Saint Mick: My Journey From Hardcore Legend to Santa's Jolly Elf

By Mick Foley

From beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author and WWE Hall-of-Famer Mick Foley comes a Yuletide tale like no other. After a lifetime of putting his body on the line to entertain his dozens (and dozens!) of fans, the Hardcore Legend is paying the price – physically and emotionally. When the final bell on Mick's career tolls, not in the ring, but in a neurologist's office, his future seems far from merry and bright. Until Mick is given the chance to become Santa Claus – not dress up, not pretend, but become Santa – allowing him to rediscover the joy of performing.

Fully committing to his new mission, Mick details the drastic measures he takes to keep the Christmas magic alive for his young children, as well as the many children he meets in his travels who are in need of some Christmas Spirit. In order to fully embrace his new red-suited responsibilities, Mick enters the fascinating world of the Santa subculture, where he hones his Christmas craft while worrying he’ll be excommunicated from the Santa world for, among other things, his Santa character being run over by a motor vehicle on Christmas Eve on WWE television. And with the help of an unlikely elf – 8-time Grammy award winner Norah Jones – Mick learns valuable lessons about the real power and responsibility of wearing the red suit. Because true success as Santa comes not by appearing in front of millions on TV, but by touching peoples' lives by creating "Santa moments" for both the young and the young at heart.

Part jolly memoir, part whimsical ode to a lifetime love affair with Christmas, part solemn tribute to the power of finding the best part of oneself in the unlikeliest of places, Saint Mick offers the magic of Christmas on every single page.

With a foreword by Stephanie McMahon, and featuring never-before-seen photos of the whole Foley family!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Polis Books
• Release date: Oct 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781943818815

Mick Foley

Mick Foley grew up on Long Island, New York. He is the author of the number one New York Times bestsellers: Foley Is Good: And the Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling and Have a Nice Day!: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks. He is also the author of two other children's books, Halloween Hijinx and Christmas Chaos. Foley wrestled professionally for over fifteen years and was the three-time World Wrestling Entertainment Champion. Foley lives with his wife and four children on Long Island.

Book preview

WALKING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND

The Foley children had grown up with a love for Christmas instilled in them (some would say forced on them) since infancy. Like most people, I loved the holiday season, but I wouldn’t say this seasonal fling became a full-time, year-round love affair until 1996, when I brought my wife Colette and my two older kids, Dewey and Noelle (the only kids I had at the time) on a WWE swing through Maine, where they saw dad do battle with The Undertaker in shows in Portland and Bangor. It was in Bangor, with novelist Stephen king rumored to be in the crowd, that Stone Cold Steve Austin (who had only weeks earlier delivered the ‘Austin 3:16’ promo that helped skyrocket his career) spotted Dewey, 5 at the time, holding his little ears to block out the cacophony of noise of 3,000 strong stomping on wooden bleachers.

Doggone, son, Steve said to me. Has he been holding his ears the entire show?

Every match except yours, Steve, I told the Texas Rattlesnake. During yours, he held his nose.

Steve let out a hearty laugh—it’s a line he still remembers to this day.

Joking around with the guys and having some laughs is a great way to ease the tension of the road. But the rigors of travel often kept me away from my family for weeks at a time, and I worked a very physical style in this strange combination of sports and entertainment. As a result, I was usually sore and quite often lonely, even while attaining greater success than anyone could have ever predicted for me when I broke into professional wrestling at age 19 in 1985.

But a road trip I took following the Bangor show, a few hours west through winding mountain roads, brought me to Jefferson, New Hampshire, and an instantaneous return to the innocence of my childhood. For me, this visit to Santa’s Village was both a return to my past—a place my parents brought me when I was three and four years old, in 1968 and 1969—and a glimpse into my future.

