Reiter: Picture of Pioli emerges in bits, pieces

[Coach]

Haven't seen this posted. If a repost, well, too bad.

Posted on Sat, Jan. 24, 2009
Picture of Pioli emerges in bits, pieces
By BILL REITER
The Kansas City Star

WASHINGTONVILLE, N.Y. | The long, steep hill that sweeps away from the highway, a hill that rises through the blue-collar neighborhood that molded him into a man, helps hide the answer to this question: Who is Scott Pioli?

In this beautiful, rugged swath of the Hudson Valley, the name of the Kansas City Chiefs’ new general manager ignites a flash of pride and a stern, studied silence. On the road he walked every day as he dreamed that football could carry him away from here, in the sand-colored brick high school where he sat on wooden locker room benches and readied himself for battle, in the hushed and worried conversations of friends and acquaintances, there is an understanding reinforced by Pioli himself making phone calls to say: Say nothing.

The journey to know Pioli is not an easy one, a road made rugged as much by where he comes from as whom he’s worked for. Few know him, fewer still have shared what they know with the outside world. And so, 45 miles southeast of here, in a house with wooden floors and a slice of the Hudson River shining blue through the trees, one of the people who know Pioli best struggles to explain.

Even though, really, he can’t.

“People knowing him would drive him crazy. No one knew very much about him in New England. He didn’t want to be known. Never out front.”

Matt Spencer pauses. He needs to think, to be careful.

He is Pioli’s best friend — his wife, Cindy, who’s sitting next to him on the couch, introduced Pioli to Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots’ secretive head coach who went on to incredible success and who took Pioli with him.

Spencer’s 12-year-old daughter, who’s running through the living room, counts the Chiefs’ most important hire in 20 years as her godfather. Spencer’s youngest is nicknamed “Katie Bowl” because she was born the day the Patriots beat the Raiders in the playoffs in the howling snow. His son sees Pioli as an uncle. Pioli’s wedding picture hangs on his wall.

“I do know him. I can say with no ego he’s my best friend,” Spencer says. “And he’s a great guy.”

Spencer is someone who has been let inside closely guarded walls. And even though that probably allows him to reveal a man bound by loyalty and tradition, by a work ethic shaped as much by suffering as success — a Scott Pioli who never lost his roots …

“I need to be careful with what I say,” Spencer says.

As the man charting the course of the Chiefs goes about the business of learning and shaping everything about the organization — including Friday’s decision to fire head coach Herm Edwards — Pioli has made time to be sure little to nothing is learned about him.

The secrecy, stretching from the 10 days of silence leading up to Edwards’ termination to simply knowing who exactly Pioli is, has been strategic, thorough and indicative of how Pioli will run things at Arrowhead Stadium.

So that there can be no confusion about the general manager’s wishes …

Word comes from the people of his hometown, such as Washingtonville Central School District official Sue Cooney: “We are very protective of him. We can’t say much.”

Word comes through Chiefs officials: “Scott just doesn’t want to talk about himself right now. And he doesn’t want his family to talk. It would be better if a story about him could wait a few months.”

Word comes by text message from Ryan Petkoff, the 27-year-old assistant of Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt: “His family is off limits.”

Word comes from Pioli himself, after he’s asked during his brief introductory press conference what kind of public persona he’ll have: “Here’s what I believe: I believe that the main voice of the organization has to be the head coach.”

The message is clear. Scott Pioli doesn’t want you to know anything about him.

•••

The route to Pioli’s boyhood home is lined with pine trees dusted in shimmering white snow. They guard the winding state highway, one after the other, like great towering Christmas trees welcoming people escaping the steel and concrete and bustle of Manhattan and the dirty, congested throughways of New Jersey.

Stone fences, rolling hills, herds of deer, distant silos but also New York-style pizza and the thick accent of Brooklyn and Yonkers, the small, blue-collar homes built for three that would hold eight, nine, 10 — this is where New York meets New England. This is where the rush of the city and hope of the country come together.

