Oct. 27, 2010

In other settings, intended for other people, they're words that might ring hollow.

Or, simply go unheeded, like so many framed platitudes, hung in hopes of motivation. You know, the ones printed beneath photos of anonymous athletes or alongside quotes by famous leaders.

Ricketts Hall isn't one of those places. What might seem trite in a different building, on a different campus is absolutely chic here, at the weekday home of Navy football.

When coaches speak from their offices on the third deck, words tend to quickly and deeply resonate throughout the hallways, into the meeting rooms, and down the flights of stairs leading to the locker and weight rooms.

"What you do in the dark comes out in the light," assistant Chris Culton says, reciting one of his personal favorites.

"Love it and it loves you back," he continues, uttering another. "The ball never lies."

Everyday expressions in these parts, they roll off Culton's tongue as he describes a senior who embodies them in every way.

"He's an absolute joy to coach," Culton gushes, before delivering an anything-but-everyday line, from a coach about a player. "I'm a better person because of Jeff Battipaglia."

Battipaglia is a three-year starter for the Midshipmen at offensive tackle and, as his position coach makes perfectly clear, far more than that. But don't just take Culton's word.

"There's nothing not to like about Jeff," says his head coach Ken Niumatalolo. "He's another model student-athlete at the Naval Academy, a great student and one heck of a player."

He is, in other words, the perfect poster child for Successories; someone who's always seen the light, on and off the field, and shown the love, of the game and for his team.

And, rising out of his three-point stance, Battipaglia has stood up to the judgment of just about every snap of the ball since beginning his sophomore season. His start against SMU two Saturdays ago was his 33rd in a row.

Such reliability helped make Battipaglia a nominee for this year's Lombardi Award, given to the nation's top down lineman. Apropos, for he's precisely the kind of kid Lombardi himself would have loved to coach; Navy's very own block of granite.

"Uncanny durability," says Culton, rattling off attributes that instantly pop into his mind about Battipaglia, "and remarkable consistency."

Culton could just as easily be talking about the person as the player. To understand how Battipaglia is built so rock solid, open your mind to a couple of sayings he's taken to heart.

One is handed down within his family. The other is passed on from the brothers of St. Joseph's Preparatory School in Philadelphia. Both, it seems, are included in his personal mission statement.

For years, Mary Ann Battipaglia has signed off on text messages and emails to her three children with the letters "P.M.A.," constantly delivering the same affirmation.

"Positive, Mental, Attitude," she said, taking time out of a recent trip with her husband, Joe, to Savannah, Ga. "They know what it means."

They learned it - as well as a few other things, like the importance of education and the value of hard work - from their parents.

Both Mary Ann and Joe attended Boston College, where he displayed his brawn on the rugby field and used his brain to graduate Phi Beta Kappa. He later enrolled at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

And while Mary Ann went to work as a nurse at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Joe grew into a veritable giant of the investment world as a market strategist. Regular television appearances, everywhere from the 24-hour business networks like CNBC to PBS, made him known to many as Big Joe.

The joke, wrote Smart Money magazine, which listed him at 6-foot-7, 300 pounds, was that Big Joe wanted to be the biggest analyst on Wall Street.

"I never had to say whether it was quantitative or qualitative," he quipped to Smart Money. "Maybe I can have both."

Thanks to genetics, Jeff and his older brother, Matt, inherited extraordinary size. By Joe's example, they and sister Christen were imbued with an extra large work ethic. Dad might be a Wall Street maven, but he seemed to wear a thick blue layer beneath that white collar of his.

"Joe and I both come from humble beginnings," said Mary Ann, pointing out that her husband grew up in Astoria, Queens in New York City and lost his father as a college senior. "He worked very hard for what he got. (Our children) saw the value of hard work.

"It's something they've taken away. They know we are very lucky."

"Jeff's mom and his dad held him to the same standards he now holds himself to," says Culton. "He never asks for anything that's not his."

Joe was out daily by 5 a.m., leaving home in Newtown, Pa., north of Philadelphia, to cross the Delaware River into Trenton, N.J. and ride the train into Manhattan. He returned around 8 p.m.

Long after the rest of Joe's world wanted him to assess the swings of the stock market, Jeff was glad to have his father around to help with homework.

"Growing up to me, my dad was always dad," Jeff says. "Sometimes my mom would say, `Come check out your dad on TV.' I'm pretty sure when I was little I would try to talk to him (through the television set).

"At the same time, he came back home in time to have dinner with us. I could still ask him an Algebra question."

What Joe and Mary Ann were teaching their youngest child was being reinforced by their two oldest.

Six years older than Jeff, Matt was the family's original tackle; good enough and bright enough to play the position at Dartmouth. Born between the two boys, Christen took to the tennis court and wound up at Georgetown.