My parents tell me it was beautiful, but not extravagant by any means in the late 60s. A new train, the Jingle-bell Junction that circled the park, was the pride and joy of Santa’s Village founder Normand Dubois, who, according to my father, took a ride with the Foleys around the park in 1969. By 1996, Santa’s Village had grown considerably, and featured Rudy’s Rapid Transit roller coaster, the Skyway Sleigh monorail, and the Yule Log among its top rides. But Santa’s Village always was, and continues to be, about more than rides; it’s about taking families on a wonderful journey—a journey where the scenery is so beautiful, so perfect, the attention to detail so exquisite, that children in that magic age can absolutely believe they are playing at Santa’s summer home. And even those falling outside the magic age can willingly suspend disbelief and feel the spirit of Christmas peeling back the layers of pessimism and cynicism to reveal the tender heart of childhood.

That return to Santa’s Village in 1996 was the soothing balm for the pains, both physical and mental, that the travel and in-ring roughhousing had inflicted on me. Soon enough we were counting down our next visit in months, then weeks, then days. My old buddy Al Snow can still recall a conversation he had with my daughter Noelle, only three at the time, about the trip we had planned for later that summer.

Noelle, where are you going to go in three months, Al asked.

My daughter was a little shy, and it took her a few seconds to summon the courage to talk to a legendary ring warrior like Al Snow. But after several seconds of silence, the little one came back with a definitive answer: Santa Viwwage!

To this day, my wife and I don’t completely agree as to why we decided to have two more children after my retirement from full-time wrestling in 2000. She claims that Santa’s Village was never a factor in the decision to have our two youngest: Mickey, in 2001, and Hugh, in 2003. Well, maybe not in her mind, because I probably dared not give voice to such a ridiculous idea. I, however, vividly recall the panic I was feeling upon realizing that Dewey and Noelle were leaving that magic age...and therefore leaving Santa’s Village, and that the only logical solution to this cataclysmic Christmas catastrophe was to have more children.

And so it came to pass that after an absence of eight years, the old bear (a nickname I bestowed upon myself in 2013 for no particular reason) was called in from the birthing bullpen to conceive two more little ones, and buy Dad an indefinite number of extra years at Santa’s Village. Nice! As of the publication of this book, we have an uninterrupted visitation streak of 22 years!

My wife and I realized that our third child, Mickey, was a little bit different from a fairly early age. At Hershey Park in 2004, Mickey was more than content to gallup back and forth, making a noise like he a big truck, splashing in puddles for the longest time. He showed absolutely no interest in the world-class attractions stretching out before him. I turned to Colette and said, He’s a peculiar little guy, isn’t he?

Colette was so relieved that I had shared the thought that had been on her mind for quite some time. He certainly was a peculiar little guy, but that peculiarity has helped make me a better father, a better person, and has helped me better appreciate the little things in life—and at Santa’s Village. When Dewey and Noelle were younger, we would compile lists of the rides we had gone on and how many times on each. It was not uncommon to rack up 30 or even 40 rides during the course of a single visit—with six rides on Rudy’s Rapid Transit Coaster, five on Santa’s Red Hot Racers, and seven or more...sometimes much more…on the Yule Log.

But as Mickey turned 3, then 4, and even 5, my excited paternal outburst of what ride do you want to do, was almost always met with the same answer in the same delivery style, the same pause, intonation and adorable facial expression: Mmm, I’d like to ride...choo-choo train.

So we would start out as a family on the choo-choo train—a very pleasant ride around the park—and wave to those lucky rascals at the Sugar and Spice kitchen, where the best gingerbread cookies of all-time are baked and served. That pleasant ride would be followed up with the question, What do you want to ride next? The answer? Mmm, I’d like to ride...choo-choo train.

The older kids would bail and go off on their own to enjoy their newfound independence in the beautiful park, and Colette would take little Hughie off in the stroller for a little Ferris wheel riding and a little bit too much shopping, while dad learned how not to sweat the small stuff, courtesy of my peculiar a little guy and the beauty of watching life go by from a seat on-board the Jinglebell Junction.

