David Bergman/ZUMA Press/Imago Images
Belly Laughs
The check arrived in a fancy envelope, and Tony Siragusa shuddered at his good fortune. It was a gift from the football gods, so Siragusa took the $1,000 signing bonus ($674 after taxes) he received from the Indianapolis Colts in the spring of 1990—his first NFL paycheck—and went straight to a bank in his hometown of Kenilworth, N.J. Though the bank had closed for the day, his aunt was the manager, and when he asked her to give him the entire sum in small bills, she happily obliged. Then, with a wallet nearly as thick as his midsection, Siragusa barged into Ross Brothers' Tavern and slapped the wad of cash on the bar. “Then," he recalls, "we drank it. Every last dollar bill."
If there's one story that captures the essence of Siragusa, the Baltimore Ravens' wide-bodied, wisecracking, potbellied, potty-mouthed, bighearted, large-living defensive tackle, then scores of others serve the same purpose. The signing-bonus saga just happens to be the tale he's telling at the moment, but Siragusa, 33, has more material than he has bulk in his 6'3", 342-pound body. When the Ravens face the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV, the Goose will be the biggest personality in the ultimate game, a man revered by teammates, reviled by some opponents and unrepentant about any feelings—or quarterbacks—he has injured along the way.
One evening last week in Pine Brook, N.J., Siragusa took center stage as he and his paisans—including some who 11 years earlier had helped him drink away his signing bonus—had another celebration at another boisterous bar. Partying at Tiffany's, however, required no wad of cash. Siragusa is a co-owner of the eatery and sports bar, which he and two partners opened in November. Thanks to a contract holdout last summer, Siragusa has earned more than $2 million this season, a salary he views as a validation of his lunch-bucket approach to football.
"My abilities were overlooked for a long time, but people are starting to see that I'm a piece of the puzzle," Siragusa said, his voice booming above the din. "When I was in college, people told me, 'Sure, you can stop the run, but anyone can do that. If you want to make money in the NFL, you've got to rush the passer.' That's bull----. It's like all the people who tell you you've got to be in computers to make money. Yeah? You know what—you still need a f------ plumber to fix your toilet, and the scarcer they are, the more money they'll make. 'Cause what are you gonna do, call a f------ computer guy to fix your f------ crapper?"
Everybody at the table—heck, everyone at the surrounding tables—burst into laughter, a common response when the Goose is on the loose. Siragusa is a salt-of-the-earth sage who can insult you in the loudest, most embarrassing manner and still get you to laugh along with the crowd.
Giants fans, beware. True, Siragusa was one of you once, growing up 20 miles from Giants Stadium, and his restaurant will be full of Ravens bashers come Super Sunday. Mindful of this quirk of fate, Siragusa went behind the Tiffany's bar, mixed roughly 30 shots of a pink liquid he identified only as Goose Juice and passed them around the bar before raising his glass of beer. “Hey, here's to the Giants...," he said, pausing long enough for patrons to exchange puzzled glances before he delivered the kicker, "...kissing my ass!"
Siragusa doesn't suck up to anyone. Just ask Mike Gottfried, who in 1987, his second year as Pitt's coach, passed out copies of the school's fight song at a team meeting. Siragusa, then a sophomore, crumpled his sheet and shouted, "If I wanted to learn a school song, I would've gone to Notre Dame or Penn State. I want to kill people on the football field. That's why I came to Pitt."
Siragusa has nothing good to say about Gottfried and has even less regard for former Colts director of football operations Bill Tobin, who ran the franchise during the last three of Siragusa's seven years in Indianapolis (1990 to '96). Siragusa detests Tobin for driving out Indy coach Ted Marchibroda with a low-ball contract offer after the team's run to the '95 AFC title game. "We had a great thing going, and the guy dismantled it," Siragusa says of Tobin, who is out of football. "Then he had the balls to refer to himself in the third person constantly. He's horrible."
Nor is Siragusa a fan of former Colts coach Lindy Infante, Tobin's choice to succeed Marchibroda. "A d---head loser," Siragusa says.
The Goose is far more complimentary toward Ravens coach Brian Billick, though Siragusa's relationship with team management became strained during last summer's four-week holdout. Siragusa, due to make $1.5 million in 2000, wanted a raise and a contract extension, but the front office didn't budge. Word of a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum by the Ravens broke in the Baltimore papers on an August day on which Siragusa was relaxing with his wife, Kathy, four-year-old daughter, Samantha, and 17-month-old son, Anthony, at their beach house on the Jersey shore. When Billick called to smooth things over, Siragusa asked whether he was prepared to begin the season with an inexperienced starter (Lional Dalton) and a free-agent pickup (Sam Adams) at the tackle positions. "Oh, I see," Billick said. "It's all about leverage now?"