“There was a bond there,” Spencer says. “We were all from New York. We were all struggling. Everyone, the neighborhood, was together, all there for their kids. Everybody was together in hardship.”

This is where firefighters and police officers and some of their friends brought their families in the 1960s and ’70s, ushering them out of the working-class boroughs of New York City. The children were raised on this hill; the fathers commuted hours a day into the city, to the hard, dirty, dangerous work of what was then a hard, dirty, dangerous place.

“Life there was a grind,” Spencer says. “The ‘life-changing, life-shaping’ experience was just getting through every day.”

Days that included Pioli watching his father struggle without complaint, working one, two, as many as three jobs, many he hated.

It’s how Pioli learned the code that directs his life: hard work. Tight-knit circles of loyalty and privacy. Knowing the churn of life before the sun rises for a job one hates; knowing, looking out on the rolling, snow-covered hills, and thinking: We’re closer to something better. Our kids are closer to something better.

There were rarely leftovers on the hill. No fancy vacations, if any at all. You didn’t drive nice cars, buy lots of televisions, expect new clothes. Old junkers, rabbit ears, hand-me-downs — you lived and you worked, and you loved your family and your neighborhood. It was hard and beautiful and, to the boys watching their dads, heroic to see.

“We were all the same,” says John Luedke, another close friend who was raised a few streets from Pioli. “We respected our elders. Learned to work hard. You worked for what you got; you were given nothing. These things made us what we are today.”

Luedke is an oil trader. A very, very good one, judging by the home he’s sitting in — one of at least three he owns.

“I’m not just saying this: I wish our kids could grow up the way we did. I really do,” he says. “Was it hard? Yes, it was. But it was the greatest childhood you could hope for.”

The neighborhood that produced that childhood hasn’t changed. Eight years ago, firefighters from the surrounding area, men who still commuted to the city, made their way there. Two planes hit two towers. They rushed in. Five never came out.

Washingtonville was a place where the jobs men did, they did. They didn’t talk about them. The meaning behind them, the lessons they taught and the things they said about who they were in this world — all of that was reserved for them and their children.

Even the simplest of details might infringe on that code.

It’s why, in a pizza place across the street from the library with the copper roof, there’s an unease about sharing.

Cooney, the school official who knew Pioli in high school and serves as a liaison between him and the school (he comes back often, whenever he can, to give back) cradles a yearbook from 1983. She flips it open, her fingers searching.

“Here he is,” she says. “He looked exactly the same. Well, except he has hair.”

She catches herself.

“Don’t write that.”

She looks at the book.

“You should write these down.”

The yearbook says that Pioli participated in football, baseball and prom court. That he liked football, winning, hamburgers, the smell of cigars and James Bond. That he disliked not having money.

There’s one more line. Cooney won’t move her hand.

“You can’t see that.”

Please.

“No, you can’t see that.”

But it’s just a yearbook.

“You have all you need. You can’t write this down. No.”

Finally, grudgingly, she moves her hand.

The state secret?

That Scott Pioli hoped to retire at age 25, that he wanted to own a mansion, and that he looked forward to traveling with the Glimmer Twins — the alter egos of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

•••

Coach Ray Ruckdeschel — everyone calls him Coach Rock for short — sat in his car in the winter of 2005, unaware of what was about to happen. Not far away, the phone rang at his home. His wife answered.

“Mrs. Rock,” a somewhat familiar voice said, “I want you and Coach to be my guests at the Super Bowl.”

The voice belonged to Pioli. It was a few weeks before the New England Patriots would win their third Super Bowl in four years. And here Pioli was, calling the man who’d been his assistant coach in high school — the kind of call he’d make over the years to dozens of others from his hometown — asking the Ruckdeschels to share one of the most important moments of his life.

