Steve DePaulis...The Poor Man's Ray Babbitt

The Manual Buzzer once again found itself at the center of a national controversy last week after our own SteveDep (do I have to keep using the nickname since your full name is in the title of the post?) published what I thought was an incredibly heartfelt and incredibly funny tribute to his good friend since childhood, me. I'm not sure what it says about Cleveland Blvd. that his effort resulted in about a hundred people coming out of the woodwork to refute Steve's piece and assert that he and I are both total assholes, but hey. I appreciated it, Steve, because even the parts that weren't true were true, in the Hunter S. Thompson "truer than the facts" sense.

Well, since fair's fair, it's time for me to dust off my profiling pen--the same pen that once wrote critically acclaimed profiles of everyone from Yogi Berra to Superintendent Phil Martin to Larry Wallington--on a much less deserving target, Stephen DePaulis, who has asked me to rip him a new one (his exact words: "I hope you bomb on me in mine.") I've made it clear in the past that I want my bachelor party, whenever that might be, to be a full-blown Comedy Central-style roast, so Steve, thanks for offering yourself up to play the part of downtown Oslo. (Too soon?) Nagasaki. (Too soon?) a field where they detonate bombs.

Steve broke his profile of me into chronological sections, but for Steve I'm going to do it by subject area, beginning with...

The Ladies

-I've always said Steve is one of the two funniest guys I've ever met (with the other being the great Colm Kelleher, who lacked Steve's range in sports and trivia but always found new and creative ways to call me a fag). Much like his chest hair, his sense of humor was fully developed by the 5th grade, and his comedic timing made him the object of affection for almost every girl in our class, minus Ji Hyun Lee who fabricated a story about Steve, Adam Goldberg and I making fun of her accent and caused our teacher to throw a Hal McRae-level fit that to this day has never been topped. (The closing line, "Daniel? GO TO THE OFFICE! Stephen? GO TO THE OFFICE! Adam? GO TO THE OFFICE!" ranks up there with "You're GODDAMN RIGHT I ORDERED THE CODE RED!" and "But they'll NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!" on the all-time list.)

-But for all the attention the girls gave Steve, who by high school was quite a handsome fellow (resembling an Italian Adrian Brody with Russell Crowe's haircut and Robin Williams' back hair), Steve returned none of their affection. He had the whole "completely ignore girls who you like because for some reason that drives them crazy in love with you" thing down years and years before the rest of us finally figured it out. However, there's a second half to that strategy--"once you get them sufficiently crazed and in love with you, THEN you actually hook up with them"--that Steve just never got around to. There were several theories as to why this was the case. Was it because Steve secretly liked black girls, and there just weren't many to choose from at F-M? Did he have a secret girlfriend from Wegman's who he was embarrassed to introduce to us because she was homeless and slept out back by the next day's bakery rolls every night?

Only I knew the real answer: Laziness with a capital L. Steve was, for most of his life, one of the laziest human beings I have ever met, and the idea of him taking the time to squire some girl from our class to Sno Top and then hold hands walking around the Swan Pond hoping for a little makeout action instead of watching Mike and the Mad Dog for three hours was frankly laughable. He was the Rasheed Wallace circa 2009 of talking to women--he just was not going to go inside the three point line on either end of the floor, but they kept him on the roster anyway because it was obvious he would have talent if he ever ended up trying.

-Which brings us to the modern era of Steve's romantic history: his lovely wife Rachel. There's really only one sports comparison for a guy who was historically such a bum marrying such a sweet, kind, and breathtakingly beautiful woman--Jose Bautista. Steve went from hitting like 8 homers a season on forgettable Pirates teams (I'm skipping over Steve's post-high school, pre-Rachel dating history because frankly I know next to nothing about it, minus some ominous talk one time many years ago about a "love rhombus" as opposed to a "love triangle"--it's more mysterious than the missing 18 minutes of the Nixon Tapes) to starting in the All-Star game literally overnight. (And they said I was the one who kidnapped my girlfriend? That matchup is shades of Borat throwing Pamela Anderson in a burlap sack.)

At Steve's wedding, I had a semi-drunken (okay, not "semi-drunken") discussion with his dad, Big Mark, the DePaulis family patriarch commonly referred to as the Don Mattingly of Cleveland Blvd for his consistency, his thick, robust moustache, and his consistent ability to grow said thick, robust moustache.

