You Gotta Have Balls Read online

  “Thurman! Thurman! Thurman!” I kept screaming. “What's up Thurman! Thurmaaaan!”

  But he didn't even glance at me.

  After the game, I sulked back to the Sheraton, disappointed I hadn't gotten anyone's attention. When I got back to the hotel, I waited in the lobby a bit, hoping I'd catch the team coming back from the ballpark. But I gave up after a little while; no one was coming.

  Then, after I got in the elevator to go up to my room, a giant arm knifed through, preventing the doors from closing at the last second. The doors reopened, and I practically fainted; the arm belonged to Thurman Munson.

  “What do you want from me?” he bellowed. “Why were you yelling my name for two hours straight?”

  Trembling, I explained I was a huge fan of his, and that I really only wanted his autograph. He laughed, and happily obliged, signing my program from the game.

  Several years later, in 1979, when Thurman died in a plane crash at 32, I know I wasn't the only Yankee fan crying. But I also felt so grateful to have had that experience with him. He was a great man.

  Chapter 3

  Life, Death, and Soda

  Dewey High School

  “You're going to be like Donald Trump one day,” my mom used to tell me. “You have that same fearless attitude in you.”

  My bond with my mother was rooted in a shared passion for business more than anything else. Most of our conversations were about money—how little we had ourselves, the many ways other people made theirs, what personal qualities made someone successful in business, and why some businesses took off while others failed. That was the language we shared.

  By the time I was a teenager, my mother was certain that one day I'd run a business. I had inherited her nose for it. She wasn't sure what kind of business I'd run—it could have been anything from a shoe store to an airline—but she had no doubt I'd be at the top of it.

  It gave me confidence when she referred to me as the next Donald Trump; it inspired me to work hard, to fulfill her image of me.

  Young people have incredibly malleable minds. Repeat almost anything to them enough, and eventually they'll begin to believe it. This can cut both ways. If you constantly tell a child, “I wish I never had you,” he'll start to believe he's worthless, if for no other reason than your insistence. Encourage him consistently, and he'll believe in himself just as blindly.

  My mother wanted to give me the necessary tools to take our shared entrepreneurial spirit further than she could—so she sent me to John Dewey High School, in Coney Island. Named after psychologist, intellectual, and philosopher John Dewey, it had opened just a couple of years earlier, in 1969, and it was getting a lot of press for being a progressive school. John Dewey was renowned for his work in education and social reform, as well as the books he published on educational theory, in which he endorsed an experience and inquiry-based approach to learning. He emphasized real world skills and social maturity. In other words, Dewey liked to cut through the crap.

  Naturally, Dewey High was based on the man's philosophies. It was experimental. All the classes were pass/fail, under the guise that students would learn more if we weren't busy competing for grades. Foreign language and technology were important subjects, but the school housed robust art and music departments as well, and offered Shakespeare and journalism classes. Among other advances, Dewey was the first New York City high school to offer a marine biology class.

  At first, I was reluctant about going to school there, because Dewey didn't have sports teams—and sports were such a huge part of my life. After all, I was going to play professionally one day! I didn't see how I could have a career in sports if I didn't attend a high school with a sports program. But my mother saw this as a good thing. She wasn't into skills or hobbies that didn't directly lead to earning money; she thought the lack of sports at Dewey would naturally steer me to more practical arenas.

  “Brandon, I know you love basketball,” my mom said, “but you're probably never going to be taller than 5′7″. I don't think the NBA is going to take you.”

  I was sold.

  Playing Your Best Cards

  My mother knew I was never going to be a wildly successful athlete or academic—that my innate intelligence was emotional, not intellectual. She sent me to Dewey to sharpen my natural skills, because she knew this was the most effective way for me to find success in life. My close friend Mariano Rivera would have appreciated her stance. The Yankees closer is fond of saying that people should focus on developing their strengths, as opposed to strengthening their weaknesses.

  That mentality has certainly served him well. Early in his career, coaches used to go over scouting reports with Mo and tell him to avoid throwing his fearsome cutter to certain batters, who excelled at hitting fastballs.

  “What was I going to do?” Mo says. “The cut fastball was my only pitch! I couldn't let that stuff get in my head.”

  Mo didn't want to do something he didn't excel at—like pitching a changeup—to keep him from doing what he did exceptionally well and what he had confidence in: throwing his cutter. He shook off the scouts' advice and stuck to his signature pitch—for his whole career.

  All it got Mo was the all-time regular season and postseason saves records, 5 Relief Man of the Year awards, 12 All-Star appearances, and a World Series and ALCS MVP award—to say nothing of unanimous recognition as the greatest closer in baseball history.

  Not a bad return on a single strength.

  Students at Dewey could join any number of 60 different clubs, which operated on a more professional level than those at other high schools. Since there were no team sports, the school put all of its extracurricular funding into the student groups. Theater, art, dance, debate, cooking, chess, prayer groups—we had it all, and they were first-rate. I knew exactly how much money went to each club, because I was school treasurer in my senior year.