"Brian," Siragusa howled, "it's always been about leverage!" (Two weeks later he signed a three-year, $9-million contract.)
On the field Siragusa, a state wrestling champion in high school, has turned leverage into an art form. "He's a load," says Pittsburgh Steelers guard Rich Tylski. "You're not going to move him. The best thing to do is get into him and have a stalemate and have him try an arm tackle."
Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger says Siragusa "plays a lot better than his appearance would suggest."
To Steelers halfback Jerome (the Bus) Bettis, Siragusa is "the immovable object, the key to what they do. You need two guys to block him, and that allows Ray Lewis to run free, which is why Ray is so good."
As tough as Siragusa is as a gap-plugger and run-stopper, he's surprisingly adept at collapsing the pocket. His bull rush of Oakland Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon was a pivotal play in the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 14. Early in the second quarter Siragusa broke through the middle and drove Gannon into the turf after Gannon had released the ball. Gannon was forced to leave the game with a separated left shoulder. Though Siragusa was not penalized on the play, the NFL fined him $10,000 for an illegal hit. "Listen, when you hit a quarterback, you hit him to rattle him up. That's how you get him out of his rhythm," says Siragusa, who says he will appeal the fine. "It wasn't a cheap shot."
Siragusa has a mean streak. Asked to name his dirtiest opponent, he says, "Without a doubt [Cincinnati Bengals guard Matt] O'Dwyer. The last time we played them, I finally got fed up. I said, 'Listen, we're destined to get an interception, and when we do, I'm gonna take out your knee.' After that, the bull---- stopped."
Still, most of Siragusa's on-field banter takes on a comedic tone. Anyone who has heard Siragusa's bawdy, unpredictable weekly radio show on Baltimore's WJFK-AM knows that. He is the city's modern incarnation of Artie Donovan, the Hall of Fame Baltimore Colts lineman whose devil-may-care humor cracks up David Letterman. In December, when Donovan joined Siragusa for a live radio broadcast in a crowded restaurant, the censors needed all of 13 seconds to hit the bleep button for the first time.
The Goose's life hasn't been entirely golden. In July 1989, while recovering from a pair of blown-out knees he had suffered in his sophomore season at Pitt, Tony was staying at his parents' house in Kenilworth when the screams of his mother, Rose, awakened him at 4 a.m. Tony and his older brother, Pete, rushed to their parents' room. Their father, also named Pete, a 48-year-old cement mixer and part-time rock singer and guitarist, had had a heart attack. The boys attempted CPR, but to no avail. "We were crushed," Tony says. "It changed my approach to life. From then on I was going to blaze a trail through the brush and go as hard and as fast as I could."
Siragusa has had to fight for everything he's gotten. At Pitt he earned spending money by hustling students at the campus pool hall. Signed by the Colts as an undrafted free agent, Siragusa made the team only after his lies convinced coach Ron Meyer that he was an experienced long-snapper. He still has that scrapper's mentality. In October, following a first-quarter head-on collision with Titans fullback Lorenzo Neal, Siragusa was rushed to a Maryland hospital and found to have a bruised spinal cord. Within the hour, he shocked teammates by rushing back to the stadium, and soon after that he was back in the game.
Even Kathy, his 5'1'', 105-pound high school girlfriend and eventual wife, wasn't easy to win over. "I was scared to death of him," she recalls. "I was a nice girl, and I wanted to stay that way. I really didn't like him, but he kept coming back and saying, 'What do you mean you won't go out with me again?' He couldn't fathom the idea that somebody didn't like him. Eventually, I got caught up in his whirlwind like everybody else. His objective in life is to enjoy every moment without regrets, and who can stop him?"
Three days after the AFC Championship Game, Siragusa stopped in for breakfast at Anthony's, a hangout a few blocks from his childhood home in Kenilworth. The blue-collar, northern New Jersey town has 7,500 residents packed into two square miles. Some of the locals—Angelo, Pete, Junior, Sally, Preacher, Artie the Undertaker, Tony's uncle Marty and a dozen others—were there to watch the Goose eat several sandwiches stuffed with what they call Taylor ham ("More like pork roast, but you don't want to know what's really in it," one diner said) and ham it up as only he can.
"Who you gonna go for in the Super Bowl?" Siragusa asked Angelo, a Giants season-ticket holder for 41 years. "Don't ask stupid questions," Angelo responded. The Goose feigned indignation, then raised his left fist. "You're lucky you have heart trouble," Siragusa said, and Angelo and everyone else started laughing.
But the town clown was just getting warmed up. "Hey," Siragusa said, "I used to go to Giants games. Back then you were happy if you got a flat beer and a hot dog without a vein running down the middle."
Take cover, America: Super Bowl week may never be the same.