Why It's Pat Croce's World

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Branding Himself

For the record I should say that, coming to this story, I was on guard against a Croce charm offensive. People who are always up, always bursting with happy talk, I regard as suspect. I see them as likely to be tedious and cloying, even false and manipulative. Do any of us, in this day and age, really believe in the power of positive thinking? Encountering unbridled optimism, I just wonder what I'm being sold. And frankly, a whole lot of selling is what I expected to encounter in Croce.

When I met him last December on the day before our lunch at the Palm, he was about to board an executive jet for a chartered flight from Philadelphia to Nashville. He had invited me along to hear a motivational speech that he would deliver later in the day to sales representatives of Reynolds and Reynolds Co., a maker of auto-industry software.

He didn't hug me. He extended his left hand for me to shake. He recently had had surgery on his right elbow and was sparing it on doctor's orders. Though his elbow ached, he smiled broadly and exuded good cheer. Despite his black belt in karate and reputation for derring-do (as recently as November he'd disarmed a knife-wielding suspect in Love Park in downtown Philly), Croce didn't seem physically imposing. Of medium height, as spare as an oak plank, and wearing goggle-style glasses, he was dressed almost entirely in black: long-sleeved shirt with a polo-style collar, trousers, and shoes. The garb would have been suitable for a clergyman.

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.

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