I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Up until the Christmas of 2011, the Foley family had written just a few brief sentences of Yuletide woe in an otherwise stellar volume of festive family fun. There had been that cap that exploded off of a frozen soda bottle that hit Colette in the eye, temporarily blinding her in 1993, just 10 days after giving birth to Noelle. But she shrugged that off after a brief emergency room visit and was good as new a few hours later. There was that time Mickey refused to allow Santa Claus in the house, so the big guy simply left a couple bags of his finest toys at the front door, making his job considerably easier that evening! Lastly, the time when young Hugh Foley, probably four at the time, let out a bloodcurdling cry just a few minutes after being tucked into bed, the type of cry usually reserved for losing a body part, or the sight of my January American Express bill. But the high-pitched, panicked shriek of unadulterated desperation was especially concerning coming from the littlest Foley, especially on a joyous occasion like Christmas Eve. Hughie, it turned out, had been working on a loose tooth, and while other children his age were listening for the sounds of Kris Kringle’s jingle bells in the distance, our guy was extracting a molar for extra holiday cash.

Hugh suddenly realized that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy could conceivably end up in the same place at the same time, in some type of mythical show down. I simply told the little guy that Santa and the Tooth Fairy were friends (as movies The Santa Claus 2 and Rise of the Guardians would later prove) and that through the centuries, given statistical likelihoods, they had dealt with this type of situation hundreds, if not thousands of times.

But by December 2011, real problems had worked their way into our lives, threatening to dilute the magic of Christmas, which had given us all so much joy. My father had passed away in 2009, leaving a gap that had yet to be filled, and still hasn’t. I can still remember Decembers in the house where I grew up: my dad with his stack of classic Christmas albums that he played all day long. The soothing sounds of Nat King Cole, Perry Cuomo, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams and many more on our well-worn turntable. The cracking and popping of the needle as it navigated the worn vinyl was every bit as rewarding as the songs themselves.

A year later, we were off to Florida as a way of scaling back, putting our Long Island home on the market and banking our hopes on the low cost of living in the sunshine State. If I could go back in time and change one thing about my life, it would be to stay in that beautiful old pain-in-the-neck house in St. James, New York for as long as possible. I’d be willing to cut back on any or every other aspect of our lives in order to ensure that our youngest children had some type of regularity, something they could count on in their ever-changing world.

It turned out that Mickey was not merely a peculiar little guy, but a little guy with developmental delays who needed special attention in school and normalcy in his life. He would not be diagnosed with autism until 2012, at the age of 11, but in retrospect the signs were there much earlier. We had just refused to acknowledge them. Had Mickey’s autism been diagnosed earlier, and had I realized just how vital regularity was to his life, I could have taken the proper steps to ensure his path to learning was free of the obstacles my own ambition kept throwing in his path. I still think back to the day I finished cleaning the house out, and Mickey and I got ready to leave.

When are we coming back, Dad? he said, so innocently.

Um, we’re not coming back, buddy, I said, as gently as possible.

Ever? he asked.

I don’t think so.

Mickey lay down on the floor and cried uncontrollably, grieving over the loss of our house as if it was the loss of a loved one. Which to him, and to all of us, it was.

At the time, I thought it was part of growing up that he would have to accept, that my days of making the type of living that had allowed us to live in such a beautiful home were coming to an end. We had to act proactively in order to escape the huge overhead that a large house on five acres, in constant need of repair, improvement, landscaping, snowplowing, and constant upkeep required. With the house still on the market in December, the family returned to celebrate Christmas—our last celebration in the only home my younger kids have ever loved.

The home was largely unfurnished, with the exception of a few beds and the Christmas room. No matter what else had happened, at least we had our Christmas room! One of our long-term WWE cameraman, Stu, told me that he had recently asked my daughter Noelle if growing up with a year-round Christmas room had seemed strange.

What did she say? I asked him.

Stu looked at me and smiled. She just said ‘it was wonderful.

