Out of the spotlight

For 16 years, Cellini’s perceptive insights and acerbic wit, wrapped in a Yankee accent with Italian seasoning, entertained sports-minded motorists as they navigated the metro area. His transition to driver-for-pay, which he trusts is temporary, would have been fodder for ridicule in his past life at radio station WQXI, 790 The Zone, had it involved anyone else.

But a man’s got to make a living. So Cellini swallows his pride in big gulps while toiling as a nouveau cabbie part-time, being the family guy he never was before and trying to inch back into the radio biz that ejected him like a bar bouncer does a rowdy drunk.

The Cleveland native also has appeared on television, but his familiarity stems less from his shaved-head visage than his voice. Occasionally from the back seat, he will hear, “You sound like that guy who used to be on 790.”

Human nature coaxes us to hide behind a grand mistake rather than publicly serve penance for it. Our inclination may be to answer, “I hear that a lot, but you must be thinking of someone else.”

Not Cellini.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he will say.

One passenger interpreted the response as a fib, which baffles Cellini.

“Why would I choose to be him?” he wonders.

Why, indeed, when your Googled name brings up pages of links that recount that monumental screw-up? When you and two cohorts are named Knuckleheads of the Year by Sports Illustrated and labeled merciless buffoons by other radio and TV critics? When you are excoriated on Twitter and Facebook and receive threatening letters at your Cobb County residence?

While the haunting ordeal has borne some blessings, Cellini rues the day he not only crossed the line of insensitivity but pole-vaulted over it.

2

A gag gone wrong

Vladimir Putin. That was Cellini’s planned target for a bit on “Mayhem In the A.M.,” the madcap morning show on 790 that also featured Stephen “Steak” Shapiro and Chris Dimino.

It was a Monday in June 2013. Cellini still was basking in post-Father’s Day bliss. His teen daughter had visited from Cleveland, joining his young son Nico and wife Cari here in town. An upcoming vacation was in the works.

Professionally, life could not have been much sweeter. Besides his weekday radio commitment, there were regular television stints on Comcast’s Charter Sports Southeast (CSS) and CBS 46. And he was fresh off the first of two scheduled auditions with ESPN Radio.

Amid pre-show preparation that morning, Cellini had stumbled across a bizarre tale about Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, accusing Putin of swiping his Super Bowl ring. A decent impressionist, Cellini intended to fake-call into the show and imitate the Russian president.

But during a commercial break, Cellini decided to switch it up and mimic Steve Gleason after reading a guest column online by the former New Orleans Saints player afflicted by the relentlessly cruel and incurable ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). The disease has robbed Gleason of bodily movement and speech, reducing his communication to an automated voice device like the one operated by famed ALS sufferer Stephen Hawking.

Early into the bit, Dimino, the least irreverent of the trio, realized he should bail. “I just don’t know if I want to play,” he muttered on-air.

“I wish I could play,” said Cellini, parodying Gleason’s automated voice.

The routine degenerated into groan-inducing knock-knock jokes, with Shapiro going along, Dimino jumping back in and Cellini/Gleason asking if someone could extend a favor by smothering him.

His closing line — “I’m going to hell” — widely was considered the fatal blow, though Cellini claims he was referring not to Gleason, but himself.

Ten years ago, maybe five, the misfire at hilarity that lasted less than two minutes might have been written off as a forgivable lapse in decency. What could have been contained then as a brushfire became a raging inferno through social media. Fed partly by the Saints’ rivalry with the Falcons, the outrage was swift, spreading from local to regional to nationwide.

The station instantly announced the crew’s suspension, standard punishment in an industry where talkers commonly fall off the tightrope between edginess and crudity upon which they wobble.

It turned into one of the briefest detentions in radio annals. Come suppertime, the threesome was terminated.

By then, each culprit was tweeting out apologies. Cellini’s sense of remorse seemed compromised, however, when he dialed an AJC reporter and trashed the station, suggesting its cloudy future made his forced separation a relief.

The public kickback was so harsh that Cellini, even with skin as thick as rawhide, holed up in his house for a few days. He took down his Twitter account when a harasser mentioned his son and wife. She was disparaged on Facebook. “It was scary,” he says.

It was a different type of scary for Cellini as he headed west to meet the offended parties.

3

Mother of mea culpas

On his first day of unemployment, Cellini phoned Team Gleason, the ex-player’s foundation in New Orleans created to raise awareness of ALS and funds to pursue a cure. He called to apologize, even though he was told the Gleason family had written off the radio bit as a spasm of stupidity instead of cruelty. Still, Cellini felt the need to convey his remorse in person.