During this chat I started an elaborate theory about how Steve was the Vlad Guerrero of getting married, because Vlad was a notorious "see ball, swing bat, ask questions later" type hitter, and it seemed like the span of time from when he met Rachel to when he was walking down the aisle was about six months tops. Granted, it was longer than that, but in marriage, just like in the backyard playing Seniors vs. Weiners, Steve was the type to see his pitch and swing without thinking twice--you never saw Steve take strike three down the middle. He even called his shot--he pulled me aside at Walter's (R.I.P.) around Thanksgiving of senior year and confided that he was thinking about proposing. He asked if I would be at the wedding if he did. I said of course. (I wouldn't be on time, because Dubroff was driving, but that's not the point.) He said he'd probably need about two months. Wouldn't you know it, the first week of February he texted me that he'd gotten engaged. Well Steve, you might be the Vlad Guerrero of getting married, but you knocked this one out of the park. Now stop peeing on your hands.

Speaking of Vlad Guerrero, it's time to move on to...

Sports

-Steve was the best all-around athlete in our class growing up. He was best known for basketball--his on-court heroics at IC Playground are well-documented, and he would have shattered the consecutive free throw record in 4th grade if certified fat slob Kareem Bazali hadn't jumped into his path about 45 made shots in and swatted the ball. People often wondered why Steve never tried out for varsity, because he would have started easily from about sophomore year onward; let me refer you back to the reason why he never hit on girls.

Basketball aside, though, Steve was just gifted at everything sports-related. I faced his devastating fastball in Seniors vs. Weiners, and, as he mentioned, was only able to hit it every single time because I was using a bat that was christened "the Toothpick". He would routinely hit homers off his shoetops or while jumping over the plate to get one four feet outside; this is why my out pitch to Steve was literally to throw one behind his back and hope he got greedy. He might have said something about how I had no velocity and no movement. This is 100% true. About five years ago, I attempted to throw a "knuckleball" with the tennis ball we played with once. It went down the tube at about 25 m.p.h., and I actually had time to see Steve's eyes light up like Tom in a Tom and Jerry cartoon right before he tries to stab a trapped Jerry with a fork. I'm being completely serious when I say that that ball might still not have landed. Joseph, who was catching (and calling a terrible game, by the way) literally threw his glove down in disgust as the pitch was approaching the plate and walked away scoffing.

-In my opinion, Steve was also the toughest, fairest, most competitive athlete around.

-He always played through pain. He, Pappy and I like to get together in the winter and play night ball by the light of Steve's car headlights on the IC Playground, and one night Steve cut with the ball and slipped on a patch of black ice (nobody ever said were were geniuses), landing square on his knee on the asphalt with a sound that I can still hear to this day. Steve laid there for about ten minutes and then got up, shook it off, and played, which to me was Willis Reed-esque. He also keeps breaking his ankle, but I think that's because he's gotten fat since he started working and his little bones aren't used to holding up such a doughy torso.

-Steve was a great teammate, and he always took me under his wing when we were kids. I was, to put it bluntly, a terrible basketball player until about the 9th grade. Steve was the best in the class, and always made sure I got picked for his team, even though I was a complete liability on offense. Once we got into high school I started to develop a Manu-esque feel for the game, but was still overmatched against anyone other than losers in jean shorts at the Y. Steve would still pick me up in games at IC and the high school. I'll always appreciate that, especially because Steve hates to lose, so picking me up must have been extra painful, and because he could have just as easily let me rot on the sideline. I never would have turned into the creative Caucasian ballhandling and passing prodigy I am today without Cousin Stevo consistently inserting his 5'7" white friend with no J into the lineup.

And Dubroff, if you're reading this: PASS ONCE IN A WHILE, YOU BIG, HAIRY, HOWIE SCHWAB-LOOKING GOON. There, I said it. Phew that felt good.

-One time Steve and I played ping pong in my basement, but we had no paddles, so we used a paintbrush and a hammer. I wish I was kidding. That's why you can't put a price tag on a Cleveland Blvd. upbringing.

-Sports trivia: This is why Steve is the poor man's Ray Babbitt, not because he has less money than Dustin Hoffman, although he does. Rumor has it that Big Mark once gave a high school aged-Stephen a composition notebook and told him he'd give him money if Steve could write the date, opponent, and score of all 162 Yankees games that had just been played that season. Not only did Steve succeed, he also got the winning pitcher's line correct for about 150 of them (the one and only instance before 2007 of Steve going above and beyond on a homework assignment). That is complete and utter Rain Man territory right there. As surprising as this story was when I first heard it, I believed it, because Steve is secretly one of the brightest guys you'll ever meet talking about any subject, but especially when it comes to sports. For most of us, being able to name every MLB playoff team from the last 15 years, and how many games each postseason series went, might not be important enough to occupy space in our brains, but that's why you're over here reading a blog and Steve's over there filling out yet another application for Stump the Schwab, which nobody has had the heart to tell him went off the air years and years ago.

Academics

-A few highlights from Steve's school career:

5th grade:

-Wearing one of the all-time classic t-shirts, which had really thin grey and dark blue stripes and looked like one of those outfits old-timey Russian sailors used to wear.

