Michael Vick appearance at Butler sports card store draws activists ire

THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Staff  Writer

If throngs of animal rights activists line up outside of Main Street's Butler Sport Cards doors to protest Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick's autograph signing on June 19, store owner Jeff Robbins said he'll be ready for it.

Armed security guards will be on site, and the ButlerPolice Department has been made aware of the potential for problems that might stem from the controversial football player's appearance; already, opponents have created Facebook groups that are trying to "spread the word" about the signing and attempt to gather protesters.



Vick, who is among the NFL's elite quarterbacks, accepted a plea deal in 2007 in relation to running a dog fighting ring that put him in jail for just over 18 months.

Since his release in 2009, the quarterback has clawed his way off of the bench and back to prominence, and is now the Eagles' leader and franchise player. Some fans say that between the prison sentence and his restart at the bottom, he's paid his debt to society.

To others, specifically dog owners or animal rights activists, Vick's debt will never be repaid.

"Michael Vick has a lot of audacity to show up in the good state of New Jersey to make more money than he already has at an autograph signing!" cries the Facebook page "Sick Vick the Dog Abuser Coming toButler NJ." "If you have waited for your chance to let Michael Vick know what you think, this will be your opportunity to have your voice heard!"

About 50 people have replied that they'll be "attending" the protest.

To Robbins, however, it's just business, even if he thinks what Vick did was wrong.

"He's the most desired autograph in all of sports...and Michael Vick has fans, period," he said.

Robbins said that he respects the right of the people to protest, and agrees with them that what Vick did was "100 percent wrong," but he's got the right to have Vick come to his store and sign autographs.

"This is what I do for a living, this is how I pay my bills and support my family," he said. "Whether it's Vick, or Eli Manning, or any other player in any sport, what they do in their personal life is what they do in their personal life. It's not my concern, and if a player is desired...that's what I'm paid to do."

Robbins said that he's done numerous signings with Vick already, and that to him, it's clear that the 30-year-old star has matured far past what he was.

"In my eyes, he's a different person. He never used to want to be bothered, but now he'll stand there and take pictures with his fans, talk with his fans...he's not doing the wrong things that he used to do," he said.

Robbins, who is a season-ticket holder and diehard New York Giants fan, has already had Mario Manningham in for an autograph session, and plans on having Giants running back Danny Ware in store on June 3.

However, he has to pertain to the fan base, and there are a lot of Eagles fans. He expects around 200 people to come in on that Sunday afternoon for autographs on helmets, photos, and jerseys. Tickets for the event start at $90.

There will always be people who hate Vick for what he did, and that's fine, Robbins said. He even applauded the animal rights activists for caring as deeply as they do about their cause, but he is worried that someone might take things too far, especially when attempting to interrupt the signing.



"(The protestors) think they're going to block the entrance to my store, and stand on the sidewalk... theButler Police have said that cannot and will not happen," he said.

He's heard enough of it from the countless phone calls he's been getting at his business, on his cell phone, and at home-but there's "not one chance in hell" that he's going to cancel the appearance.

"I have people mailing things in from California to be signed...I'm here to make my customers happy, not to argue with protestors," he said.

Robbins said that it's also likely that he's going to donate 5 percent of the total made from the session to charity, although he isn't sure which one yet. It may end up being an animal rights group.

"These people will never forgive Michael Vick, and that's their opinion," he said. "In my eyes, he changed, and everybody deserves a second chance."

Whether local animal rights activists will look at it the same way remains to be seen.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Young fighter's quest for a lasting legacy

By Steve Janoski

In the back of what looks like a typical general fitness gym in Whippany sits an Olympic size boxing ring and a long row of heavy bags that sway and flutter like the ocean breakers over the rippled hardwood floor.


It’s here, among the smell of sweat and old hand wraps, that athletes are put through sweltering torture to the snapping rhythms of punches hitting leather meant to forge them into fighters.

One man here has risen a bit faster than the rest, though, and when Final Round Boxing’s pride and joy gets in the ring and goes to work, the whole gym stops and takes notice.

