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Finally Home: How Pittsburgh Won Over Troy Polamalu
Troy Polamalu’s first trip to Pittsburgh didn’t reveal a city that resembled “hell with the lid taken off,” as James Parton put it in 1868. Still, the California-born safety did not immediately perceive western Pennsylvania to be the kind of place he wanted to stay for long.
“I think I arrived at 11 at night,” Polamalu says, recalling his pre-draft visit in March 2003 to be checked out by the Pittsburgh Steelers. “I get to the Hilton and I call my agent and I [say], ‘I don’t want to play here in Pittsburgh, I already know.’ It was dark, and it was rainy, and it was cold. It just seemed like a miserable Northwestern — Seattle or Oregon — kind of day. [So] I call [my agent] and I tell him, ‘There’s no way I want to come to Pittsburgh.’”
On draft day, Polamalu says, “I got this phone call from the 412 area code. And I was a little disappointed — because I was like, ‘This is not a California area code.’”
Years later, the town — occasionally as dark, cold and rainy as Polamalu portrayed it — now is home for him, for his wife Theodora (another transplanted Californian) and especially for their sons, Paisios and Ephraim — and the boys’ father wouldn’t have it any other way.
“They’re native-born yinzers, and they’re gonna be raised [that way],” Polamalu declares. “It’s going to be something that I’m very proud to say will always be in their blood.”
For Polamalu, 33, what once was unimaginable has become the inevitable. He’s come a long way since that initial visit to Pittsburgh — far enough that he now envisions hanging around the town he once wanted no part of long after his playing days with the Steelers have ended. While many have speculated that 2014 may be his final season, at this writing Polamalu hasn’t disclosed his plans for next season. Still, with the possibility of a final snap drawing near, the soft-spoken athlete is ready to impart wisdom to a new generation of players and reflect on his position as part of the fabric of Pittsburgh.
“It’s just funny for me and for us how, I don’t know, maybe how my outlook has changed or how little I knew then and how much I actually thought I knew then,” he says. “It’s just ironic the way everything has worked out.
“Pittsburgh’s grown on us because I’ve played here for so long. We’ve been living in California for pretty much most of the offseasons. And the funny thing is, as soon as we get back to Pittsburgh it’s like, ‘Oh, man, we’re finally home.’”
Polamalu, who is of American Samoan heritage, was born in Garden Grove, Calif. He moved to Oregon as a child — but not before he had been “scandalized by sunshine,” as he puts it.
He returned to Southern California to play college football for the University of Southern California, and he would have much preferred to join Jerry Rice, Rod Woodson and Bill Romanowski of the Oakland Raiders upon turning pro.
But that was before Polamalu knew Pittsburgh — which he did not upon being summoned by the Steelers for that first memorable visit. At that time, he wasn’t even up on regional geography.
“When I came here to Pittsburgh on my visit,” he says, “I was like, ‘I have to have a Philly cheesesteak sandwich because I’m practically in Philadelphia.’”
In 2003, Polamalu was drafted 16th overall by the Steelers, who traded to improve their placement in the first round and gave away their third- and sixth-round picks to the Kansas City Chiefs to grab him.
“So I get drafted here, and my wife loves Pittsburgh — [but] I don’t. She’s into history and the architecture, seeing all these brick houses. It was just a really tough adjustment because I knew it was going to be tough for me to go from LA to the exact opposite of LA.
“I remember telling my wife, ‘If I ever tell you that I want to live here forever, you can slap me in my face.’ And here we are settling down in Pittsburgh, raising our children here. Because it’s our home now.”
Success with the Steelers helped to ease Polamalu’s transition. He was a situational player as a rookie — an extra defensive back deployed when the Steelers anticipated their opponent would pass, and he wasn’t a very good one.
“My first year was so horrible, I should have been league MVP for the [opposing] offense,” Polamalu jokes. Instead, in subsequent seasons Polamalu was selected eight times for the Pro Bowl, chosen first-time All-Pro four times and named the Most Valuable Player in the league — for the defense — in 2010. This run of individual on-field brilliance also included being voted the Steelers’ MVP in 2010 by his teammates. With Polamalu, the Steelers won Super Bowls in 2005 and 2008 and an AFC Championship in 2010, before losing Super Bowl XLV to the Green Bay Packers.