"Jeffrey saw how Matthew and Christen worked in sports and academics," Mary Ann recalls. "He learned a lot from them about how to keep your priorities in order."

"They were great role models for working hard, academically and physically," Jeff agrees. "I'm very grateful to them."

While his siblings were showing Jeff the path to achievement as student and athlete, a buddy was helping to point the way to where such success could someday take him.

Growing up in Newtown, one of Jeff's best friends was Jeff Caraccio, whose father, Dan, was a West Point graduate, class of 1984. Hanging around the Caraccio family, which included another son, Joseph, Battipaglia was regaled with stories from Dan's Army career.

Whatever was said hit home. Both Caraccio boys were bound to become USMA legacies - Jeff as a sprint football player. Meanwhile, Battipaglia, still a long way from high school, began to think seriously along those same academy lines.

"Growing up, I'd hear his stories," Battipaglia says of Dan Caraccio. "In the fourth or fifth grade, my interest started."

A couple of years later, it crystallized.

He was just starting the seventh grade in the early fall of 2001. Matt had recently gone off to Hanover as a Dartmouth freshman and both Jeff and Christen were at school when Mary Ann left for a tennis match on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11.

Her phone rang shortly before 9 o'clock. It was Joe, calling from his office on the 17th floor of One Liberty Plaza, directly across the street from the World Trade Center.

"He called and said something was happening at the World Trade Center," Mary Ann remembers. "He could see a fireball from the North Tower. He said, `Something is going on, I don't know what it is.'"

Joe then hung up. The TV was on, of course, when Mary Ann arrived at her tennis club. Sixteen minutes after a plane impacted the North Tower, a second struck the WTC's South Tower.

"I immediately got in the car and drove home," she says. "My phone started ringing, I was getting calls from family and friends. My mind was racing.

"I had no idea where (Joe) was, except that he had been on the 17th floor in an office full of windows."

A coach from Dartmouth called to let Mary Ann know that Matt was being taken care of. Christen was sent home from school. Eventually, Jeff joined her.

"I remember the whole day, coming home from class," Jeff says, with a reminder that cell phone service cut out in Manhattan. "It was a long wait. It was a very traumatic day for everyone in the United States, whether you were personally affected or not."

Unknown to them, Joe evacuated his building, helping to herd employees down 17 flights of stairs and into the terrifying and chaotic streets of lower Manhattan. He started running toward the East River and, eventually, to the safety of an apartment on the Upper East Side.

Shortly past 3 p.m., Joe accessed a land line and got in touch with his family. They wouldn't see him until after 1 a.m. on Wednesday.

"It was a pivotal point in Jeff's life," his mother says. "He saw it as a personal attack on his dad. He focused on the idea of going to defend his country in the Army or Navy."

"We're very lucky and blessed," Jeff said a couple of weeks ago. "All you wanted to do that day is be with your loved ones. It rings true for me. That's always been in the back of my mind."

Foremost was the vision of West Point or Annapolis in his future. But before Battipaglia could select a college, he had to settle on a sport and choose a high school.

Typical of talented young athletes, Battipaglia participated in a number of youth sports. His seasons were balanced between football, soccer, baseball and lacrosse. In soccer, he was good enough as a goalie to be asked to join a travel squad.

Lacrosse was a favorite, but, ultimately, Battipaglia would retire his stick once he emerged as a college football prospect. It was difficult maintaining weight for the upcoming autumn, when so much of his springtime was spent running around the lacrosse field.

Battipaglia made that decision, as his mother recalls, midway through his career at St. Joe's Prep, his brother's alma mater. Initially, the private Jesuit school wasn't where Battipaglia wanted to be, he recently admitted in a SJP alumni profile.

"As an eighth grader, I wanted to stay with my friends and go to the local public school but my parents wanted me to attend The Prep because my brother had such a good experience," Battipaglia told The Prep News magazine.

"Jeffrey saw Matthew develop," says Mary Ann, whose sons awoke in time for an hour-plus ride by bus into Philadelphia every morning. "Jeff saw that, and listened to Matthew. He was young and impressionable."

His experience proved every bit as enriching as Matt's. Jeff embraced St. Joe's motto of "Men for and with others." Like his mother's P.M.A., it became part of his personal creed.

The school's emphasis on community service, and the fellowship it fostered, further convinced Battipaglia to seek a similar environment in college - the kind of atmosphere bred by the brotherhood of a service academy.

As a member of the Philadelphia Daily News all-decade Catholic team, the agile 6-foot-4 Battipaglia had plenty of opportunities waiting elsewhere.

For one, his parents' alma mater, with a recent history of graduating linemen into the NFL, showed strong interest. But Battipaglia canceled plans to attend the Eagles' summer camp. Mary Ann specifically remembers him telling a Penn State assistant not to reserve a scholarship in his name.