At 24 years old, he’s a relative newcomer to a sport where most champions train from their first steps, but as soon as he steps through the ring ropes, it becomes undeniable that the kid’s got a natural aptitude for violence; as he shadowboxes, his body hurls around like a gyroscope in a brutal ballet designed to devastate the hardiest of men.

Vinny O’Brien, lean and chiseled with slicked-back black hair, started boxing around three years ago and immediately showed his aptitude in the squared circle: a finalist in the 2008 NJ Golden Gloves tournament, he won the 141 pound title in the same tournament in 2010.

This Friday night, the East Hanover native will return to the Prudential Center in Newark for his third professional fight in the hopes of staying undefeated as he tries to turn a fledgling pro career into something bigger — much bigger.

A bell signals the end of the round, and his trainer, Lou Esa, steps between the ropes himself to work the focus mitts for the young welterweight nicknamed “The Lion.”

In another life, the mammoth 6 foot 6 inch Esa, 59, was a professional heavyweight who fought on Muhammad Ali’s undercards. With blonde hair and a huge smile, he talks with the swaggering confidence of one who’s knocked out 16 men.

He trains O’Brien every day, and calls him a “work in progress” whose maniacal attitude towards training is proving to be his finest asset.

“He’s only had eight amateur fights and two pro fights…but he works every day like it’s his last and I love that about him,” said Esa.

With every session he improves, the trainer says: increased movement, more powerful punches, the development of a left hook that can shake a building.

Pop, pop….pop, pop, bang goes the sweet cadence as combination after combination tear into the pads. Esa shouts encouragement as O’Brien throws a right hand to his chest.

“Yea, you stopped his heart with that one!” he yells.

A step to the side, and another right hand spits out from the furious dynamo, another yell, and I have no envy for his opponent.

“You hit somebody with that and its goodnight Irene!” Esa yells through his goatee.

O’Brien’s style is electrifying— he’s got no problem taking a punch to land one, and when he takes one on the chin, it’s like pulling the cord on a 5 foot 9 inch chainsaw.

He’s also white, which in boxing is nothing but a blessing; if you’re a good fighter, you can be transformed into the next “Great White Hope” overnight. If you happen to be a great fighter, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is— the money is out there.

“You’re in boxing, you could get lucky and make millions…I mean, you could set your kids up for life if you worked hard,” Esa tells me later.

He says that his fighter has a style that will fashion an iron bond between he and his fans reminiscent of the late Arturo Gatti, anotherNew Jerseynative andAtlantic Cityfavorite known for his die-hard following.

Friday’s fight will be broadcast nationally on ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights,” so if there’s any time to create that bond, it’s now.

O’Brien wants it just the same, because if it doesn’t work out in boxing….well, in his words, “It’s gotta work out.”

“There’s no backup plan. This is Plan A, Plan B, Plan C…this is everything,” he says.

It’s not an easy road to choose—littered with empty promises, shattered careers, and the corpses of good men, it’s known as a meat grinder that will use up the weak and lay low the strong.

But Esa knows the siren song of the villainous swine, and says he laid it bare to O’Brien from the first meeting.

“I was there, I been there, I done that,” he says. “I told him, ‘Look, they’re gonna’ offer you the world, and you gotta’ make the decision: it’s either you do it the right way, or we don’t do it,’ and he says, ‘No Lou, I promise I’ll listen.’”

Esa shakes his head as he relates stories about fighters from his generation who are so punch drunk that they can barely talk, or who lost everything on their journey down the rocky road.

“I won’t let that happen to (Vinny),” Esa says, shaking his head.“No matter what.”

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

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Veteran's gravestone finally commemorates black Civil War soldier'sservice

By Steve Janoski

Staff Writer

On a spring day in April 1898, the members of the Bloomingdale Coronet Band gathered in the cemetery of the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains to perform a final tribute to one of their own, a black Civil War veteran who played the kettle drum and was considered something of an honorary member of the local group.


It has been 113 years since that day. But on Saturday, May 7, members of the band visited the gravesite once again, this time to help dedicate a veteran’s headstone that finally commemorates the military service of their musical forbear during the nation’s greatest period of tribulation and internal strife.

