Among wrestling fans, Mick Foley is seen as a "hardcore legend." Wrestling as Cactus Jack, Foley earned a name for himself in Japan, wrestling in matches featuring barbed wire and thumbtacks. He worked his way up to the WWE, wrestling under the name Mankind and earning mainstream recognition during a "Hell in a Cell" match in June 1998, when he fell off the top of a steel cage through the announcer's table.

After years of tormenting his body, Foley retired from the active roster in 2000. Out of the limelite, Foley turned his attention to writing. He penned two autobiographies, three childrens books and is currently trying to break his way into popular fiction. His first novel, Tietam Brown earned him some critical praise, but it seems his newest book, Scooter might just be the breakthough novel Foley has been searching for.

The book has already impressed Richard Price, the best-selling author of Freedomland and Clockers. Price is quoted on the back of the book as saying, "In turns ashcan realist and operatic, lurid and heartfelt, sentimental and hard-nosed, Scooter is an absorbing tale of one kid's growth into young manhood via sports; sports as an instrument of love, of revenge, of celebration and of destruction. It also, most compellingly, offers an athlete's contemplation of pain, and the unique brand of salvation that can come of its forbearance."

Foley also plans on returning to wrestling. He signed a new contract with the WWE to return to the ring part-time and he appeared as a special guest on last night's special "Homecoming" edition of Monday Night Raw. We were fortunate enough to get a chance to speak with Foley about his writing, his wrestling and the evil empire that is the New York Yankees.

Willie McCovey, and more importantly, his bat play a huge role in this book. Did you choose him for a specific reason or did you just pick a name of a former great?
Two reasons. One, the first story that kind of came to seed for this book was of a New York city cop coming home after a few too many drinks in the Long Island railroad bar car and playing stickball with the neighborhood kids and having a good time until he realized he was swinging with a McCovey bat. He seemed to have a great big problem with the neighborhood kids playing with an autographed model of a black athlete's bat and he set about trying to destroy that bat against a tree. So, I fictionalized that story and used it for Scooter.

McCovey's name is also important because I was trying to find a famous major leaguer who could hit the ball a long way and pulled everything. McCovey was a name that my friends offered me.

We know you did a lot of research for this book. What was that process like for you?
I started this book as a short story when I was in route to China for some volunteer work. I thought two things - one, I had the potential for a novel and two, if I didn't really have my baseball knowledge down that the baseball fans would be unforgiving. So, I set about reading nothing but New York history and baseball history for about six months. I really wanted the story to sound as if it came from a guy who knew the game.

Did it work for you? Has the response from baseball fans been positive?
Yeah, even people who write about baseball for a living seem to think the baseball is pretty solid, with the exception of my having the Mets taking the field in the bottom of the 14th at Shea, which is impossible, and spelling Bobby Thomson's name with a "P," it seems like I've done pretty good.

We have an important question for you. Are you actually a Yankees fan?
Yeah, I grew up a huge Yankees fan. For a few years in the late 90s, I thought it would be good for baseball if the smaller market teams had a shot at the series title. I now think it would be good for baseball if the Yankees won another series title.

We thought you made Scooter's dad a Yankees fan because you were looking for another way to make the character less likeable.
(Laughs) It's kind of tricky because most Yankees stories don't take place during the lean years, but I really was intrigued by the fact that the Bronx and the team were crumbling simultaneously.

Speaking of dads, we noticed you snuck your father into this book. What made you decide to include Dr. Foley?
My father was a very interesting character who was respected and feared in the halls of my high school. So I decided that it would be more interesting not to fictionalize him at all. The mountains of magazines on his desk are pretty much exactly as they would have been years ago.

One of my big fears was that my dad would take issue with being a character in the book and I kind of held my breath when he was reading it. I was really happy that he not only liked his depiction, but was really touched that I dedicated the book to him.

Did he have any idea beforehand that you were going to put him in the book or did you just spring it on him?
(Laughs) Yeah, I figured I'd take the gutless approach.

Photo by Courtney Vickery

What are your plans for your next novel?
There's something like 50,000 books published a year and I guess everybody has their own unique style, so I don't see any pressure to stop being a first person narrator. But, I am intrigued by being a different narrator in each book.

Tietam Brown had a 17-year-old year old kid growing up in upstate New York in the 80s. Scooter was a little more ambitious in that he was a narrator at four, nine, 13 and 17 growing up in the Bronx in the 60s. My next project, I'm going to attempt to be a black woman in her 30s growing up in the segregated south in the mid-1950s.

Have you started working on that book yet?
No, I'm in the research and imagination phase. I'm trying to find her voice and actually the voice-finding process is going pretty good. I hear her voice - not in a literal, psychotic sense, but in the imaginary, literary sense. It's going to involve a lot of work because I really want my research to be legitimate and get a feel for what this kid would have been going through as he takes this monumental trip through the segregated south to meet Mickey Mouse.

What kind of expectations do you have for a book like Scooter?
I'm pretty realistic as far as sales. It's very difficult to find new readers and I've come to accept that wrestling fans, though they may actually love me, are not necessarily going to change their lives for me. Reading fiction is a lifestyle change and it's a very rare book that comes along that actually brings new readers to the table. I'm not sure that Scooter is going to be one of those. But I do think that people who pick it up and have an open mind will enjoy it regardless of whether they are a wrestling fan or a baseball fan. The most important thing is that the people who do read it like it. But, of course, big sales would be a close number two.