For one month, he let things simmer. Then one day he asked a common acquaintance at Tulane University to float the idea of peace talks. Had enough time passed? he wondered. Would enough time ever pass?

Even with the get-together arranged, Cellini needed prodding from friend Ray Voght to set out on a critical leg on the road to redemption. Voght, who had cringed when he heard the routine on his car radio, took time off from work to drive his pal.

En route, tension was a constant companion in the vehicle.

“You didn’t know how the people on the other side would be,” Voght says. Not just the Gleason camp, but New Orleans residents who might recognize Cellini as the one who belittled one of the Big Easy’s most beloved figures.

Many Atlantans once viewed Gleason less adoringly. A Falcons encounter with the Saints in 2006 holds up as one of the most memorable games in NFL annals, and Gleason was the central figure in its pivotal play.

The year before, Hurricane Katrina had ravaged the Louisiana Superdome, displacing the team to San Antonio. The league tapped the Falcons to play the foil at the Saints’ stirring homecoming.

On the game’s fourth snap, the under-sized, undrafted Gleason, a valued special teams player, endeared himself forever to Saints devotees by blocking a punt that resulted in a touchdown and presaged a win. A bronzed re-creation of the highlight titled “Rebirth,” which depicts an outstretched Gleason smothering the ball off the punter’s foot, stands outside the Superdome.

The name carries a double meaning. When the statue was unveiled, Gleason was in the early throes of ALS, which precipitated his own rebirth. A paragon of fitness was converted into a prisoner in his own skin — physically incapacitated, still mentally astute. While yet to bump aside Lou Gehrig as the most renowned athlete stricken by ALS, he flanks the great baseball player, as does fellow Hall of Famer Jim “Catfish” Hunter.

Sitting down to supper with Vinnie Varisco, Gleason’s brother-in-law, Cellini remained a jangle of nerves. Heart in his throat, Cellini would have had trouble gulping down his crawfish mac and cheese had Varisco not put his guests at ease right away.

“We know what you guys are about,” he said. “We listened to your show.” Then he absolved Cellini for overstepping the boundaries of taste.

Cellini tendered another apology and admitted ignorance about ALS.

The next afternoon, he and Voght toured the Team Gleason House for Innovative Living, a residence for patients coping with chronic muscular disorders who learn to live as independently as possible.

Their guide was Vinnie’s father, who greeted the visitors brusquely. “Why the hell would you think I’d want to meet with you?” he said.

But the words were framed by a smile, his way of busting Cellini’s chops. The crash course on ALS at the facility enlightened Cellini, and the apparent absence of malice from everyone there floored him.

After he returned home, Gleason, who had been out of town during the sojourn, contacted Cellini with a request: Would he participate in fundraising?

Of course, came the response.

Gleason, whose circle describes his sense of humor as off-center, alerted Cellini to expect a call from a representative with the details. When the call came, Cellini quickly grew skeptical: Could you clutch a football while ex-Saints players pound you? Also, wrestle a lion? Get bit by spiders? Oh, one other thing: Leap out of a plane, sans parachute, and trust that fellow jumpers will catch you?

Cellini played along and promised to consider the request.

A half-hour later, the phone rang again. His hunch was confirmed. Cellini had been punked — and Gleason was in on it.

“This started with a prank,” Gleason said with his automated voice, “and it should end with a prank.”

He added, “I hope you were laughing.”

Cellini was laughing — and crying. He’d been schooled on the power of forgiveness.

Later he received an email from Gleason: “Our actions after our mistake reflect who we really are. I think you have shown both courage and strength since and I admire that,” it said.

His atonement tour continued at a meeting over bagels in Atlanta arranged by a regular listener of the “Mayhem” show. His father-in-law, Ed Vetter, was incapacitated by the disease. The next thing Cellini knew, he was wearing a blue “Ed’s Journey” T-shirt and participating along with Shapiro and Dimino in last year’s annual walk-a-thon for the ALS Association Georgia Chapter.

Originally Cellini was hesitant to join, until Ed’s wife gave him a hug. It made the few dirty looks cast his way during the walk tolerable.

This year’s walk was a more sobering affair. Ed had died in the interim.

“It was amazing to me that people struggling the most reached out the most,” Cellini says. “What I think about is the families that must go through everything by taking care of them.”

Cellini’s effort to repair his career has not gone as smoothly as his reparations. A follow-up audition with ESPN radio never transpired. His erstwhile station abandoned local programming — converting to ESPN shows — and dismissed its roster of talkers, thus shrinking opportunities in the market. A solo podcast, which aired ads for Team Gleason, came and went.

