“When you'd get home, your dad would kick you worse,” he says. In fact, the old man was one of the problems that DeBartolo had with appearing at the Pavilion. is tough now, you should have seen him when Eddie Jr. D, "You should have gotten out of the way.” D, I think I caught that punch,” Policy said afterward. In fact, one overhand right from the old man hit Policy in the ear. jumped in, too, and the DeBartolos both got in some decent shots. At the Fonderlac Country Club in Youngstown a few years back, Policy says, DeBartolo tried to calm down two rowdy drunks and found himself in a brawl. After the man was helped away, Niner general manager Carmen Policy dragged a potted plant over to cover the damage. At a San Francisco hotel on the day of the Dallas game in December 1985, a belligerent Cowboy fan grabbed DeBartolo by the wristwatch and DeBartolo punched him so hard that the man skidded across the marble floor and made a hole in the drywall. “If you knock Eddie down, you better be there to knock him down again, because he'll never stop coming at you.”ĭeBartolo's temper is still as quick as his fists. “I'll tell you one thing,” says his friend Bill Lopatta, vice-president of a Youngstown foundry. Eddie was a popular entry on the Pavilion cards because even when he lost, he got in his licks. "Whenever you'd see a crowd start gathering, you'd go over and, sure enough, there was Eddie and somebody getting ready to fight." Most of the fights at Cardinal Mooney High School in Youngstown were rescheduled for later that day at the Pavilion, an old band shelter nobody used except to prove his manhood. “Eddie was feisty,” says childhood chum Tim Porter. For a little guy, he could sure carry a big chip. He was athletic but too small to make the football or basketball team. Not only was he little, but he was the only son of the richest, most powerful man in town.
DeBartolo Corp., “he'd play till he's 45.”Įver since DeBartolo was old enough to fight, he had plenty reason. “If Joe Montana had the boss's legs,” says Bill Moses, a senior VP in the Edward J. Eddie's chest is thick, his legs monstrous. When you are 5' 7", your height cannot impress, but your chest size can. If he's on the road, he will have all the machines waiting for him in his hotel room, damn the cost. He'll ride and read for 90 minutes without stopping, then hit the rowing machine, then the stair-climber. It's four in the morning and DeBartolo is already whirring away on the exercise bike. Says Simpson, "Eddie is a hard guy not to like." Yet when Simpson was going through a divorce in 1980 and was about to lose his house, DeBartolo lent him the money to keep the place. Simpson became a Niner in 1978 via the Lawrence Welk trade-San Francisco gave up "a one and a two and a three," not to mention a four and a five-he didn't do much for the team on the field, gaining only 1,053 yards over two injury-plagued seasons. "And that's just two of dozens of people the boss helps," says Kathy Keklak, secretary to DeBartolo, sifting through a file of answered prayers. He sends money and gifts to sick children such as one boy with cancer in Sacramento and another in Youngstown.
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Priests eat free at Paonessa's in Youngstown.ĭeBartolo has a nice command of the English language except for one word: no. "There's a lot of traffic on that road," he said. When the Niners moved their offices from Redwood City, Calif., to Santa Clara, he bought a train pass for each secretary with a long commute and had each of them picked up at the Santa Clara station and driven to the office, even though the walk is less than four blocks.
He worries about 4'10" secretaries, too, and even men of the cloth. DeBartolo doesn't fuss only over large, sweaty athletes and their dates.
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