FRISCO, Texas — As Mike McCarthy talks, the recollections of Pittsburgh preserve flowing.
“Roberto Clemente, that was the primary man I feel I had on my wall as a younger child within the late sixties,” the Dallas Cowboys’ coach mentioned in his workplace at The Star earlier this week of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Corridor of Fame outfielder. “He dominated within the ’60s and the early ’70s in baseball.”
Point out the school soccer video games at Pitt and it’s as if he can nonetheless see working again Tony Dors-itt — he did not turn out to be Tony Dors-ett till he got here to the Cowboys — run for a landing.
“My dad would all the time be like, ‘Hey, listen, preserve your eyes open. He’ll break one. Thirty-three goes to interrupt one,'” McCarthy mentioned. “It was only a matter of when, not if.”
After attending mass on Sundays and cleansing his father’s bar, it was time to observe the Steelers.
“I may title the entire protection [from then] most likely nonetheless right now,” McCarthy mentioned, after which he does.
McCarthy has not lived in Pittsburgh since 1992, however it’s nonetheless residence. At all times can be. He nonetheless appears like he’s from there, rising up in Greenfield, only a few miles from dahn-town.
This week, McCarthy returns residence for the primary time as coach of the Cowboys (2-2) to tackle the Steelers (3-1), who nonetheless play in the identical spot the place the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers meet. Gone is Three Rivers Stadium. Acrisure Stadium is the Steelers’ residence now.
McCarthy’s mother and father, Joe and Ellen, nonetheless dwell there, not removed from the Greenfield Ave. properties the place they raised 5 kids. Now, they’re up on a bluff subsequent to McCarthy’s sisters, Ellen and Kellie. Colleen lives close by too. They are going to all be on the recreation Sunday, in addition to different family and friends. With assist of the Rooney household, McCarthy was capable of safe a set.
“Between our folks and their folks, we had been capable of get what we would have liked,” McCarthy mentioned.
On Saturday night time, his first cease can be on the mausoleum at Calvary Catholic Cemetery, the place his youthful brother, Joe, rests after passing in 2015. Then he’ll drive to his mother and father’ home and spend time with household.
“It is all the time a particular alternative,” mentioned Kellie McCaffrey, one among Mike’s sisters, who’s the senior director on the Tepper College of Enterprise at Carnegie Mellon College. “He is been within the NFL for 30 years now and it is so intense, however we’re all the time joyful to get the possibility to see him. I do know he is centered on the enterprise at hand and we’re completely thrilled to assist him and his group.”
McCarthy needs the Cowboys had been staying nearer to downtown Pittsburgh as a substitute of out by the airport.
“I will take the scenic path to the home as a result of it is all the time cool to journey by way of the neighborhood,” McCarthy mentioned.
They are going to have some pizza from his favourite spot, Aiello’s, however his mom will even prepare dinner up a feast.
“My mother is a superb prepare dinner,” Kellie mentioned, including, “She just about units the menu. He’ll be proud of no matter she makes.”
McCarthy first returned as an NFL head coach in 2009 with the Inexperienced Bay Packers. The subsequent journey residence in 2017 was particularly painful, because it was the primary recreation there since Joe’s dying. The Packers misplaced each video games by a complete of 4 factors. In actual fact, the Steelers are the one group McCarthy has performed a number of regular-season video games in opposition to and never recorded a win.
However he can nonetheless declare bragging rights over his hometown group. Extra on that later.
“Rising up in Pittsburgh, I’m so proud to be from there. I feel the technology that I grew up in, I do not know, it could not have been any higher rising up proper there within the metropolis,” McCarthy mentioned. “Our neighborhood’s Greenfield. We’re one of many first neighborhoods proper out of downtown Pittsburgh. You may bounce on the 56E on a Saturday morning and go run round downtown Pittsburgh. So long as you are up for dinner, your mother and father did not even know you left the neighborhood. Simply so many nice instances.”
The metal mills had been “busting on the seams,” McCarthy mentioned of his childhood. Neighborhoods had been stuffed with youngsters. The Greenfield Ave. youngsters would play video games in opposition to youngsters on Exeter St. after which Loretto Rd. and so forth down the neighborhoods.
Generally they might go to Pitt Stadium and seize a soccer out of the locker room. They’d play a pickup recreation on the identical area their heroes performed. When the grounds crew shooed them away, they might go to Carnegie Mellon College.
“Nobody was on them fields,” McCarthy mentioned.
Within the summertime, the pool at Magee Park would open at 10 a.m. Two baseball fields. Two basketball courts. They had been all the time busy. It was nearly a 10-block stroll — or dash — from his residence.
“You then went residence for lunch, went again down, went residence for dinner, went again down, and then you definately needed to be residence when the streetlights got here on,” McCarthy mentioned. “However then when you discovered many of the enjoyable began after the streetlights got here on, you’d ask to remain out later. However no, hell, I can keep in mind being on the market in highschool enjoying basketball ’til one o’clock within the morning as a result of the police, they had been anxious about different folks working round.
“Wanting again on it, it was like having your individual nation membership.”
McCarthy was nearly 8 when the Pirates gained the World Sequence in 1971. The “We Are Household” Pirates gained it once more in 1979.
