Miracle Of St. Anthony A Season With Coach Bob Hurley Inside Basketball's Most Improbable Dynasty

PROLOGUE In the old neighborhood, on the street corners in the Greenville section of Jersey City, in the playgrounds and the gymnasiums, Bob Hurley can still see him. Thirty-eight years have passed but Tommy Esposito will be forever eighteen years old, the kid the girls adored, the kid the boys wanted to be. He was Hurley's best friend, big and strong and smart, representing promise'the promise of every kid who Hurley someday would struggle to save, and the tragedy of those he would lose.It happened late in the summer of 1965, in the fading innocence of his childhood, and it wouldn't be until years passed that Hurley understood that both of them had been desperately trying to hold onto something that was slipping away too fast. Everything was changing, the way it had in the world beyond the borders of this jagged city in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan: the racial tensions, the growing anxiety about the Vietnam War, the drugs. Bob and Tommy had missed all of it while bouncing a basketball. Together, they had held courts from St. Paul's Parish to the No. 30 School to Audubon Park. Afterward, they would drop a quarter on the counter of Irv's Deli on the walk home to Greenville, on the southern tip of the city, buying pressed ham sandwiches on half a pizza loaf. On Friday nights, they would cross Kennedy Boulevard for the Friday night dances at Sacred Heart Academy, where fluid footwork on the gym floor remained secondary to flailing fists outside in the parking lot. It was one of those gorgeous summer nights when young men feel untouchable, like nothing could ever stop them. Bob, Tommy, and a few of the fellas had gone down to Roosevelt Stadium to watch Bucky Rineer, a buddy from the neighborhood, play quarterback for a minor-league football team. In just a few weeks, Hurley would begin his sophomore year at St. Peter's College, over on Kennedy, where he had played freshman basketball. Tommy was a bright student and had a chance to play football in college, but no one had ever steered him that way at home. He had been a year behind Bob in school because he had run away as a kid and had been kept back at Snyder High. After enlisting in the army that summer, he would soon be leaving for basic training, and after that, Vietnam. Everyone was sure he would come home a war hero. Tommy Esposito could be a little crazy, but he always landed on his feet. As they walked to the corner of Danforth and Fowler, Hurley told his buddies that his family was away for the night and invited them over to watch the Mets game. ?Nah,? Esposito told them, ?we're gonna go swimming in the channel.' Now, on a bright October afternoon in the fall of 2003, Bob Hurley, the coach of the nationally renowned St. Anthony High School boys basketball team, was pulling up in his Toyota Camry to that same corner. His thoughts went back again to that night in 1965. ?So we get to the corner, and a couple of us made the right and walked over to my house,? Hurley said. ?Tommy and two others guys decided to turn down toward the water. They walked up and bought some beer, and now they were going to go swimming in the pitch black down by the channel. They decided to hop a train. Two kids hopped up. Tommy was carrying the beer. He tried to hop on while the train was going. ?He lost his balance. The one kid couldn't grab him.' While Bob had been sitting in his living room, Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner flickering on the television set, Tommy Esposito ended up under that train, pieces of his body scattered down the tracks by the Morris Canal. Hurley tapped the pedal in his old neighborhood, looked into his rearview mirror, and turned right, down Fowler. Window down, elbow dangling, he could feel the chilled autumn air through his blue nylon New Jersey Nets windbreaker. It meant that the start of basketball season wasn't far off. And it guaranteed to tighten the knot in his stomWojnarowski, Adrian is the author of 'Miracle Of St. Anthony A Season With Coach Bob Hurley Inside Basketball's Most Improbable Dynasty', published 2005 under ISBN 9781592401024 and ISBN 1592401023.