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| For the love of the game Friday, April 2, 2004 by Miki Turner LOS ANGELES -- The first thing you notice about Neal McDonough are his eyes. They're steely blue and totally intense. The first thing you hear out of his mouth, two days after Syracuse fell to Alabama, is intense pain: "My Orangemen, my Orangemen." Yes, the Orangemen falleth, but this former Orangeman is doing just fine. McDonough, a Boston native who played baseball and hockey for Syracuse, is definitely in demand these days. Coming off his starring turn in the critically-acclaimed, but ratings-challenged NBC drama "Boomtown," he is currently appearing opposite The Rock in "Walking Tall" and recently wrapped a drama pilot for NBC. And to top it all off, he's a newlywed. "I'm really blessed right now," McDonough says wistfully during an interview at the St. Regis Hotel. "I have a great wife, and I'm the luckiest guy that I know." He's not so fortunate, however, in "Walking Tall," playing a golden boy gone bad. McDonough plays Jay Hamilton, a high school buddy of Chris Vaughn (The Rock), who runs the local casino/brothel/drug den. When Vaughn finds out that one of Jay's boys sold heroin to his nephew, he grabs his stick and goes hunting. While the stick serves Chris well initially -- he clubs quite a few bad seeds -- a guy needs a little something extra when he's outnumbered and his former best friend has ordered his men to kill him. Fortunately for Chris, Jay's thugs forgot to check Chris' pulse when they left him for dead. Unfortunately for Jay, revenge is a you-know-what. For McDonough, playing Jay was not that much of a stretch. He'd already met a Jay or two growing up in tiny Hyannis, Mass. "I played him as one of the guys I grew up with; the guy who had a little more money than everyone else, was a good athlete and always got the girl. He was the guy you always wanted to see get his ass kicked. And it worked because by the end of this film you really want to see (my character) get his ass kicked. According to The Rock, however, McDonough held his own during their fight scenes. "Neal is an exceptional athlete and his athleticism shows in our fight scenes," The Rock says. "I was really surprised because a great athlete does not always make a great fighter. There's an X factor, a switch you turn on. Neal is one of those guys who have that switch." McDonough says he has hockey and his older brothers to thank for toughening him up. "My four older brothers beat the snot out of me as a kid," he says. "If I can put up with them, I can put up with Rock for a couple of months! He, too, is a great athlete, but he's also a really talented and gifted actor. Of all the actors I've ever worked with, he's my favorite." Yeah, OK, but could you take him? "With a gun, a bazooka, a tank and a machete, I'd still lose," McDonough said with a laugh. "But with a hockey stick, I'd get him!" An award-winning thespian who studied at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts, McDonough, who played first base and pitched at Syracuse, once dreamt of playing Major League Baseball with his beloved Red Sox. "Yeah, I considered going for it," says McDonough who was about to give up on acting just before he was cast in HBO's "Band of Brothers." "In fact, tonight is my Opening Day. I play in a hardball league still. At 30 years old I'm playing with 18-year-old kids who are throwing balls 95-miles per hour. Stupid! Ruve (his fiancée) is like, 'Why do you subject yourself to such torture?' But I love it! I love the game." That love, however, does not extend to the New York Yankees. When asked how much he hates the boys from The Bronx, McDonough said: "I can't tell you how much I hate the Yankees. But if the Yankees weren't the Yankees, it wouldn't be the best rivalry in sports. I'm just a pathetic Red Sox fan." Indeed. After the Sox lost to the Yankees in the playoffs, McDonough, who had hosted a party that night, got up at 7 a.m. the following morning and watched a tape of the game. "I was rewinding it and thinking that maybe they're actually going to beat the Yankees this time! It's sick. I'm pathetic, I will admit it. I hate the Yankees! But if there were no Yankees, it wouldn't be as fun." The Red Sox were expected to do well last season and did. That is, until the Yankees' Aaron Boone hit that solo homer in the bottom of the 11th in Game 7 of the ALCS. But did McDonough really think the Orangeman had a chance to repeat as NCAA champions? "Well, you know we'd lost Carmelo (Anthony) and he was the franchise," he said. "So no, I really didn't know what to expect. But man, both those Alabama teams with the big upsets. Who knew? |