It was the morning that Tom Pecora woke up in the back of a truck in Jackson, Miss., that he realized he wanted a little more out of his life than working for the Mohawk Moving Company, schlepping furniture thousands of miles, or roofing houses, or cutting trees, or dragging bricks up to the men who were building chimneys.
This was 30 years ago, and you might say he left those blue-collar roots behind him forever now that he is the freshly-minted basketball coach at Fordham, where he will be the highest-profile employee at a Jesuit school that always has taken the left side of the hyphen as seriously as the right when it comes to student-athletes — a little too seriously, for the fervent ambitions of some alumni.
That wouldn’t be true, however. Pecora may have returned to Adelphi and gotten his degree, might have traded in his work boots for a whistle and a clipboard and the peripatetic life that the profession of coaching demands, but there is a part of his soul — a large part, maybe the most important part — that honors that working-class pedigree.
And maybe best explains how a guy who made all of $300 for the whole season his first year as a basketball coach — at Long Island Lutheran, working under Bob McKillop — can work his way up to a gig just across the Throgs Neck Bridge from his hometown of Queens Village where he will pull down close to $650,000 a year.
“I like to kid Bob,” Pecora says, “and tell him he still owes me about $250 of that salary.”
There are a lot of coaches who dream of reaching Division I. There are also a lot of knockaround guys who let life beat their dreams out of them. These are the lessons Pecora brings to his players, as much as anything. And it’s why those players tend to be fiercely loyal to him, why they play so hard for him.
“One of the things that helps you appreciate it when you reach a certain level, I think, you need reference points,” he says. “Ask someone our age what real work is, we probably think of real physical labor, and you try to convey that asking guys to work hard on the basketball court, relatively speaking, is pretty easy.”
Some coaches are afforded a relatively easy pathway north. Some have to pay their dues at places such as Lutheran and Nassau Community and SUNY-Farmingdale for years before ever getting a full-time basketball job. When that happened for Pecora, under Rollie Massimino at UNLV in 1991, his father, Carmine — who always said he believed in working “half days,” as in 12 hours out of 24 — kept asking, “You mean you don’t have to do anything besides coach? You don’t have to be a janitor?”
There was wonder in Carmine Pecora’s voice then. And there remains wonder in his son’s eyes even now, as he enters his fourth day on the job at Rose Hill.
“I tell young coaches who ask me, I say, ‘Make damn sure this is what you want’ because it’s not easy,” Pecora says. “Just getting a D-I job is like winning the lottery. Getting to coach in your home town? It’s like winning the lottery twice.”
Leaving Hofstra was difficult; leaving his players there wrenching; leaving the people he had grown close with hardest of all. The ex-roofer found himself on the receiving ends of bear hugs from dozens of people, the maintenance workers most of all.
“We used to shoot the breeze about the Mets all the time,” he says. “How do you think that’ll play? A Mets fan in The Bronx?”
For a daily dose of Vac’s Whacks, click http://www.nypost.com.blogs/vaccaro.
WHACK BACK AT VAC
Nick Vendikos: As a St. John’s alumnus and former season-ticket holder (thanks, Norm!) I think you have been on target since Day One about Jim Baron. Now that Paul Hewitt has thankfully turned the job down (excellent recruiter, terrible bench coach), it’s time is for St. John’s to look toward Rhode Island and Baron.
Vac: The “problem” with Baron is that he isn’t a flash-and-buzz guy, just someone who knows about building up moribund programs — St. Francis (Pa.), St. Bonaventure, Rhode Island. That’s exactly what St. John’s needs, but I don’t think the men who run the operation there want to realize it.
Glenn Harrison: In regard to your column about Yankee haters who “converted” during the ’01 World Series: I am a lifelong Yankee hater and I work right across the street from Ground Zero. But I still just couldn’t root for the Yanks in that Series. For me, Mike Piazza’s post-9/11 home run was what gave the city back its smile. I just couldn’t root for the Yankees!
Vac: You have to admit, there is something to be said for preserving your baseball ethics even when all around you are temporarily compromising theirs.
Bradley Mortensen: You’re forgetting Larry Brown when it comes to the St. John’s coaching mix. He wants out (of Charlotte). Family in Philly. From New York. And a mega-star coach who might have a reason to want to have the best team in the Garden! Why not ask?
Vac: I’d really like to come up with a reason to find fault with this suggestion. But it escapes me just now.
VAC’S WHACKS
* If that Kansas State-Xavier game the other night should have reinforced anything — other than the fact that Gus Johnson has an amazing capacity to be at the right courtside microphone at the right time year after year — it is this: leave well enough alone. The NCAA Tournament is just about perfect as is.
* I am not among those who like to bash Jim Boeheim. You don’t win a national championship and as many games as he has won simply by showing up for work every day. But those last five minutes against Butler won’t ever be preserved between the pages of a coaching textbook.
* I know we are supposed to applaud sportsmanship and fair play, and that we are supposed to endorse the kind of fellowship Joba Chamberlain displayed when Phil Hughes was announced as the Yankees’ No. 5 starter. But there’s a part of me that thinks part of Joba’s problem is that his reaction wasn’t “I think that’s a horsebleep decision and the best man didn’t win the job.”
* Not for nothing, but after seeing the way Sandra Bullock looked in “The Blind Side,” I’m pretty sure Jesse James should be declared legally insane.