The Steel Cage

A musical montage projected on a giant video screen showed how Mick Foley earned that moniker.

There was Hardcore falling 15 feet from the top of a steel cage onto a ringside table, being "choke slammed" back-first onto a pile of thumbtacks, taking countless blows from a folding chair to his temple and performing hundreds of other daredevil stunts that, over a 15-year career, claimed one of his ears (ripped off in a match), earned him dozens of broken bones and left him walking like an old man when he was barely in his 30s.

Foley, who lives in Saint James, is indeed a Hardcore Legend, and to symbolize this, the wrestlers presented him with a glass display box containing the relic that he made famous - a shattered gold and leather championship belt held together by masking tape and emblazoned with the words "The Hardcore Championship."

Amid deafening cheers, a teary-eyed Foley took the microphone and proclaimed, "Damn, I almost forgot how good I really was."

"Until you stand there in front of ... 18,000 fans really reacting with genuine affection, you do kind of forget all the things you did," Foley said. "And you forget that other people have not forgotten."
To be sure, his attentions for the past two years have been about as far removed from the pro wrestling ring as one can imagine.

Earlier this month, the man who made his living as Cactus Jack, Dude Love and Mankind released his first novel - "Tietam Brown," published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House. It is a "coming-of-age novel" and - with its graphic descriptions of carnage alternating with its warmth and softness - has taken reviewers aback. Their assessments have been mixed so far, with Book Magazine giving it three stars out of four and calling it "surprisingly moving" and "agonizingly tragic, yet ultimately hopeful in its outlook," and Publishers Weekly opining that "Foley is not much of a stylist."

It is a story that the now-retired Foley said he could not have written had he remained in professional wrestling. But it also would not have existed had he never been such an integral part of that brutal and often bizarre world.

"It's really brought me full circle," Foley, 38, said. "It's the book that led to my departure and the book that led to my return."

Andy "Antietam" Brown - named after the Battle of Antietam - is a troubled teen. (Foley is also a Civil War buff.) The book tells the story of Andy's new life with his estranged and eccentric father.

As it happens, Andy is an awkward and misunderstood young man growing up in suburban New York with a missing ear, a penchant for gory violence and a gorgeous love interest once considered out of his league.

Foley acknowledges that many of the similarities between him and his protagonist were deliberate, while others were incidental. In any case, the book owes its authenticity to Foley's career in wrestling, where he broke the mold of how a wrestler looked, spoke and behaved.

"If you think of the 10 most influential wrestlers of the late '90s, you'd have nine guys who look like superheroes and one guy who could very well show up to fix your refrigerator, and that guy would be me," said Foley, who with his shaggy mop top, robust belly and trademark flannel shirt looks every bit the suburban dad - until he smiles and exposes his two missing front teeth.

"My strength was the depth of the characters I created in the wrestling world," he added. "I just went from telling stories in a 20-by-30-foot ring to telling stories in a ... book."

Foley grew up in East Setauket, the son of Beverly Foley, a government worker, and Jack Foley, the former athletic director in the Ward Melville School District and an inductee in the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame. Young Mick Foley's first taste of wrestling was in the backyard of his family home. A home video captured him as a teenager diving off his garage roof onto his "opponent" below - an early hint of his willingness to sacrifice his body for spectacle's sake.

When he was in his mid-20s, Foley won over wrestling fans as Cactus Jack, the barbed-wire-wrapped, baseball-bat-wielding madman at the "King of the Death Match." He would later achieve his greatest fame in the character of Mankind, who began as a Hannibal Lecter parody (complete with leather restraint mask) and evolved into a jovial, if sadistic, "good guy" wearing a sock puppet. But it was Foley's intense brawls and equally heart-wrenching speeches that made him something of a wrestling deity.

"His success and his performances are an indication of just how much passion he has for the business," said wrestler Al Snow, a close friend and frequent butt of Foley's jokes. "If you have any question, all you have to do is watch a tape or listen to one of his interviews."