Indeed it was. The room that was intended at first for my sole use, my place to get away from everything, quickly became the room the Foley family gathered in most often. In 2010, we assembled for one final Christmas in our sparsely furnished home. If only I could turn back the hands of time, I’d take that old house off the market, learn to cut back in whatever ways we needed to, in order to maintain a sense of normalcy in my childrens’ hectic lives.

When I purchased that house in August of 2000, I was WWE commissioner, a position I believed I would hold for many years to come. My feeling was that a home on Long Island would be geographically beneficial for my long-term role with the company. Much of my work as WWE Commissioner involved official duties at the WWE sight-based entertainment complex in Times Square. When I lived in the Florida Panhandle, due to scheduling at the Pensacola airport, an appearance in New York meant being away from home for 36 hours. By moving to Long Island, only minutes from where I’d grown up, I cut that 36 hour absence down to five hours.

Four months later, I took some time off to be home for the birth of Mickey—and never really returned to the role of commissioner. At the time, it certainly seemed like I had valid reasons for not returning. Primary among these was the importance of honoring my February 2000 retirement after a dramatic Hell in a Cell match with Triple H in Hartford, Connecticut... only to come out of retirement six week later to retire again for good at WrestleMania.

Honoring that stipulation was important enough to me that I was willing to give up my job as commissioner—lest I make a mockery out of my own retirement. The scene for a return to my Commissioner role would likely have been dramatic, and well-received, leading to a huge match with Vince McMahon at WrestleMania XVII in 2001 for on-air control of the company. But I let it all slip away: the big WrestleMania payoff, the job as Commissioner, even some of the faith Mr. McMahon had in me. All because of my heartfelt belief that I was completely and officially finished as an in-ring performer.

Fast forward nine years to 2010, when my prior fears came to fruition. I had indeed made a mockery out of my retirement stipulation. I had originally signed a contract with the upstart Total Nonstop Action promotion that initially called for only three matches a year, with no added physicality. Yet this somehow resulted in wrestling far more than I ever intended. One realization that took far longer than it should have, was that physically, I was just not the man I used to be. Sadly, It was taking less and less to hurt me worse and worse, for longer and longer periods of time—until, finally, the man who used to be able to take almost anything could no longer take much of anything at all.

WHERE ARE YOU CHRISTMAS?

During my 15-year full-time career from 1985-2000, I suffered 8 documented concussions. It was, in fact, fear about these head injuries that led to my initial retirement in 2000—a fear that I had conveniently forgotten about when I returned to the ring in 2004, at which point the head injuries started arriving with more frequency. Concussions just seemed to be part of life—something I accepted as an inevitable inconvenience for living the life I’d chosen. It was part of the cost of tearing down the house with Randy Orton at Backlash in 2004; throwing up in the parking lot of Tim Hortons following the match seemed almost like a badge of honor. A few weeks later, I had arrived in Tokyo barely able to walk, but surely able to take punishment from legendary striker Toshiaki Kawada, whose high impact kicks saw me spending much of the night on my knees in front of the toilet bowl—praying to the porcelain god—a seemingly small price to pay for the handsome fee I’d been awarded. At Wrestlemania 22 in 2006, Edge and I had a hardcore classic, possibly the match of the night, and I bathed in the glow of adulation at the post Wrestlemania party, even though I was too queasy to hold down any food. I simply went upstairs, vomited, brushed my teeth and returned to the party. Every man, after all, has a price—and I paid that price willingly, of my own volition, never telling anyone about these consequences of my actions.

But by 2010 and 2011, I’d come to feel tired, lethargic, easily agitated and extremely sensitive to even the slightest criticism. The world took on a muted feel, as if I was viewing and hearing everything around me from underwater, a phenomenon consistent with the symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a new name for the old scourge of post-concussion syndrome.

There were two bright spot in an otherwise cloudy time period. I had begun working on material for a one-man-show of sorts, and was finding my way around the comedy world with the help of 30