-Getting the stock market game shut down for the entire class as part of our group, The Crooks of Donut Island, who wrote just unbelievably obscene captions all over the Dilbert cartoons in the Wall Street Journal stock pages we were supposed to be reviewing. Regrettably, I was absent that day, so I can't take credit, although some experts believe that had I not dodged that bullet (and the subsequent detentions) I never would have landed a career in finance, where now I actually read those same articles every day for work, while some other members of that team are probably still drawing obscene captions on Dilbert cartoons.

8th Grade:

-Having announced early on that he had no plans to go on the end-of-year field trip to D.C., I knew Steve meant nothing but trouble when he raised his hand at the pre-trip assembly. After hearing a bunch of idiots ask nitpicky questions about the fairly straightforward "no open containers on the bus" rule ("What about soda cans? What about open-ABLE containers?"), Steve's timing for the classic question "Mrs. O'Leary, what are the rules regarding yogurt?" could not have been better.

-Steve and I worked on the 8th grade yearbook together. My contribution was doing the cover art and helping write the little articles that went inside. Steve's contribution was to help crop photos, except for whatever reason the way he did it (to this day I'm not sure what went so horribly wrong) made the advisor, Mrs. "C", absolutely lose her mind one day and start screaming that "Mr. McKeever" and "Mr. DeAngelo" needed to get down here this instant and explain what was going on with the photos. "Mr. DeAngelo" still makes me laugh to this day.

-Getting detention with me for unzipping McRae's backpack on the late bus so his books would spill all over the place when he got off at his stop. Keep in mind this was 100% my doing and Steve did nothing but watch and laugh with all the other kids, but the principal just assumed he was in on it because we were friends and Steve had a bit of a class clown reputation. After all, what was another tour of duty in detention for young Steve? I remember going in with him to detention that day and the proctor saying "McKeever, you can leave, it's nice that you want to keep your friend company but you really don't have to sit with him."

Also, for the record, McRae completely fucking deserved it and I would do it again 10 times out of 10. That kid was a nightmare. McRae, wherever you are, I'm not sorry, and I hope for your sake that you've shaped up. But I think we all learned our lesson.

High School:

-One teacher about whom Steve and I never saw eye to eye was Mr. Bindig. I loved the guy. He was my journalism teacher, my adviser when I was the EIC of the school paper, and wrote my letters of recommendation in high school and for the first few years of college. I will always remember him as a kind, warm, bright man with a wry sense of humor who shared my love of Brett Favre, and I owe him a great debt.

Steve, on the other hand, took no greater delight from life than antagonizing poor Mr. Bindig in his Film Studies class. He and two other kids, Ben and Al, formed a trio of hellraisers the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Philadelphia Flyers of the early 90's had the Legion of Doom. Their favorite topic was the film Brokeback Mountain; specifically, every single day, they would ask Mr. Bindig "Are we watching Brokeback Mountain today?" When he finally told them that he would have them all suspended if they asked about Brokeback Mountain one more time, they stopped doing it and went on to learn a lot in the class. Just kidding, they obviously resorted to saying stuff like "Ah, Mr. Bindig, I think I broke my back climbing a mountain!" until he took a job in Buffalo.

-Steve has more or less covered IC basketball, and says he's going to address orchestra in Pappy's profile, so I'll leave those alone for now. All I'll say is that if you thought Steve slacked off in real classes, you have no idea what he was capable of in orchestra. I think there was one concert where he literally didn't play a note on his viola, just sat there staring at the page and rocking like Leo Mazzone.

College:

-The only printable story from Steve's college experience: the time he showed up for a "stand-up" (an assignment where you read a news story in front of the camera) for broadcast journalism class, an assignment for which he was supposed to wear a shirt and tie, in a Pink Floyd hat and a "Stop Snitchin'" t-shirt. Another move that's so Cleveland Blvd I can't even stand it, and another reason you can't help but love Steve.

---

I think that about wraps up Steve's illustrious history to this point. All that's left now is the future--he has a daughter on the way in December, an awesome house on Tipp Hill, and is working his ass off (as he has been for the past few years) to make it all come together. He's going to be a terrific dad, and I can honestly say that he's the only one of my friends who I would say that about at age 23. That poor girl is going to know so much freaking sports trivia. I shudder to think that there are children coming into this world who will grow up listening to Jon Sterling and Suzyn Waldman almost 200 nights a year. It's just not healthy.

But now that I'm done crapping all over him, I really should note that I've never met a more sincere, caring person. Steve, you're a great friend, a great man, a great husband, and I wouldn't have grown up down the street from anyone else after all these years. Stay hood.

P.S. Beeb still cries at the Sarah McClachlan dog shelter commercial.