The soldier’s name is Charles “Tully” Schuyler, and local officials have searched far and wide to piece together as much information as they can on what was surely an interesting life.

When Schuyler was buried in the last years of the 19th century, Councilman Ed Engelbart said, there was no money to buy him a gravestone. As a result, he lay in an unmarked grave with no one knowing who he was or what he’d lived through until a member of the Pequannock Historic District Commission (HDC) came upon his obituary in an old copy of the Butler Argus.

That member, Dave Wisneski, said he was helping his wife do research on local history for her mas

ter’s degree when he came upon the colorful obituary, which described Schuyler’s love of the band.

Wisneski had an immediate interest in Schuyler’s story. Besides being in the HDC, Wisneski also has been a trombone player in the Coronet Band for the past 22 years, and he did further research into Schuyler’s life, using census records and the website ancestry.com to track backward through the years.

At the same time, Engelbart contacted Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) and asked him for help in procuring information about Schuyler from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as for assistance in securing a veteran’s headstone.

In the past few months, large chunks of the soldier’s past have been filled in through these combined efforts and have painted a picture of the life of a former slave who fought for theUnion.

Schuyler’s life

The HDC issued a pamphlet during the dedication of the veteran’s stone that states that Schuyler is believed to have been born inPassaicCountyin 1833.

Engelbart said that Schuyler appears to have been a slave who was freed;New Jerseywas slow to abolish the practice and didn’t do so officially until 1846.

In 1850, Schuyler was listed in theU.S.census as being one of the “free” residents of the township, and by 1860, he seems to have been living inBerry’s Hotel, which was acrossJackson Avenuefrom Jones Hardware.

Wisneski said that Schuyler lived there along with 15 other people, a mixture of both couples and single individuals. That building burned down during World War I when lightning struck it, and is now the site of the PNC Bank.

In January 1864, as the Union armies in the East were set to begin their most vicious series of battles, Schuyler left his wife, Hannah, and their 2-year-old child Francis at home to enlist with Company K of the First New Jersey, and was assigned the position of “Colored Cook.”

At 30 years old, Schuyler stood at just 5 foot 3 inches tall and was said to have a black complexion and black eyes, Engelbart said.

“Though African-Americans were frequently given low-level jobs, they also could get caught up in combat very, very quickly,” Engelbart said. “And if you were in the Union Army as an African-American, you were putting yourself at tremendous risk.”

Little is known about the particulars of his service, except that he was with the Army of the Potomac while it fought through General Ulysses S. Grant’s “Overland Campaign,” the final, ferocious advance onRichmondintended to pin down Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

It was a bloody time for the army— in the course of two months, from the start of May to the end of June in 1864, the Union Army racked up 55,000 casualties.

Schuyler was nearly among these, as he was listed “missing” at some point during the spring, but no information remains on what was surely a grueling period of being lost in the slaveholding South before he made his way back to the army.

He eventually returned to the army and finished out his tenure, being mustered out with an honorable discharge in June 1865.

Schuyler would have two more children, one in 1867 and another in 1870, and was baptized himself at the First Reformed Church in 1867.

Wisneski said that the 1870 Census recorded Schuyler as living in the Bloomingdale area and working as a “laborer/handyman.”

He was also playing as a drum major in the Bloomingdale Coronet Band, which was founded in 1884, and although he was not an official member per se, records say he was often in rehearsals and in parades as a drummer.

Schuyler was undoubtedly one of the few blacks in the area and likely the only one in the band at that time, but Wisneski said that he figures Schuyler was a local character who band members knew and let join.

“They seem to have liked and respected him,” Wisneski said. “If he wasn’t an official member, he was definitely ‘part of the gang’ so to speak.”

When Schuyler died on April 21, 1898, the band attended his funeral and played “several appropriate selections,” his obituary noted.

A headstone a century in the making

On May 7, several parts of the community came together to mark the dedication of the headstone to Schuyler, from the First Reformed Church to American Legion Post 242 to the HDC to the Bloomingdale Coronet Band themselves.

Englebart said that Frelinghuysen was able to get the process of securing a stone moving and that within three months of Engelbart’s initial calls, the congressman had the stone delivered.

