Jim Delorey
Jim Delorey played his first game of rugby at 29, coerced into coming out by an Aussie classmate while in grad school in 1998. A Bostonian, Delorey had a hockey background, but put his 6’ 6" size, aggression and considerable smarts to good use in the second row, before hanging up the boots – or, specifically, leaving them on the field – in 2001.
A genuine gentleman and scholar, Delorey still straps on the skates for his beloved Ice Dogs at Chelsea Piers. He spends days wearing fine suits and working as a kingmaker -- consulting on the campaigns of various left-leaning politicians around the country. A valued teammate on the pitch, on tour, at the 10th Street bath houses and in the team van coming back from Jersey, "Two Scoops" stays in touch with several teammates -- all the while plotting his return to old boys.
A PINT WITH: Tell me about your job?
JIM DELOREY: I’m a pollster.
APW: So you upholster chairs, couches, things like that?
JD: I get that a lot. I had this woman walk up to me in Enid’s once. I was wearing a pretty spiffy looking suit, and she asked me if I was an architect. I told her I was a pollster and she walked away. She came back ten minutes later and asked for a card, because she said she had a couch she needed done. I told her, no, I’m a pollster, not an upholsterer, and she asked for my card anyway.
APW: So what do you really do?
JD: We’ll work with our clients – politicians, corporations – to find what their problem is or what their goal is, and construct some sort of research to get them answers and figure out how to reach that goal or fix that problem.
In a campaign, that could mean testing awareness and favorability, or testing messages and finding targets for the people you’re going to talk to, and then going back in later and seeing how well your messages worked, and if you persuaded anybody to think better of your candidate or product. My clients include Elliot Spitzer, a governor candidate in Virginia, the YES cable network.
APW: So you coach George Steinbrenner on his public persona?
JD: No. YES approached us about 100 days before they went on the air and said, what are people expecting from us? So we put together a package to let them know how to cast their network.
APW: How did you get involved in the Lions?
JD: [Former Lion] Graham Thom was a grad student at a seminar I was in at the New School. He took a look at me and asked me if I played rugby, and told me I’d be an excellent second row. I’d never heard that expression before. Maybe he caught me in an insecure moment in my life, but he got me to go to practice.
I remember being very frustrated at practice, because it was early March in New York, we’re on a terrible field in the dark, and I’m being asked to do all these things I’d never done before. I remember the first tackling drill I participated in, being instructed to hit someone as hard as I could. I didn’t know how to tackle, and we certainly weren’t getting any instruction on how to do it. I just creamed somebody – I don’t know who it was, probably some 5’ 8" guy – by hitting him as hard as I could, somewhere around the neck. I remember Christian saying, "Good, good good. A little unorthodox, but good – we’ll show you how to do that."
I remember the first tournament I was in, the Lansdowne Tournament in ’98. I didn’t know anyone besides Graham, but I had been instructed just to call out "Mike," and somebody would turn around. I didn’t know what to do, and had been playing about ten minutes when Graham was involved in a fight, and was really connecting with this guy’s skull with genuinely hard punches that you could hear from across the field. I remember thinking, this is the only guy I know, what am I doing here?
APW: What’s rougher, hockey or rugby?
JD: Crossing Houston Street on the way to practice is more dangerous than hockey is. What shook me up about rugby was that there’s a season-ending injury pretty much every weekend on the Lions, and we have that maybe every six or seven weeks in hockey. I’ve never missed a hockey game due to injury, but I got hurt pretty good in rugby. Rugby guys seem to be in awe of hockey, like it’s a rough and violent sport, but it amazes me that anyone would even think that for a second.
APW: What’s the worst rugby injury you had?
JD: It was against the Coast Guard. They were unbelievably fit and could do 5-second 40s, and had absolutely no idea how to play rugby; it’s a very dangerous combination. I remember getting hit three different ways at once while my foot was being held by a guy, and I badly messed up my knee. Fortunately I never had anything that had to be set by Brandon [Dr. Demento].
I did get two black eyes once, the day before I was running this event where I had to introduce Robert McNeil and Morley Safer. There’s nothing like showing up at the Princeton Club with a bunch of tweedy guys, and you’ve got two black eyes.
APW: With hockey being your first love, what kept you coming out for the Lions?
JD: When I first joined the hockey team, I really appreciated having 19 guys who would help me move if I had to. I quickly realized the Lions would do a whole lot more than that. I know there were a few guys on the hockey team who’d get in front of a bullet for you, but with the rugby team, I was always amazed by the loyalty. I never felt like I was doing anything to warrant such protection from these guys, but they’d always come to your defense, and I really value that. And other times, they’d have me laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. That’s a really good feeling. However horrible the van rides stuck in the tunnel on the way back from Jersey were, there were still plenty of funny things that were absolutely great.
APW: You were married recently. How did you meet your wife?
JD: I met Angela in the basement of a Hindu temple at the wedding of a mutual friend. We sat next to each other during the wedding, which was a two-day affair. The first day, we were sitting around barefoot, and spent a lot of the time talking. The second day, we again spent a lot of time talking, but I again didn’t ask her for her number. We got together with our married friends a few months later, and I still didn’t ask her for her number. She got sick of waiting for me to ask, so she called me.
APW: Why didn’t you ask for her number?
JD: I was going out with someone else at the time, and thought that would’ve been very bad form.
APW: What does your wife do for work?
JD: She’s a physiatrist -- an MD who does physical medicine and rehabilitation. One of my favorite memories is… people find out what she does at a party, and everybody I know, whether it’s rugby or hockey, has some kind of physical complaint. I remember this one party, she’s standing there, doing a test on someone’s arm with one hand, and holding a Mojito with the other.
APW: With the old boys resurging, might you suit up for the Lion Kings one of these days?
JD: Yes. I live around the corner from Doss Sports, and always bought my stuff there, and I’m tempted when I pass by. The last game I played, I got the fear…I got hit by this guy who was upset at something I’d done earlier, and he hit me so hard I was shaking. It was a guy from Rockaway -- he was British and clearly a jerk, and he really wanted to hurt me. He hit me in the open field from about 20 yards away when I didn’t have the ball. After that, I felt, it wasn’t the game that was gonna hurt me, but some completely imbalanced person. That really turned me off. Coach made me start the second half of the B game as well, and I was so completely spent afterwards that I accidentally left without any of my stuff –shorts, boots, everything.
But some of that fear has gone away. My brain has gotten around the game a little more, so I think I could get into it and not be so aware of what it is I’m doing. For a while, though, I’m probably going to let it stay nostalgic.
Quick Facts:
- Birthplace? Salem, Massachusetts
- Favorite beer? Le Cheval Blanc, in Montreal
- Kennedy or Clinton? Kennedy
- Most Valuable Teammate? 280 Paul. We pulled each other through some rough scrums.
- Best Lions Memory? Last-second loss to NATO Lions in Naples, Italy.
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