During the two-hour trip to Nashville, Croce, who is 47, talked openly and easily about his background. His given name is Pasquale, after his father. The father, who died in 1993, was an Italian American who grew up in a Philadelphia orphanage and worked as a salesman and then a supervisor for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. The family was devoutly Catholic and lived in an inner-city neighborhood of north central Philly, eventually moving to the working-class suburb of Lansdowne. Croce attributed his "dream genes" -- that is, his optimistic nature -- to his mother, Dolores, who's of Irish descent and a former nurse. "She's a very positive person," Croce said. "I knew when my mom said, 'You can do it,' I could do it. That's how dumb I am."
About his father Croce said, "Loved me," but added quickly that he "beat the fuck out of me." (When I later called Dolores Croce, she concurred that the father had been a strict disciplinarian with Croce and his three younger brothers -- there were no sisters -- but went on to say that the father, like the son, had been uncommonly, vivaciously sociable. "That's the Italian," she said. "They're huggers." And, she noted, "his father was a super salesman. Pat's just like him in that way.")
When Croce's plane arrived at the Nashville airport, a black Lincoln Town Car limousine was waiting for him on the tarmac. His speech an hour later to 1,200 people in a ballroom of the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center smacked of a rock concert. ("I'm an entertainer," he had told me during the flight.) With his fists raised in victory-salute fashion, he rushed onto a stage accompanied by an earsplitting rendition of "Born to Be Wild." On the two giant screens flanking him, video images flashed in rapid-fire succession. They showed Croce doing such things as cheering on the 76ers, bungee jumping, directing the Philly Pops Orchestra, rollicking in a wheelchair, gunning a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and, decked out in grand-marshal attire, leading the Miss America Parade in Atlantic City.
If Pat Croce's style is cornball, verging on buffoonery, his unabashed attitude is "Damn right. I'm making corny cool."
Speaking for hire is one of several activities that Croce is pursuing post-76ers. He's working to "brand" himself, as he puts it. That is, he aspires to make his name nationally known so that he can exploit his fame in a variety of profit-making endeavors, not unlike Martha Stewart or Jimmy Buffett. Among Croce's milestones so far are a regular gig as an NBC basketball commentator and a weekly column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which he hopes to syndicate nationally. A subscriber-supported Web site that he envisions as an interactive motivational guide à la Croce is in the works.
What I found most noteworthy about Croce's performance in Nashville was less the content than the style. Throughout, he maintained the same high-voltage delivery and hyperkinetic flourishes with which he had begun. The message was standard fare as speeches by motivational gurus go. As in his book I Feel Great and You Will Too!, published two years ago, Croce extolled the virtues of a can-do attitude and never-say-die perseverance. Heed my example, Croce said in effect, as he drew on experiences from his life to illustrate how he had prevailed against long odds time and again. "You have the power, each and every one of you," Croce told the audience.
Making Torture Fun
Above all, Croce would have the world believe that he has the power. Make that powers. Energetic, driven, detail oriented, competitive -- Croce certainly possesses the stereotypical qualities of a successful entrepreneur, as his friends will point out over and over. "He's probably off the scale when it comes to his passion for winning," says Joe Masters, a friend of Croce's since high school and the best man at his wedding.
However, that supernova of personal power appears to run amok in ways that, by all rights, ought to hurt Croce as a business leader. That's the side of Croce that his friends have in mind when they joke that they drink only decaf when he's around and say that he's basically just a big, zany kid abounding with adolescent-like energy.
When he was a teenager, Croce had a yen for conferring nicknames on his friends. Masters became Bator, a creative extension of his last name. Others in Croce's circle were dubbed Jakester, Meat, and Hole. Masters recalls Croce as a "skinny little kid" in high school who played football tenaciously and was the first one to leap into a fight against a bully. Even then, Croce had a knack for organizing others. "It was always, like, 'We're gonna do this,' " Masters recounts. " 'We don't have Eagles tickets, but we're gonna go anyway, and we're gonna get in.' And we'd sneak in."
After stints as a physical therapist for hospitals in the Philadelphia area, Croce founded SPT in 1984, wheedling a local banker into lending him the $40,000 he needed to finance the start-up. It was part of a breakaway movement in physical therapy, and Croce was one of the boldest mavericks. His emphasis was not simply on treating injuries but on marketing sports-training services to fitness-minded Americans. Until then, physical therapists had worn white lab coats bearing the profession's official emblem on a patch on the pocket. Croce outfitted his employees in black warm-ups. "Physical therapists didn't knock on doctors' doors and ask them to send them business. Pat did," explains Masters, who worked for Croce at SPT and at the 76ers, where he is director of fan relations.
Croce had an eye for collecting friends who could put SPT on the map. A chance meeting in 1985 with Pierre Robert, a deejay on popular WMMR Radio, prompted Croce to invite Robert to work out every morning at SPT -- gratis. "He was taking it upon himself to find people who had extra baggage and offer them the opportunity," Robert recalls.
