Pat Croce

I first met Pat Croce in 1996 as a sportswriter while covering a baseball tournament in southern New Jersey. Croce, president and part owner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team, was the evening's guest between games of the nightly doubleheaders. Since the tournament was largely boring and the local readership didn't particularly give a rat's ass about what a great cut fastball the Rider College sophomore possessed, I needed to bring back a "color" piece, a personality profile about someone local or the evening's celebrity, preferably something other than just what happened on the field. Croce fit the bill; he had recently joined the Sixers,