Frelinghuysen also presented a flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol to the church in celebration of its own 275th anniversary this year.

“Everything clicked with this. I couldn’t believe it,” Engelbart said.

About 20 residents turned out to see the dedication on the warm spring afternoon, and comments were made by Master of Ceremonies Lou Hebert of American Legion Post 242 and Engelbart about the significance of the event.

It was important, Engelbart said, to recognize this man who served in the Civil War with a veteran’s stone to acknowledge his existence and to carve out his own piece of the cemetery.

“It was these men who volunteered and joined who saved theUnion,” he said.

Wisneski agreed, saying that without a stone, it feels like Schuyler was completely forgotten.

“He was one case where nobody knew anything about him,” he said.

Wisneski said that he thinks that having about 20 members of the Bloomingdale Coronet Band play the dedication is something that Schuyler himself would have enjoyed.

“I think he’d especially like the fact that it was still there all these years later, that the group’s still there and able to play,” he said.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Destruction of Mosley proves Mayweather-Pacquiao is the only fight left

By Steve Janoski: When Marvin Hagler and John Mugabi fought on March 10, 1986, one man watched the match from ringside, drinking beer where the celebrities sit but still managing to hold an acute sense of interest in the bout’s result.

Hagler won the grand battle in the eleventh with a series of right hands that floored the man they called the “The Beast,” but that one observer saw that something had changed.

Later on at a post-fight party, wrote boxing scribe George Kimball, the man sat alone thinking, until he suddenly turned to actor Michael J. Fox and said, “Know what? I can beat this guy.”

That man was Sugar Ray Leonard, and the world remembers what he would go on to accomplish on one April night just over a year later.

Last night, as Manny Pacquiao utterly dominated the once-great Shane Mosley in a 12 round unanimous decision, another man was assuredly watching the fight with that same acute sense of interest. Maybe, if he was watching closely, he may have said to himself, “Know what? I can beat this guy.”

It wasn’t the career defining performance that some of us thought Pacquiao was going to have, but that’s all right— he’s had enough of those.

It was a near shutout though, a strong performance against one of the sport’s finest boxers— aged though he may be— and the latest in a string of fights that has seen the southpaw from General Santos City take the heart from his larger opponents with the strength of his will and the power of his left hand.

For Mosley, it looked like the last gasp of a crumbling legend, a final embarrassment in a career that should have ended after the Mayweather fight last spring. No fighter of Mosley’s caliber should subject themselves to the mortification of being seen as a tired 39-year-old being chased around the ring by a younger, angrier brawler, unable to pull the trigger and doing little more than desperately avoiding a knockout loss.

The game is over for Mosley, and it’s time to ring the final bell on a career that’s been as fine as any in boxing can be.

On the other end, Pacquiao, though dominant, was far from spectacular last night. Although some of this may be owed to Mosley’s unwillingness to engage, he did not look like that same vicious tornado that destroyed Antonio Margarito.

He was clearly wary of Mosley’s power, and not as willing to take chances in the early rounds against someone who he knew might be as fast as he. It wasn’t until after the false “knockdown” of Pacquiao that Mosley was gifted in the tenth round that the Filipino came out with that enraged, Roberto Duran-esque ill intent that we’ve flash in his eyes so often.

And although his defense has greatly improved, there are still holes in Pacquiao’s game— but he’s so fast that they could only be exploited by a special fighter who is still in his prime. Of course, it just so happens that the only worthwhile fight left for Pacquiao is against a man who fits that description.

The world knows that there is but one scalp left for the savage puncher to claim, and that’s Floyd Mayweather’s. If nothing else, last night proved yet again that a fight between Pacquiao and the counterpuncher-extraordinaire would be the perfect match-up of styles, the perfect match-up of men, to put boxing back in the public eye for at least one glorious night.

It would not only be that career-defining war that Leonard-Hagler became— it would be both men’s Waterloo, the last great stands of two fabled warriors whose epic battle will live forever in our memories.

All the kings of my generation have fought each other…now, it’s time for the gods to settle up.

Article posted Eastsideboxing.com on 09.05.2011



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