When Polamalu was at his best, “I don’t think there was anybody better,” says linebacker James Harrison, a longtime teammate whom Polamalu regards as one of his best friends. “I don’t think there are too many people [who] would disagree with that.” Defensive Coordinator Dick LeBeau has been in the NFL as a player or coach for 56 seasons, yet he considers Polamalu elite in at least one respect and unique in at least one other. “He’s like a [Dick] ‘Night Train’ Lane or Lem Barney,” LeBeau says, recalling a couple of former teammates in Detroit’s secondary and a couple of fellow enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — a likely destination for Polamalu eventually.
“The splash plays that those guys made, you never know when one’s going to hit. “I haven’t seen anybody [who] can play up near the line of scrimmage the way Troy can and then make the plays in space that he’s made.”
As he found his way with the Steelers, Polamalu found out how much his new team means to the people of his new city. That, too, took a little while to sink in.
“I had an interview coming out of college and I said I was excited to play at Three Rivers Stadium — but it was already Heinz Field by then,” Polamalu says. “So I really didn’t know too much about Pittsburgh. My friends were like, ‘Man, you get to play with [wide receiver] Hines Ward.’ I didn’t even know who Hines was. I didn’t know who the Rooney family was. “I really didn’t know how much this city identified with the team or how much the team identified itself as a part of the city. This organization really identifies itself as a Pittsburgh team and embodies everything that history has taught us about what it means to be a person born and raised in Pittsburgh.”
Polamalu now respects and appreciates what that means well enough to want the same for his sons.
“I really didn’t see the value in Pittsburgh in terms of wanting to settle down here until we had children,” he explains. “There’s nowhere in the world that I can imagine raising our children other than Pittsburgh.
“I like the culture here,” he continues. “I love the blue collar-ness of Pittsburgh. Maybe it’s lost a little bit of that identity; you have more of the medical industry, which is more attached with the white-collar workers. But I still think it’s in the gut of this city.
“The identity of this city will always be that this country was built on the back of the mentality of people in Pittsburgh, and that’s the blue-collar worker. When everybody talks about a blue-collar worker, Pittsburgh’s gotta be the first city they talk about.
“And it has an identity, you know what I mean? People are proud to be from Pittsburgh. People aren’t necessarily proud to say they’re from LA or Orange County, or whatever it is. Pittsburgh carries a certain sentiment with it when you talk to people about it outside of Pittsburgh.”
to read the rest of this article, please click on link below:
[URL]http://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Pittsburgh-Magazine/December-2014/Finally-Home-How-Pittsburgh-Won-over-Troy-Polamalu/[/URL]
Troy Polamalu’s first trip to Pittsburgh didn’t reveal a city that resembled “hell with the lid taken off,” as James Parton put it in 1868. Still, the California-born safety did not immediately perceive western Pennsylvania to be the kind of place he wanted to stay for long.
“I think I arrived at 11 at night,” Polamalu says, recalling his pre-draft visit in March 2003 to be checked out by the Pittsburgh Steelers. “I get to the Hilton and I call my agent and I [say], ‘I don’t want to play here in Pittsburgh, I already know.’ It was dark, and it was rainy, and it was cold. It just seemed like a miserable Northwestern — Seattle or Oregon — kind of day. [So] I call [my agent] and I tell him, ‘There’s no way I want to come to Pittsburgh.’”
On draft day, Polamalu says, “I got this phone call from the 412 area code. And I was a little disappointed — because I was like, ‘This is not a California area code.’”
Years later, the town — occasionally as dark, cold and rainy as Polamalu portrayed it — now is home for him, for his wife Theodora (another transplanted Californian) and especially for their sons, Paisios and Ephraim — and the boys’ father wouldn’t have it any other way.
“They’re native-born yinzers, and they’re gonna be raised [that way],” Polamalu declares. “It’s going to be something that I’m very proud to say will always be in their blood.”
For Polamalu, 33, what once was unimaginable has become the inevitable. He’s come a long way since that initial visit to Pittsburgh — far enough that he now envisions hanging around the town he once wanted no part of long after his playing days with the Steelers have ended. While many have speculated that 2014 may be his final season, at this writing Polamalu hasn’t disclosed his plans for next season. Still, with the possibility of a final snap drawing near, the soft-spoken athlete is ready to impart wisdom to a new generation of players and reflect on his position as part of the fabric of Pittsburgh.
“It’s just funny for me and for us how, I don’t know, maybe how my outlook has changed or how little I knew then and how much I actually thought I knew then,” he says. “It’s just ironic the way everything has worked out.
“Pittsburgh’s grown on us because I’ve played here for so long. We’ve been living in California for pretty much most of the offseasons. And the funny thing is, as soon as we get back to Pittsburgh it’s like, ‘Oh, man, we’re finally home.’”