Cellini found work at a loan company. It lasted two weeks.

On a whim, he answered an advertisement for Uber drivers, then signed up for the humbling gig that provides modest income and the flexibility to set his work schedule to accommodate his wife, whose livelihood frequently takes her out of town.

Most importantly, it freed up his calendar and his mind to be super-daddy.

4

A second chance

Nico Cellini, all of 4-foot-2, stands at home plate, wielding a baseball bat as he glares at a machine about to deliver a soft-serve pitch. Behind the 5-year-old crouches his father, gently feeding instruction.

With each plate appearance, the ball eventually finds Nico’s bat, and his tiny legs carry him decisively toward first base.

A second baseman, he heads to his defensive station in the third inning, plops onto the ground and gazes at a cloudless sky — this, after leaving his glove in the dugout. Cellini fetches the forgotten necessity and patiently explains that, in essence, the degree of difficulty fielding balls barehanded rises without a mitt.

“This guy over here keeps me going,” Cellini says, nodding toward Nico over a post-game lunch.

Cellini’s own father might have reacted differently at the ballpark. The factory worker and tavern operator ascribed to the all-too-common tough-guy parenting approach. As a youngster, Nick was subjected to earfuls of criticism, even in an activity as inconsequential as youth sports.

“He’d hit you over the head with a sledgehammer,” Cellini says. “I’m the polar opposite with my son.”

That wasn’t always the case in other areas of his life. When things went sideways, Cellini was known to lash out at others.

“You think somebody is out to get you,” he said. “You take it personally.”

His on-air detonations were finger-snap quick, and his radio teammates became practiced at calming him down. “Don’t count ’til 10. Count ’til tomorrow,” Dimino would advise.

Often, Cellini’s ire was directed inward.

“If I mispronounced a name or something, I would fall into a depression,” he says. “I was never at peace with myself.”

Anti-anxiety drugs and therapy have engendered some relief. Passing through the gauntlet of unemployment and humiliation has helped, too.

Cellini laments having been too detached from his two older children (by his first wife) when they were growing up. He blames self-absorption and an inability — or unwillingness — to downshift from the job after hours. Such was his immersion in career advancement, he got sucked into a vortex. “I was going a million miles an hour.”

He views Nico, his child with Cari, as a second opportunity to get this parenting thing right. If there is an overriding downside to Uber driving, it is that he misses the joy two nights a week of tucking his son into bed.

Already Nico is showing signs of inheriting his father’s wise-acre trait. At a restaurant, someone approached Cellini to convey well-wishes and inquire about his circumstance. Overhearing, the boy informed the questioner, “He was fired.”

5

Long road back

“How long you been in radio? Thirty years? Forty? Fifty?” sports talk show host Brandon Adams asks his sidekick.

Not quite, but Cellini, 47, has yakked into a microphone for most of his self-supporting existence. This Saturday morning, the day after Halloween, he is back at it — though as a temp, sitting in on a college football-themed show emanating from Wild Wing Cafe in Suwanee. The establishment, cold and dimly lit, has yet to open, and the staff is removing upside-down chairs from tables as they begin.

One topic on Georgia-Florida day is Will Muschamp. Adams is teeing it up for him, almost inviting below-the-belt shots to be aimed at the Gators’ embattled coach.

Cellini resists. Muschamp has disclosed that the most unpleasant aspect about ducking slings and arrows from fans and media is the ill effects on his children. Pre-Gleason, Cellini would have had more to say, but not now.

“I don’t know if I want to laugh too much anymore at somebody’s expense,” Cellini says following the broadcast. “(I’m) more aware of what I say on the air. I don’t need to be hurtful. It’s one thing to joke, another to be mean. I’ll still be a smart-ass, just not as mean-spirited.”

He even exercises restraint nowadays on Twitter, the wild west of social media. Never again, he vows, will there be a tweet like his one about Bobby Petrino. It included a photo of the former Falcons coach’s scratched, bruised face after a motorcycle accident with a mistress that cost him the head coaching job at Arkansas.

“As much as Bobby Petrino was [justifiably] vilified,” he says, “I’m not sure I would do that now.”

During the show, Cellini dabbles in some subtle frat-boy double entendre and pokes fun with impressions of the late curmudgeonly coach Bo Schembechler and the geeky university president Gordon Gee. Mostly, though, he plays it straight, backing up opinions and game predictions with a recitation of facts or statistics.

He begins one thought with, “I’m not gonna pile on a college kid, but ...” It is no pile, merely a scoop of dirt that lands on the player.

