took Dad's '56 Mercury Monarch, put our sister, who had been born just a few months before, in the back seat, and went cruising.

Mom and Dad came home early, because my dad hated the movie, I guess. We were gone, and so was the Monarch. They were frantic with worry.

When we returned, I saw Dad's truck, and I knew I was in trouble. I didn't know what to do, so I sent my brother into the house with my sister. My dad came out, and when he saw me, he screamed, "You dirty son of a bitch. You little bastard." He started chasing me, and I ran, boy. I ran. We ran around the block, and when he got close he kicked me in the ass, and I kept running.

When I finally came home, my brother was hiding under the bed. I tried to hide too, but my dad grabbed me by the foot, yanked me out, and what a beating he gave me! That was the first time my nose was broken. He had to make sure I would never do that again. Because I was crazy. I was fourteen. I didn't have a license, but I loved to drive.