  I had run for student government with my friend, Cliff Savage, in the junior year elections; he ran for vice-president, and I ran for treasurer. We made buttons that said NOTHING COULD BE FINER THAN SAVAGE AND STEINER. And WHAT COULD BE MORE DANDY THAN CLIFF AND BRANDY?

  Unfortunately, Cliff lost his race, but I was elected treasurer. Along with a faculty advisor, I appropriated money to all student groups. In the process I learned even more about empathy—not to mention politics.

  Dewey also offered a co-op program, which some people called a “four and one.” Students would attend school four days a week, and then go to a “regular job” on the other day. It was a very formative program.

  As part of the four and one, during my junior year, I worked in the emergency room of Maimonides Hospital, in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Cliff had chosen to work in the hospital to please his father, who was a renowned ophthalmologist; he begged me to go with him, and I agreed.

  We basically served as orderlies, rotating through different hospital departments and helping the doctors and nurses with whatever was needed—the smaller tasks that tended to slip through the cracks during an average day.

  Our first day, we were assigned to the emergency room. While there, a young girl who was around our age was rushed in on a gurney, hooked up to all sorts of tubes and pumps. Her name was Gina. There was a team of doctors and nurses flying around her, and her father was by her side. Gina was suffering an allergic reaction to penicillin, which the hospital had given her to address something else. As they were treating her in the ER, Gina went into cardiac arrest—right in front of Cliff and me.

  The scene was indescribable. Then her heart stopped beating.

  Cliff and I were given the assignment of bringing Gina's body down to the morgue. Gina's father came down with us, his hand still clutching his daughter's. I'll never forget the elevator ride down with Cliff, and Gina, and her dad. He was crying uncontrollably, repeating her name.

  Despite the fact that it was a harrowing experience, it gave me some perspective. The Steiners weren't the only family that dealt with sickness and death. It was an object le
sson in the expression: “Where there's life, there's hope.”

  The next few months provided Cliff and me countless additional lessons; thankfully, most of them were less stark than that first one. The hospital was its own city; we got to see what went into running it from the inside out. We saw what the doctors and nurses endured in an average day—and in an average week—as opposed to the hour-long slices most of us experience when we go in for appointments. There was no shortage of authentic heroes among the staff. Watching them in action, Cliff and I learned the value of teamwork and trust, and persistence and commitment. The patients taught us about sacrifice and faith.

  I never would have thought to go work in a hospital on my own; I had had more than enough of them on account of my mother. But in the end, I was so glad that I had done it. It usually pays to go outside of your comfort zone, and the further out you go, the bigger the payoff. I couldn't have gotten those experiences anywhere else.

  My First Collectibles

  It was actually a personal injury that led to my first foray into the world of sports collectibles.

  When I was a little kid, soda was sold only in glass bottles. During every shipment, a few bottles per truck usually got jostled around too much and exploded or shattered. The delivery or store men would notice and replace them; these bottles rarely reached anyone's home. But one such bottle that slipped through the cracks ended up in our house.

  One day when I was two years old, I was playing with a Pepsi bottle when it abruptly shattered in my hands. A glass shard flew into my face, ripping through my left eyelid. Blood was everywhere.

  My mother rushed me to the emergency room of Kings County Hospital. The resident who examined me told her that while my eye and my sight were not in danger, the nature of the wound might leave that part of my face with a serious scar.

  “Who would be the best doctor to do the stitches for something like this?” my mom asked him.

  “That would be the chief of plastic surgery,” the doctor answered. “But he's not here right now, so we'll have to call an attending physician.”

  “When will the chief of plastic surgery be back?”

  “He won't be in until tomorrow,” the doctor said. “At least another 12 hours. Maybe longer.”

  Holding a toddler in her lap who was bleeding out of his eye, my mother was faced with a choice. She could have me stitched up, cleaned up, and back home in little time. That was the safe play. But she knew that this scar would be with me my entire life, in a prominent location. She wanted to make sure that the best doctor possible did the stitches.

  “We will wait for the chief surgeon,” she said.

  Just because we were poor didn't mean that we were less worthy of the best medical care. We waited.

  It has faded a lot, but I still have the scar 54 years later: a half-inch streak under my left eye, like the track of a tear. For a long time now, it's been just deep enough to be noticeable in good light, but not enough to alter the look of my face. It doesn't feel as unsightly to me as it did while I was growing up and, with all the history behind it, I've come to appreciate the scar.

  Had we not waited for the chief surgeon, I don't know that it would look so different. But I'm glad my mother had that patience, because there was a lot at stake. It was my face after all!

  “Better to wait three days for a good doctor,” my mother would say, “than see an inexperienced doctor right away.”

  The plastic surgery notwithstanding, the scar was somewhat prominent for most of my childhood, and for a long time, my equilibrium was a little off. My head would always tilt at a slight angle when I walked.