Sue Ruckdeschel was taken back. “I told Scott, ‘I’m not telling him. You have to tell him. Because this is so wonderful. It needs to come from you.’ ”

Then the phone in Coach Rock’s car was ringing.

“Coach.”

“Scott.”

And before the old coach could guess — the coach who’d helped drive those boys into the ground, work them until they swore and hurt with football drills that were a physical replication of the lives they’d led up until then — Scott Pioli was extending the invitation, and the old man couldn’t help it. He cried and cried and thanked Scott for such a kindness.

This, too, is Scott Pioli: the out-of-the-blue call. Not just tickets, but airfare, hotels, dinner at the Chart House in Jacksonville, Fla., the Saturday before the big game. And when it was over, when the Patriots were again champions, that kid from Washingtonville sprinted through the confetti-filled field, running toward the stands where people from his hometown waited and then finding them and raising his thumb.

Saying: We did it. All of us. Together.

Sitting in Washingtonville four years later, remembering, the couple laughed and smiled and sighed.

“He remembers his past,” Ray says.

“He honors his roots,” Sue adds.

And yet to push — to assume such kindness equals understanding, that such unprovoked loyalty means those who’ve experienced it know well the man who provided it — reveals more of those walls rising around Pioli.

“I know you want to know more about him, something personal,” Ray says. “I wish I could tell you more. I wish I could tell you what makes him tick. But I only really know him on the football field.”

•••

There is a story that shows Pioli at his most private and happy. It’s a good story — funny, fulfilling, a tribute as much to his childhood as to how far he’s come.

But first, all those defenses to overcome.

“I don’t like to expose too much of Scotty’s personal life,” Luedke says.

There are behind-the-scenes talks, intermediaries, phone calls. There are friends who will tell this simple tale only if Pioli OKs it. Then word comes: The story can be told.

And yet …

“I don’t believe Scott would allow that story to be told,” a friend says.

More phone calls, more talk, more pledges that this is a Pioli-approved moment. Then, finally, contact with the GM is made.

He says the story — a simple, private, positive, happy moment — can be shared.

•••

All his life, Scott Pioli and the friends with whom he stalked those hills loved Bruce Springsteen. Jersey boy, blue-collar hero, self-made man. Here was someone they could understand. Someone like them.

So when it was announced that the Boss would perform at Gillette Stadium in August 2008 — the same place the Patriots played and Pioli worked — he fired off an e-mail to three high school friends.

“It said, ‘I want you guys to be here,’ ” Spencer said.

And so in August they were, all together for the first time since they were 18 years old, watching the Boss sing, listening to the music that told the stories of their lives.

When the concert was over, Pioli took his three friends behind the stage, into the depths of the stadium. Word came: Springsteen would meet with the Patriots’ football man. Pioli disappeared behind a closed door.

The way the story goes, Pioli was talking to Bruce when he slipped in the fact he was here with high school buddies.

“Where are they?” Springsteen asked. “Go bring them in.”

Then Scott was opening the door and pointing at his friends, and they were ushered into that place, and suddenly four kids from Washingtonville — who used to wrangle up $5 so they could try to justify their existence in the local pizza place by buying one slice at a time so they could stay warm — were sitting there talking to their hero.

“This goes back to Scott wanting to share as much of it as he could with us,” Spencer says. “Most people would want Springsteen to themselves. But it’s something Scott wanted for all of us.”

The point is this: Scott Pioli had made it off that hill, but he hadn’t left it behind. When the time came to meet the man whose poster still hangs in his room, Pioli knew it wouldn’t be right if the people who got him here weren’t there themselves.

“I wish I could express it, what it meant,” Spencer says. “I think about that. Many times we looked at each other, and it was just that — how did a couple of kids from Washingtonville end up here? Really? There are probably a lot of people who would have bet against a couple of us, if not all of us. It’s hard to articulate the satisfaction and happiness of being there with your buds, and … it’s just hard to put into words.”