He noticed the Immaculate Reception by Franco Harris on a black-and-white tv when the Steelers beat the Oakland Raiders in 1972. He was devastated every week later when the Steelers misplaced to the Miami Dolphins within the AFC Championship Recreation.
However then the Steelers gained 4 Tremendous Bowls in a five-year span. Twice they beat the Cowboys (Tremendous Bowls X and XIII). The Metal Curtain was born.
“It was simply such an outstanding time to develop up within the ’70s in Pittsburgh,” he mentioned.
Throughout that point, McCarthy met Artwork Rooney, the Steelers founder, referred to as The Chief. Jack Butler performed 9 years for the Steelers and McCarthy was pals with Butler’s sons, Tim and Kevin, who was a little bit older. In the future, they needed to ship a mass card as a result of Artwork’s brother, Silas “Dan” Rooney, a priest, had died.
“So right here we go right down to North Facet and pull as much as the house, and I nonetheless keep in mind two black Cadillacs sitting in entrance of it and only a regular neighborhood, not removed from the stadium, Three Rivers Stadium,” McCarthy mentioned. “The Blue-Grey Recreation was on the tv. I feel it was the Blue-Grey Recreation. And there he was, Artwork actually sitting on a sofa. I am like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ So we stroll in, and Kevin’s massive Irish, I am Irish so we may go for brothers. He launched us.”
When The Chief discovered McCarthy’s grandfather performed soccer at St. Rosalia’s Prep, he mentioned, “Nicely, he should’ve been one robust sonofab—- if he performed there.”
“It appeared like two hours, however it may have been 10 minutes,” McCarthy mentioned. “That is one thing you always remember.”
Thirty years later, McCarthy’s Packers had been on the brink of play the Rooney Household’s Steelers in Tremendous Bowl XLV at AT&T Stadium on Feb. 6, 2011.
McCarthy swears he didn’t get caught up within the emotion of enjoying in opposition to his favourite group rising up earlier than the sport. An excessive amount of to prepare for. Too many issues to fret about. An ice storm blanketed Dallas that week, so the Packers’ apply plans had been shifted, transferring from SMU to Highland Park Excessive College’s indoor facility.
“We had a variety of transferring components,” McCarthy mentioned.
However on Sunday, hours earlier than kickoff, it hit him when he noticed the “inexperienced and gold and the black and gold,” in every single place within the stadium.
On the sphere earlier than the sport, he spoke with Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, the identical coach he’ll face once more Sunday (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC).
To get to the Steelers’ facility, Tomlin needed to drive by way of McCarthy’s previous neighborhood down Greenfield Ave., then throughout the Sizzling Steel Bridge to the South Facet. Over time, Tomlin had turn out to be pleasant with the crossing guard at St. Rosalia’s, the Catholic grade faculty 4 generations of McCarthys attended.
Usually, the crossing guard would wave the Steelers coach by way of.
“Mike says, ‘I come down Greenfield Avenue the start of the week, faculty guard blows me off. Offers me a cease signal. She hadn’t made me cease since I have been there. She’s waving everyone else by way of,'” McCarthy laughs on the reminiscence.
When Tomlin pulled into the native CoGo’s for some fuel, a few loudmouths screamed, ‘You are taking place this time, Tomlin. You are going to get your ass kicked.’
“He mentioned, ‘The place the hell am I at?'” McCarthy mentioned. “He goes, ‘It was fairly cool driving by way of Greenfield this week.'”
The Packers beat the Steelers, 31-25, to win the Tremendous Bowl in an iced-over Arlington, Texas. The Pittsburgh child had crushed his group within the greatest recreation of all.
On the nook of McCarthy’s desk, behind a household picture, sits the Lombardi Trophy.
“Did you ever choose one up?” McCarthy asks a customer. “It is heavier than you assume. That is the factor that shocked me after they handed it to me. Since you’re up on that stage, they hand it to you and you are going to do the, ‘Hey, right here we go,’ or no matter. I imply it is not tremendous heavy, it is simply shocking.”
For almost 40 minutes, the trophy, combined in with an assortment of photographs and papers, in addition to a lit candle, went nearly unnoticed because the dialog steered towards Greenfield, meals at Aiello’s and Rialto’s, Clemente and the Pirates, the Metal Curtain Steelers, Dors-itt and the Pitt Panthers, and a Pittsburgh child teaching the rival Cowboys.
“Assembly Roger Staubach, it was unbelievable,” McCarthy mentioned. “I imply no completely different than the primary time I met Terry Bradshaw.”
After the Tremendous Bowl, one of many Steelers’ minority house owners discovered McCarthy.
“Hey, clearly we wished to win,” he informed McCarthy. “But when we did not, we’re glad it was you. I all the time appreciated that as a result of we’re a good fraternity again there.”
Some Cowboys flags can be noticed in Greenfield. Kellie mentioned the neighborhood helps her brother no matter the place he coaches, even the Cowboys, regardless of the rivalry that began within the Nineteen Seventies, and particularly this week.
On Thursday, Kellie took her daughter, Reese, Mike’s goddaughter, to Pittsburgh Kids’s Hospital for a checkup.
“She simply bought dressed, bought within the automobile and did not understand she had a Cowboys shirt on,” Kellie mentioned. “She wears it with satisfaction. And nobody gave us a tough time.”