I couldn't fit in the Irish community in New York. I was never one of the boys because they would talk about baseball or basketball, and I knew nothing about it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My Dublin wasn't the Dublin of sing-songs, traditional music, sense of history and place and community.
My parents were both first-generation Irish Catholics raised in Brooklyn.
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
I grew up in a little village in the west of Ireland.
I had quite a scattered childhood. I was Irish in London, because I had my secondary school education there. I never really fitted anywhere. I didn't feel it was a negative thing, and I was never made to feel different - I just knew I was.
I'm Irish as hell: Kelly on one side, Shanley on the other. My father had been born on a farm in the Irish Midlands. He and his brothers had been shepherds there, cattle and sheep, back in the early 1920s. I grew up surrounded by brogues and Irish music, but stayed away from the old country till I was over 40. I just couldn't own being Irish.
When I was growing up, there weren't any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all the time. They didn't have time to take their kids out to play baseball and football.
In any small town, sports are really important to the high school, and I wasn't very good at sports.
I'm just a true Irish boy at heart.
Being Irish was a big thing for me, particularly growing up in Chicago.