His is a Philadelphia story. He was a schoolteacher and part-time bar bouncer who went from bellowing at the Eagles from his peanut-heaven seats in Veterans Stadium's 700 Level to being on the receiving end as an Eagles special teamer on the field below. Vince Papale was Everyman in a football town starving for successes and yearning to cheer for any, man.

	Vince Papale's tale of winning a spot on the Philadelphia Eagles during an open tryout is the subject of a new movie, "Invincible." Click photo for larger image. Related article Movie role wasn't a stretch for sportswriter

"This was right when the movie 'Rocky' came out -- and we were living it," said his roomie, pal and successor as Eagles special-teams captain, Dennis Franks of Bethel Park. "We used to drive through South Philly on gameday morning getting everybody excited, yelling out the car windows and honking. People threw fruit at us and everything." In a nice way, he meant.

This real-life football Rocky, arising from an open tryout, is seeing his story play out on movie screens across America, with Disney's "Invincible" opening in theaters Friday.

"It's the time of our lives," Papale said over the telephone recently amid a monthlong media and screening tour. There's something about Pittsburgh in his life story, too, he believes, because Steelers/Pittsburgh ties abound in it.

He was an Eagles special-teams ace not long before some fellow named William Laird Cowher came along ("still had that jaw ... this guy was the king of the special teamers; he was born to play it"). He was the first special-teams captain in team history, just before Franks became the second. And he has tailgated in the Three Rivers Stadium lot after an exhibition, inside the Franks family Winnebago, then-coach Dick Vermeil giving both players an exemption from riding back to Philadelphia on the team bus.

"I'm a Steel Curtain kind of guy," said Papale, who went from a quiet Interboro High substitute to bouncer with Franks to Eagles player to Eagles broadcaster to now a Sallie Mae executive, motivational speaker and father of two school-age children. "They're similar, Philly and Pittsburgh: blue-collar towns, hard-working people. They just appreciate effort. Don't ask me why, but they appreciate me. I've been to Pittsburgh a zillion times.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Papale, No. 83, in "Invincible." Click photo for larger image.

"I was in Chicago, up for the Whizzer White award in 1979 -- me, Roger Staubach and Archie Manning. I was on an elevator and [then-Steelers halfback] Rocky Bleier walked in. I went absolutely ballistic: I'm thinking, 'It's Rocky Bleier!' But before I can say anything, he says, 'Vince Papale, I'm a big fan of yours.' I couldn't believe Rocky knew who I was. I'd arrived." Rocky identifying a Rocky.

Papale's story arrives in theaters 30 years later, if not late, after his 1976-78 career ended with an injury in the 1979 preseason. He made only one catch in that career, for 15 yards, although he was shocked that an interviewer still remembered a CBS pregame feature back then about Papale teaching the proper receiving techniques -- "Triangle" formed by touching the index-fingertips and thumbs for high balls, "Diamond" by touching pinky tips and palms for low ones. Rather than as a receiver, Papale cut his chops as a special-teams demon, the movie ending with the home-debut moment when he sealed a rare Eagles victory by collecting a fumble by a Giants punt returner.

(OK, so dramatic film license has him picking up the ball and scoring a touchdown, an advance that wasn't allowed then. The movie also failed to point out that, even though he went to St. Joseph's on a track scholarship and never played collegiate football, he did manage to start at receiver in the short-lived World Football League, with the Philadelphia Bell. An ex-wife contended she was his steady at that Eagles time, not the current wife portrayed in the film. And it glossed over the business about him teaching school and working as a bouncer, not a bartender. These are the same movie people who brought you "The Rookie" and the "Miracle" of the late Herb Brooks' 1980 U.S. Olympic team, so they get such latitude, apparently.)

"It's sort of ironic," Franks, a businessman living in North Carolina nowadays, said of the tale. "We talked for years, 'I wonder why nobody ever picked this story up.' Now, 30 years later, it's finally a hit."

Ray Didinger not only helped to write the tale, he lived it. Like Papale a Philly native, he played against him in youth football and recalled once getting clocked by the bigger fellow. One of his 1976 training-camp stories in the since-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin about Papale carried, at his suggestion, the headline "InVincible." (One other difference between art and reality: 30 years ago, Dick Vermeil broke the you-made-it news on the field to Papale, who promptly ran up the tunnel to use a pay phone by the locker room. He dialed his father at work at the Westinghouse plant in nearby Essington, where the related news caused the factory to erupt in cheers.)

"That year, Vermeil was looking for something more than talent," the eloquent Didinger, a senior producer with NFL Films, said of the ex-UCLA coach's first year in Philadelphia. "He was looking for guys who would change the culture of the locker room.

"Vince is the only guy who ever took the passion of the 700 Level, put it in the jersey and threw it into the wedge on a kickoff on Sunday. Other fans took it and threw snowballs at Santa."

This old sports writer recalled standing on the edge of the Eagles practice fields, two days after Papale survived the final cut that first season, and talking Hollywood ... not Henderson of Dallas, either.

"I pointed to Vince and I said, 'Some day, they're going to make a movie about this.' I swear. I swear," Didinger said. "And everybody laughed at me. So for the next few days, we started playing a game: Who's going to play who. We had Robert Urich playing Vince, Robert Redford playing Vermeil, Dom DeLuise as Jimmy Murray the general manager, Anthony Quinn as [owner] Leonard Tose, John Belushi as Denny Franks. We cast the whole movie."

Today, it is one, with Mark Walhberg in the lead role.

"Vince has gone through a lot of challenges throughout his life," Franks said, referring in part to Papale's first wife leaving him abruptly in 1976 (portrayed in an unDisneyesque, wall-smashing fit) and a bout in 2001 with colorectal cancer (unmentioned). "He's always picked himself up and done well."

"I was up in the stands; these were guys I idolized," Papale said of the start of a journey made for the movies, landing on the Eagles. "To come down to the field and be their teammate, imagine that?"