  My mother hired a lawyer and filed a lawsuit against Pepsi. The case dragged on for years. It went on so long, in fact, that a settlement wasn't reached until I was in high school. By that time, the case had wound up in the hands of a lawyer named Sid Loberfeld, who also happened to represent several professional athletes, including a few New York Mets. Sid got us a settlement of about $5,600, $4,000 of which was placed in a savings account for me.

  A couple of years later—in between my high school graduation and my first year of college at Syracuse—I got into a car accident with a couple of friends in Sussex, New Jersey, where I was working as a camp counselor. I was in the front middle seat, and my head hit the rearview mirror. Amazingly, we were all okay—except that I had reinjured my eye.

  Now I had to deal with the car insurance company. I enlisted Sid, and this time he brokered a settlement of $10,000. Again, the money was put into my savings account. As a bonus, Sid gave me some sports memorabilia he had picked up from dealing with his athlete clients, including ticket stubs from the 1969 World Series of the “Miracle Mets,” old baseball programs, and a baseball autographed by a major leaguer whose name I unfortunately can't recall.

  At the time, I had no way of knowing that years later, that insurance settlement, and the settlement from Pepsi, would play key roles in my fledgling business.

  Syracuse

  My father graduated from the Bronx High School of Science at 16, earning a scholarship to Columbia in the process. But he still needed money for room and board, so he had to work full time while attending school. He kept it up for two years, until he developed pneumonia, after which he started having epileptic seizures. The doctors told his family that my father's body couldn't take the stress it was under; he had to either quit school or quit working to maintain his health. His mother refused to aid him financially; he was forced to quit Columbia, and his life began a steady descent. My mother had briefly attended Hunter College, but never made it through.

  My brother Cary was the intellect of the family. He was a writer and a poet, with exceptional SAT scores. But he was a renegade; he didn't care about high school and struggled to achieve a 65 average. So Cary's college prospects were bleak. He went to the State University of New York at Geneseo for a year and a half before dropping out.

  Even though I was only an average student at Dewey, it became apparent that I was the best hope to be the family's first college graduate. My mother was determined to see that through.

  When it came time to look at schools, my friend David Badar and I decided we would take a road trip to visit three—Utica, Syracuse, and Ithaca. Nowadays kids visit any number of colleges. Back then, it was common to apply to state schools and only go on one trip to visit them.

  David and I left at midnight one Friday night, so we would arrive at our destination early Saturday morning—saving money on a hotel. Utica was the first stop. We got there at four o'clock in the morning, and took a little nap. When we woke up around six o'clock, it had snowed so much that our car was buried up to the windows. We dug ourselves out, and drove to a gas station, where we changed and “spruced up” a little in the bathroom. Then we drove to the campus. The roads were practically impossible to navigate. The campus itself was almost invisible—completely buried in snow. Utica was a very small town. It wasn't for me.

  Our next stop was Syracuse. I knew as soon as I set foot on the campus that it was the one. There was a thick blanket of snow there too, but all the buildings and walkways were perfectly plowed; the place seemed to thrive in the inclement weather. There was so much going on; it was like a self-contained city. I felt right at home.

  As we walked around, I kept thinking, “This is unbelievable.”

  I had an entrance interview scheduled at Syracuse that day. As I went into it, I thought, “I don't want this to be the last time I see this place.”

  Then I had the interview of my life.

  “I don't have any money,” I told the admissions counselor. “My SAT scores are kind of low, and my grades are pass/fail. But I've been working full time since I started high school. I've contributed to every student club I could fit in my schedule. I've been involved with so many activities I can barely remember them all. If you give me this opportunity, I promise you I will use every inch of this school. You will never regret letting me in.”

  As I said that, I also said a s
ilent prayer that the counselor would not look further into my SAT score. I got a 760—combined math and reading comprehension. It was important that she took my word that the score was “kind of low,” as opposed to discovering for herself that it was “worrisome.”

  I felt that I had made a strong impression on the counselor; she really took a liking to me. She asked me question after question about my life, family, and experiences. I could tell she wasn't going to take my application and just put it in a pile; she'd go to bat for me.

  This was the first time I came to understand how important it is to make an impression on someone, instead of simply impressing them in the moment. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

  When you impress someone, they admire and respect you, but that might be the extent of their feelings. Imagine a well-dressed man walking into a business meeting; his style and confidence may impress the people there. But will they think about him while they're eating dinner or at work the next day?

  On the other hand, you leave a mark on someone when you make an impression. You facilitate a mutual emotional investment. Picture the aforementioned well-dressed man complimenting someone in the room on his work or even appearance. That's something he'll remember later on.

  I realized early on that making an impression is a combination of impressing someone and asking them What Else?, offering them that little extra something that no one else will bring to the table. That's what I did with the Syracuse admissions counselor.

  And I got in—to all three schools, in fact.

  Of course, once I got into the three, I had to apply to more. I was on a roll. The deadlines hadn't passed, and I was playing with house money. I had a student aid waiver, so I didn't have to pay any of the application fees.