The gig is Cellini’s third in a series of stand-ins on WCNN (680 The Fan), his ex-employer’s onetime blood rival. He scored a recent appearance on CBS 46. Patience, another heretofore elusive trait, has been forced upon him as he realizes re-entry into the business full-time is out of his hands.

“I’m in timeout. I get it. I need to be,” says Cellini, who spends a few hours a day at home or the gym skimming websites to bone up for a show, whether actual or imaginary.

“In a moment’s notice,” he adds, hopefully, “I can be ready to roll.”

There is no bitterness that 680, the station of second chances, tossed a lifeline to Shapiro and Dimino by hiring them, only gratitude that The Fan has helped restore his confidence in what might be a trial run.

Besides, there is lingering guilt that his fleeting slip in judgment cost the two their old jobs, though neither harbors resentment.

“I [willingly] fell on the sword,” he says. “The other guys didn’t know what I was going to say.”

Perhaps that’s why their return to the industry has gone more smoothly.

The day after his dismissal, Shapiro squirmed through an apology on CNN and rebounded quickly, sliding a few stops left on the radio dial last December to 680. A side venture he founded for foodies that includes the TV program “Atlanta Eats” and a judging role on a Food Network competition program jams his calendar, though he carved out time to serve as co-chair with his wife at the Muscular Dystrophy Association Night of Hope, a fundraiser in Buckhead.

Dimino, who returned to the air in March as soon as his non-compete clause expired, has convicted himself and his accomplices of a form of bullying. He turned the torment into a learning opportunity, seeking forgiveness in person from Team Gleason. (“Ridiculously kind people,” he says.) He’s been involved in various ALS money-raising affairs and given speeches to at-risk teens aimed at discouraging bullying.

In the long run, the whole ugly experience has resulted in tangible benefits beyond the education of three men about a deathly scourge. Team Gleason welcomed a spike in donations and attention, while Lincoln Financial Media, the parent company of 790, pledged support to the Atlanta chapter.

The time has come, both his former co-workers maintain, for the radio industry to pardon Cellini.

“He has been punished for this in a spectacular manner,” says Shapiro. “He’s been humbled to his knees.”

For almost anyone chatting to the masses for four hours daily, going overboard is inevitable, says Andrew Saltzman, co-founder of 790 and its president until 2010. The rogues’ gallery of sports jocks suspended or fired for oral indiscretions includes many who were bestowed reprieves.

“It’s over. It’s past,” says Saltzman, now involved in media production of high school sports. “If I were GM of either one of those stations (680 or 92.9 The Game, the other local sports talk option), I would find a spot for Nick Cellini. Nick is very employable. Very good at what he does.”

One reason Cellini hasn’t been hired back yet may be because of his tirade toward 790 in the aftermath of his heave-ho, as reported by the AJC.

“Nick didn’t do himself any favors there,” Saltzman says.

The venting illustrates the pitfalls of a trigger temper, which Cellini has endeavored to holster. Though full composure may remain elusive, some characterize him as almost Zen-like compared to the earlier version.

“Overall,” says his buddy Voght, “there’s a lot more stuff that rolls off his back, that he takes in stride.” Cari concurs, saying her husband has become more sensitive to others’ feelings.

In a commercial break during his substitute assignment in Suwanee, a man listening at the bar drains his glass of beer and tells Cellini on his way out, “Good to hear you back on the air. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Glad to have you back on, brother,” another offers.

An acquaintance who caught the program while driving nearby drops in for a handshake.

As the broadcast signs off, Cellini checks his phone. Someone has created a hashtag on Twitter: #FreeCellini.

It prompts a chuckle from the man who, in another respect, already has been freed.

HOW WE GOT THE STORY
Former AJC sports writer Mike Tierney had long wondered how the trio of sports radio hosts for 790 the Zone had fared since their firing last year for what the management called "offensive programming." He was curious how someone builds back a career after such a spectacular professional implosion. As it turns out, Chris Dimino and Steak Shapiro recovered fairly quickly. But Nick Cellini has yet to regain his footing in the business. Perhaps for that reason, he was the most willing to open up about the aftermath, which has been both trying and rewarding.

Suzanne Van Atten
Personal Journeys editor
personaljourneys@ajc.com

About the reporter

Mike Tierney is a former AJC editor and writer for nearly a quarter-century whose various duties included sports media critic for a few years. It required listening to Nick Cellini, whom he found funny, knowledgable and, at times, dangerously edgy.

About the photographer

Brant Sanderlin has more than 20 years' experience as a photojournalist, including 14 at the AJC. He shoots a variety of assignments, including front line action during the Iraqi war, sporting events, breaking news and human interest stories. He grew up on the family farm in eastern North Carolina.