Foley retired from active competition in March 2000 (dozens of injuries had slowed him), and remained in the then-World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) for more than a year in a non-wrestling role as "commissioner."

But the literary bug had already bitten him in 1999, when he released his autobiography, "Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks," which sold 754,000 copies and for 26 weeks captured the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. He followed up two years later with "Foley Is Good," a sequel of sorts that also made it to the Times' No. 1 spot. It was loaded with the same candid insights and humor about the pro wrestling industry that made the first book such a success - and launched a genre of pro wrestling biographies.

"I think, even when considering all the wild things I did inside the wrestling world, that sitting down to write the autobiography by myself was one of the most courageous things I've ever done," Foley said. "It takes an enormous amount of courage to venture out of your comfort zone, which writing a book certainly was for me." The two books, and two children's books ("Mick Foley's Halloween Hijinx" and "Mick Foley's Christmas Chaos") penned in 2000 and 2001 by the first-ballot Hall of Fame wrestler, were published in-house by WWE.

The more Foley delved into the life of an author, the more he realized there was something else he could be as passionate about as he was pro wrestling. "Have a Nice Day," he said, "gave my career a sense of closure. It actually made leaving a much easier decision."

In 2001 he left behind a world that had become as much a part of who he was as the barbed wire scars and burn marks that cover his arms, and turned toward a more comforting atmosphere - his family.

His wife, Colette, a former fashion model, and four young children, Dewey, Noelle, Michael and Hugh, keep him grounded, he said. "As soon as I got home from Madison Square Garden, my wife told me to take out the garbage and clean the kitchen," Foley said. "I went to bed laying down and I said, 'Three hours ago, 20,000 people were chanting my name, and now I'm taking out the garbage and feeding the guinea pig.'"

In a small apartment above the garage of his Saint James home, Foley wrote his first novel longhand in seven spiral notebooks. He sat on a folding chair taken from a Worcester, Mass., arena the night he won his first world championship.

The barren room may be the only one in his home not littered with toy cars and action figures - but like the rest of his home, it is conspicuously clear of wrestling memorabilia. When a news photographer asks him to pose with something wrestling-related, Foley is coy. His wife suggests the gym, where wrestling posters and other artifacts hang on the walls. "I don't want it to be all about wrestling," he tells her.

But Foley knows it is, in large part, "about wrestling" and in Victoria Wilson he found an editor who appreciated the unique experiences he brought to the table from his parallel life. "I'd never heard of him, so I really never had any preconceived notions of him," said Wilson, who shepherded "Tietam Brown." "He has a voice, a sensibility... He's a fabulous storyteller."

Others were more skeptical. Foley admits it was a "hard sell" convincing publishers that a pro wrestler was cut out to be a novelist, regardless of the success of his other books. "I always thought that wrestling was very legitimate, and I was always proud of it," he said. "The truth is the closer I got to publication, I became prouder of my roots."

And so in June, Foley returned to a WWE ring for the first time in nearly two years to referee a match held inside his home away from home - a "Hell in a Cell" steel cage. Of course, he also returned to promote his book.

The response from fans was overwhelming, and he hopes for a similar buzz when he signs his new book at the Barnes and Noble in Huntington Station on Aug. 14. "I think wrestling fans can prevent it from being a failure, but I think it will take some support from the general public to really make it a success."

Foley hopes to make regular appearances on WWE television in the future and said he is even open to returning for another match or two. But he is adamant that Mick Foley, the author, is here to stay. He has already completed the manuscript for his second novel, "Scooter," which is set partially on Long Island.

The crowds at his book signings are smaller than they were at at the peak of Mankind's popularity, but Foley said he is just as fulfilled. "I don't feel like I'm dependent on people chanting my name to make me feel like I'm important."

That may be true, but he still enjoys the spectacle of it all. Minutes after his televised tribute ceremony concluded last month, fans watched two villainous wrestlers crush the very display box he was just awarded against his skull and throw him down a flight of steps.

"Everything hurts a lot more when you're not used to it," he said later.

The stitches have not yet fallen out.