•••

There’s time for one last look into Scott Pioli’s world, a glimpse given by the almost one-mile walk up the hill from Route 208 to his parents’ home. It’s where he walked with Spencer and Luedke and others as they talked about the future and football and understood without having to say anything that they shared a way of life that would stay with each of them.

The strip mall they went to for pizza and candy is still there, a red-brick outpost with eight pillars standing like sentries, protecting memories.

Up the steep incline you go, the legs burning just a few houses in, past the unmarked police cars and the small, squat homes and the American flags flapping, flag after flag, house after house, the legs aching so much they stumble.

At the top, breath catching in the chest, it’s stunning to see what Scott Pioli saw day after day: high enough now to look down on the beauty of the hills, and the smell of pine, and the smoke rising from chimneys warming houses of people you knew and loved. You could stand here, catching your breath, feeling your legs throb, and all at once — looking all around — you could feel rooted so strongly to this place and still see a whole world waiting for you to conquer.

One more left turn, and there’s the Pioli home: Small, light brown, with two giant trees rising over it from the backyard and a stone fence behind them. Two cars are in the driveway, and the garage door is open, but the way forward is not.

For now at least, the home that raised Scott Pioli — like the man himself — is closed to the outside world.

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/v-p...ry/999648.html

[Hammock Parties]

The yearbook says that Pioli participated in football, baseball and prom court. That he liked football, winning, hamburgers, the smell of cigars and James Bond. That he disliked not having money.

That Scott Pioli hoped to retire at age 25, that he wanted to own a mansion, and that he looked forward to traveling with the Glimmer Twins — the alter egos of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

[milkman]

That's a nice fluff piece that's about as useful as Clathan's dick in a whorehouse.

[Brock]

Did they find Scott's old Camaro out back with a Bon Jovi tape still in the tape deck?

[DaWolf]

So Pioli is not about self promotion and likes to keep his life private. As long as he isn't wearing kilts and parking in handicapped parking and yelling down first rounders and not building mediocre football teams, we're good...

[Mr. Laz]

nice story


thanks





(btw after reading the first 3 responses after the story you can see why Pioli doesn't want to share)

[The Bad Guy]

I enjoyed reading it.

Pioli is the anti-Carl Peterson - and for that, I am thankful.

[milkman]

Originally Posted by Laz

nice story


thanks





(btw after reading the first 3 responses after the story you can see why Pioli doesn't want to share)

The point is, I don't give a rat's ass about his personal life.

All I care about is what he does as the GM of the Chiefs.

[Brock]

Originally Posted by Laz

(btw after reading the first 3 responses after the story you can see why Pioli doesn't want to share)

Er....ok.

[T-post Tom]

Lackluster. Poor man's JoPo.

[StcChief]

Originally Posted by Pioli

That Scott Pioli hoped to retire at age 25, that he wanted to own a mansion, and that he looked forward to traveling with the Glimmer Twins — the alter egos of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

I knew there was something about this guy I liked.

[Danman]

Originally Posted by Brock

Did they find Scott's old Camaro out back with a Bon Jovi tape still in the tape deck?

This story told absolutely nothing, but it did take the author nearly the whole A section of today's paper to say it.

[theorangelion]

Originally Posted by milkman

The point is, I don't give a rat's ass about his personal life.

All I care about is what he does as the GM of the Chiefs.

[Lurker2:-)=)]

Originally Posted by The Bad Guy

Pioli is the anti-Carl Peterson - and for that, I am thankful.

I agree.
I'll be perfectly happy to have his high draft choices who (I hope) become Pro bowlers and the (I hope) carefully chosen FA's he signs who (I hope) make an immediate positive impact on the Chiefs do all Pioli's speaking for him.

[JuicesFlowing]

I respect Pioli's decision to remain private. His football decisions are all that matter. Amazing that the article was that long just to tell us that Pioli keeps to himself.