Polamalu, who is of American Samoan heritage, was born in Garden Grove, Calif. He moved to Oregon as a child — but not before he had been “scandalized by sunshine,” as he puts it.
He returned to Southern California to play college football for the University of Southern California, and he would have much preferred to join Jerry Rice, Rod Woodson and Bill Romanowski of the Oakland Raiders upon turning pro.
But that was before Polamalu knew Pittsburgh — which he did not upon being summoned by the Steelers for that first memorable visit. At that time, he wasn’t even up on regional geography.
“When I came here to Pittsburgh on my visit,” he says, “I was like, ‘I have to have a Philly cheesesteak sandwich because I’m practically in Philadelphia.’”
In 2003, Polamalu was drafted 16th overall by the Steelers, who traded to improve their placement in the first round and gave away their third- and sixth-round picks to the Kansas City Chiefs to grab him.
“So I get drafted here, and my wife loves Pittsburgh — [but] I don’t. She’s into history and the architecture, seeing all these brick houses. It was just a really tough adjustment because I knew it was going to be tough for me to go from LA to the exact opposite of LA.
“I remember telling my wife, ‘If I ever tell you that I want to live here forever, you can slap me in my face.’ And here we are settling down in Pittsburgh, raising our children here. Because it’s our home now.”
Success with the Steelers helped to ease Polamalu’s transition. He was a situational player as a rookie — an extra defensive back deployed when the Steelers anticipated their opponent would pass, and he wasn’t a very good one.
“My first year was so horrible, I should have been league MVP for the [opposing] offense,” Polamalu jokes. Instead, in subsequent seasons Polamalu was selected eight times for the Pro Bowl, chosen first-time All-Pro four times and named the Most Valuable Player in the league — for the defense — in 2010. This run of individual on-field brilliance also included being voted the Steelers’ MVP in 2010 by his teammates. With Polamalu, the Steelers won Super Bowls in 2005 and 2008 and an AFC Championship in 2010, before losing Super Bowl XLV to the Green Bay Packers.
When Polamalu was at his best, “I don’t think there was anybody better,” says linebacker James Harrison, a longtime teammate whom Polamalu regards as one of his best friends. “I don’t think there are too many people [who] would disagree with that.” Defensive Coordinator Dick LeBeau has been in the NFL as a player or coach for 56 seasons, yet he considers Polamalu elite in at least one respect and unique in at least one other. “He’s like a [Dick] ‘Night Train’ Lane or Lem Barney,” LeBeau says, recalling a couple of former teammates in Detroit’s secondary and a couple of fellow enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — a likely destination for Polamalu eventually.
“The splash plays that those guys made, you never know when one’s going to hit. “I haven’t seen anybody [who] can play up near the line of scrimmage the way Troy can and then make the plays in space that he’s made.”
As he found his way with the Steelers, Polamalu found out how much his new team means to the people of his new city. That, too, took a little while to sink in.
“I had an interview coming out of college and I said I was excited to play at Three Rivers Stadium — but it was already Heinz Field by then,” Polamalu says. “So I really didn’t know too much about Pittsburgh. My friends were like, ‘Man, you get to play with [wide receiver] Hines Ward.’ I didn’t even know who Hines was. I didn’t know who the Rooney family was. “I really didn’t know how much this city identified with the team or how much the team identified itself as a part of the city. This organization really identifies itself as a Pittsburgh team and embodies everything that history has taught us about what it means to be a person born and raised in Pittsburgh.”
Polamalu now respects and appreciates what that means well enough to want the same for his sons.
“I really didn’t see the value in Pittsburgh in terms of wanting to settle down here until we had children,” he explains. “There’s nowhere in the world that I can imagine raising our children other than Pittsburgh.
“I like the culture here,” he continues. “I love the blue collar-ness of Pittsburgh. Maybe it’s lost a little bit of that identity; you have more of the medical industry, which is more attached with the white-collar workers. But I still think it’s in the gut of this city.
“The identity of this city will always be that this country was built on the back of the mentality of people in Pittsburgh, and that’s the blue-collar worker. When everybody talks about a blue-collar worker, Pittsburgh’s gotta be the first city they talk about.
“And it has an identity, you know what I mean? People are proud to be from Pittsburgh. People aren’t necessarily proud to say they’re from LA or Orange County, or whatever it is. Pittsburgh carries a certain sentiment with it when you talk to people about it outside of Pittsburgh.”
to read the rest of this article, please click on link below:
[URL]http://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/Pittsburgh-Magazine/December-2014/Finally-Home-How-Pittsburgh-Won-over-Troy-Polamalu/[/URL]
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