Table of Contents
Praise for The Miracle of St. Anthony:
Part Bad News Bears, part Hoosiers, and absolute entertainment for anyone who cares about kids, basketball, education and any combination thereof.Gregg Doyel, CBS Sportsline.com
After more than eight hundred wins and in excess of one hundred players placed in four-year colleges, Bob Hurley may have thought hed seen it all. But then St. Anthonys tough-love coaching legend encounters a group of players he regards as the most clueless and unmotivated bunch hes dealt with in thirty years of winning state and national titles. Bob Hurley deserves a great basketball writer to tell this story and he has one in Adrian Wojnarowski.
Bob Ryan, Boston Globe columnist and panelist for ESPNs The Sports Reporters
Hurleys calling was always to do for St. Anthony what Coach Carter, Ken Carter, did for his Richmond, California, team, a truth laid out poetically in Adrian Wojnarowskis book, The Miracle of St. Anthony.Ian OConnor, USA Today
Wojnarowski... has matched Feinsteins effort with The Miracle of St. Anthony.... It reads like a novel, with the players characters so fully developed that you felt personally connected.
Joe Sullivan, The Boston Globe
Through the eyes and words of players, coaches, and nuns, Wojnarowski tells their story in a kind and compelling manner. But Miracle is more than a hoops history lesson; Wojnarowski also chronicles the devotion and motivation of Hurley and the sometimes harrowing life experiences of the young men he is trying to reach and teach.
Steven Goode, The Hartford Courant
Wojnarowski provides a powerful, poetic look at an old-school disciplinarian. He makes it clear Hurleys mission isnt so much to win games as it is to change lives, to take boys from difficult urban backgrounds and turn them into men.
Jerry Sullivan, The Buffalo News
An honest, sometimes startling peek into the workings of the most storied high school hoops program in the country.... Basketball junkies will love the book.
Jerry Carino, Courier News (Bridgewater, NJ)
In [Wojnarowskis] words, the entire tale becomes a melding of Hoosiers and Hoop Dreams.... St. Anthonys is a story of passion and dedication and drama told well and true here.
Mike Sielski, Calkins Newspapers
[An] enormously readable take on one of the games great teachers.... Wojnarowski has captured the Hurley life, one that along with producing winning basketball teams and successful kids also saves St. Anthony from closure and, some would say, saves a way of life in Jersey City.
Cormac Gordon, Staten Island Advance
Like a good point guard who sees the entire floorlike a Bobby Hurley, for instance[Wojnarowski] sees the totality of an incredible story, and he makes us care.
Gordie Jones, Morning Call (Allentown, PA)
Remarkable... A tale that will inspire anyone who is responsible for the lives of young people.
Simon Crowe, Greenville News
A story of determination, perseverance, and dignity... Wojnarowski brings readers a story of a basketball coach that is a hero, a school that means so much to many, and a basketball team that is on the brink of destruction.
Felix Chavez, Las Cruces Sun-News
For my parents, Edward and Lillian Wojnarowski, whose sacrifices for Bryan, Brenda, and me taught us the value of family.
For Amy, the love of my life.
For Annie and Ben, who make it all worthwhile.
We were in Vegas at the AAU event last summer, recruiting some kids on a South Dakota team. They come in, all white kids, beautiful uniforms, four coaches, parents in tow, running all kinds of offenses and defenses. So, I told my assistants, Now, watch this. See this team here? Eight black kids from Jersey City. Shitty uniforms, no parents, not even a coach. Just a chaperone somewhere there.
So, I tell my assistants, Watch these Jersey City kids kick the shit out of that team.
Theyre like, Why? Whats special about them?
I told them, They will not say a word to the refs. They will not say a word to the other kids. Theyll get on each others backs for not taking the charge, not closing out, not stopping penetration.
So the game starts, and they were huddling at the free-throw line, one or two kids were yelling about not closing on penetration. Theyre coaching themselves.
My assistants finally said to me, Holy shit, these kids play like theyre possessed, like theyre freaking animals. Who are they?
I said, Well, theyre Bob Hurleys kids.
Pat Kennedy, former Florida State and DePaul coach,
currently at Towson University
To some extent, were all 24/7 with basketball, but Bob takes it to a level Ive never really seen anywhere in the game. I mean, this guy takes his vacations to go coach basketball. Good luck finding any of us doing that in college. Ive never seen anyone, on any level, more dedicated than him.Jim Boeheim, Syracuse University,
2003 national championship coach
Everybody knows that Bob Hurley is the total package. The presence, the organization, the style of play, hes one of the great teachers in the game. He captivates people when hes talking. What hes done at St. Anthonywith no gymnasium, no fundingthe success speaks for itself. Its staggering.Hubie Brown,
2003-2004 NBA Coach of the Year
I think that Bob Hurley teaches the game of basketball better than anybody in the country. In the purest sense, a coach is a teacher. And hes the best Ive ever been around.
Phil Martelli, St. Josephs University,
2003-2004 NCAA Coach of the Year
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 Hurleys best friend, big and strong and smart, representing promisethe 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 wouldnt 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. Pauls Parish to the No. 30 School to Audubon Park. Afterward, they would drop a quarter on the counter of Irvs 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.
