When you`re rich, revered and retired, you can just sit back and collect awards. Then again, if you`re Tony Esposito, you stay too busy to worry about whether people remember how great you were, and for how long.
”The competition, I miss,” he says. ”The limelight, I don`t miss.”
Tony-0 didn`t miss many pucks, either, during his tenure as Black Hawks` goalkeeper extraordinaire. Chicago hockey fans circle the day in 1969 when he was pried from the Montreal Canadiens for a meager $25,000 draft price so as to settle the defense over at the Stadium. Esposito, one of several rookie unknowns on that squad, put on his mask and never looked back. The Black Hawks skated from last place to first in one season, an NHL record trip, and what followed was 15 seasons of excellence between the pipes, probably the toughest position in sports.
Esposito played with broken bones, abrasions the size of dinner plates and migraines. Above all, he played with a remarkable level of concentration, fortified by hours of mental preparation. If you ever tried to say hello to Tony on game day, you were lucky to receive a cold glare in return. The man was in another world, the world of frozen rubber whizzing toward your earlobe at 100 miles an hour, with an opposing sniper on your doorstep. Tough business, tough guy.
”One of the top five goalkeepers in hockey history,” says Billy Reay, his coach for many years. ”No matter how sick, or hurt, or tired he was, Tony always wanted to play. Very reliable, very dedicated.”
Esposito put the pads and mask away in 1984, leaving quite the legacy. Now, comes the red carpet treatment. Rest assured hockey`s Hall of Fame will welcome him, one minute after he becomes eligible in a couple of years. But first, he`ll take his bows at the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame, which will stage its 10th anniversary induction and dinner Jan. 16 and 17 at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.
Esposito will be one of four honorees this year. The others are Joe Paterno, coach of the national champion Penn State Nittany Lions and a beacon of ethics in a sometimes seedy business; Daryle Lamonica, former quarterback for Notre Dame and the Oakland Raiders; and Vic Raschi, a right-hander who won 132 games for the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals during the late
`40s and early `50s. Tom Lasorda, part-time raconteur and full-time manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, will be master of ceremonies and dozens of former inductees will attend–Eddie Arcaro, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mosconi, Angelo Dundee included.
Esposito is humbled and appreciative to be recognized as a full-fledged legend, but citations aren`t his thing. A mere mention that his No. 35 jersey surely deserves to be hanging from the Stadium ceiling, and he gives you the same glare he used to beam at players who violated his crease.
”I told you,” he says. ”That type of stuff doesn`t really matter to me. I had a nice career, I worked for an outstanding owner, I met a lot of great people and I made a decent living. I don`t need the headlines any more. The only thing that you miss is the action, the moment, the feeling of working hard with your teammates and winning. There is nothing like it, and if you never experienced it, there`s no way to really describe it.”
Esposito has changed hardly at all since his days in uniform, except that he doesn`t dodge imaginary pucks in his sleep anymore. Son Mark, not a bad player himself, is off to college at Kent State and Jason is a high school sophomore, promising and forever growing. Meanwhile, Tony and wife Marilyn remain part of the Elmhurst community they`ve graced for years. For all the hours she gives to charity, Marilyn still looks like a movie star. Tony, his affinity for an occasional beer intact, is nevertheless rock solid from working out and racquetball.
”Still at my playing weight,” he says. ”I don`t want to let myself go, if you know what I mean. Same when I was playing. I saved a little money because I didn`t have to be driving a Porsche when I was 25.”
Tony-0 still directs much of his intelligence and intensity toward hockey. He is the right hand man to executive director Alan Eagleson in the NHL Players` Association, and thus partakes in various facets of the sport, notably labor-management sessions. Esposito will tell you that the game is as good as ever, if not better–an intriguing opinion from a fellow who recorded 82 shutouts, 15 in one season. In these wide-open times, a shutout is rare indeed. The Hawks, for instance, have had three since he left.
”I like it now and the fans like it,” he said. ”People want scoring. As an ex-goalie, I can still enjoy it because now there`s an even greater chance for a goalie to make a difference in a game. One big save can win it for you. The NHL has come back nicely from the expansion and the war with the World Hockey Association. We`re as strong and healthy and
entertaining as we`ve ever been. And, the way things are headed, we`re getting more and more away from fighting. I don`t think fans come to see brawls. Look at the rules that have been put in the last few years, you`ll see the direction we`re going.
”I really feel good about our sport. We`re regional, we`re never going to get the network TV exposure that some other sports get. But we`re doing damn well. We have less animosity between players and management than any other sport, and I`m proud of that. We get knocked for not having free agency, but if we had it and lost six or eight teams because they couldn`t afford to survive, what good is that doing? You`re losing all those jobs. Eagleson takes a lot of abuse, and so does the owner here, Bill Wirtz. But they are very smart and they are great for hockey. People don`t understand all they do.”
The more he`s away, though, the more people realize what Tony Esposito was all about, pacing on skates as he did before that cage, night after night. Now it`s time for him to count his trophies, instead of bruises.