Battipaglia would be either a cadet or midshipman. He would make two official visits; then decide whether to study along the Hudson or the Severn. The former was his first stop.

"His eyes really lit up at West Point," says Mary Ann. "He really liked Bobby Ross."

Next was the Naval Academy.

The Battapaglias visited during what Mary Ann describes as a "monsoon." But to the kid from Philadelphia, it was always sunny in Annapolis.

"Right away, I knew Navy would be the place I wanted to be at," Battipaglia says.

Two assistant coaches at the time helped cultivate such conviction.

"We had a great visit with Coach (Jeff) Monken, and then a separate visit with Coach Niumat," she said, recreating the way Niumatalolo - then tutoring Navy's tackles under Paul Johnson - openly discussed the team's offensive line situation. "He stood in front of the big white board listing all the linemen and explained to Jeff, `If you do well, then I see no reason why you can't start by your sophomore year.

"I have great respect for Coach Ken and Coach Monken. Everything they told us came true."

Only because Battipaglia made it happen.

He toiled his freshman year on the scout team, but showed enough promise to dress for both the Temple and Army games. The opener against the Owls, in Philly no less, was a particular thrill. But not nearly as exciting as Battipaglia's next visit to Lincoln Financial Field a year later.

Entering the 2008 preseason, Battipaglia was behind several more experienced tackles. Soon after training camp got underway, he was at the top of the depth chart.

"He leap frogged a bunch of guys," says Culton. "He impressed when it was his chance to shine and made a phenomenal impact."

Battipaglia expected no less of himself. He doesn't to this day.

"He played on the razor's edge," expounds Culton, who shifted from fullbacks coach to oversee Navy's tackles when Niumatalolo succeeded Johnson in '08. "He's probably the most self-critical player I've ever been around. Before you have to tell him (as a coach), he knows exactly what he did wrong and what he did right. He's a student of the game."

"He's so meticulous," Niumatalolo says. "Jeff goes to work every day with a meticulous attention to detail. He's able to take stuff from the classroom to the football field, able to translate what the coaches tell him into his play."

Son of an ex-rugby player, there's one thing his coaches never questioned.

"He's one of the toughest people I've ever been around," says Culton, who asserts that Battipaglia has sat out only one practice in three years - and that was because of a coach's decision to rest him. "You should see our guys on Mondays (after games), and look at their bodies. They're just beaten to a pulp. But Jeff will strap on his knee braces, get his ankles taped and go out and practice the right way."

"He's as tough as it gets," Niumatalolo says. "Jeff is one of the most mentally-tough human beings I've been around, being able to stick to his goals regardless of adversity."

To no one's surprise, those goals include service selection as a Marine Corps infantry officer.

"(Joe and I) both had a feeling he might go that route," says Mary Ann, a mother who knows full well what such a career may require of her son and others like him. "It does raise your antenna a bit. But I'm proud of the fact that these young men want to do this for our country. Thank God. I couldn't be prouder than to call him a Marine."

Mary Ann and Joe always stressed that Jeff love what he does.

"Wherever I go, I want to be happy," the economics major Batttipaglia says, considering his post-graduate options. "Ultimately, it comes down to whether you enjoy what you do in your career. If I get out there and I love what I'm doing (as a Marine), there's no reason to stop."

What Battipaglia savors most in the moment is that which he shares with his teammates, particularly his senior classmates.

"One of the biggest things is the bond I share with the other Firsties," Battipaglia says. "We're best friends for life. There's something special about the Academy, especially the football team. We share a bond and after graduation we'll move onto bigger things. I'm sure every other guy would say the same thing."

They are, truly, young men for and with others. And last month, in the first home game of their last season together, they took the field against Georgia Southern, a team now coached by Jeff Monken. It was the anniversary of 9/11.

"It was very humbling," Battipaglia says. "It was in the back of my mind the whole time, Friday at the team hotel, going through the pre-game rituals as the nerves were building. I was proud to run out there with my brothers, knowing what we stand for. I feel that way about all the service academies."

Exactly three months later, this December 11, two of those academies - the two that always fascinated Battipaglia - will intersect in South Philadelphia. If he's so fortunate, the ironman of the Mids' offensive line will be out there playing, while his old pal, Jeff Caraccio looks on from the other side of stands.

"It's very special," Battipaglia says, reflecting on his first start in the Army-Navy game, the day he went back to Lincoln Financial Field at the end of 2008. "I remember the first time my sophomore year, running out in The Linc. It will mean that much more this time than in past years. I'm very excited for that opportunity."

Out of the dark, into the light, it will be one more chance for all that he loves to love him back.

"When you look at the guys who make up the fabric of our team," says Culton, "they're guys like Jeff Battipaglia."