By Chris Bradford
September 8, 2013
PITTSBURGH -- As a left-footed punter in the NFL, Zoltan Mesko is in a distinct minority. That, however, might be the most typical thing about the newest Steeler’s tale.
Mesko isn’t one in a million. He’s more like 55,000 in 20 million.
Those were the odds stacked against Michael Mesko from winning a green card to immigrate to the United States in 1996.
For young Zoltan, whose earliest childhood memories had been of dodging bullets during the bloody Romanian revolution in his hometown of Timisoara, the move to America was just his first stroke of good fortune.
“I’ve beaten the odds a little bit,” said Zoltan Mesko.
Just a little?
Released last week by the Patriots, Mesko emerged as the most unlikely winner of the Steelers’ training camp competition that had pitted Drew Butler against Brian Moorman. Mesko, who was claimed off waivers Monday and will make his Steelers debut this afternoon against Tennessee, was deemed too good to pass up.
You see, Mesko is a contradiction of sorts.
To wit, after leaving Romania at age 10 he became a Steelers fan living in Cleveland. One of his first purchases was a Steelers jacket, though he was unsure what the three hypocycloids meant or how they would be received in his adopted hometown.
“I was just walking the streets of Cleveland getting a couple middle fingers,” said Mesko. “It was pretty funny really.”
Growing up in Eastern Europe, Mesko played soccer and had never even considered taking up football – the American version -- until he was a freshman at Twinsburg High School, where he carried a 4.0 grade-point average. OK, that’s kind of befitting the son of two engineers who is fluent in four languages (English, Romanian, Hungarian and German).
Zoltan had his choice of Ivy League schools, and Carnegie Mellon had been near the top of his list after attending a punting camp in Pittsburgh hosted by NFL punting great Ray Guy.
“I always wanted to go to a more academic institution until Michigan came calling,” he said. “I couldn’t turn them down.”
An Ohio kid going to Michigan? See, there’s that contradiction thing again.
Instead of at Cambridge or New Haven, Mesko excelled at Ann Arbor. He was All-Big Ten all four years in college and was drafted by the Patriots in the fifth round of the 2010 draft, a rarity for punters right-footed or left.
Over the past three seasons, he appeared in every game – including six postseason games – for New England. He launched a postseason-long 53-yard punt against the Giants in the Patriots’ Super Bowl XLVI loss.
Mesko jokes that he never made it to the Pro Bowl, but his father had once been a professional bowler in Romania. Well, until his mother made Michael quit the game “because he had to take life a little more seriously and make money in engineering.”
Perhaps more than most, Mesko has a greater appreciation for the dollar. Despite his parents’ engineering backgrounds, a good life was hard to come by in Romania during Nicolae Ceausescu’s reign and even after the brutal communist dictator was overthrown and executed.
“Being in communism, up until 1989, you had all the money in the world but you had nothing to buy,” Mesko said. “There were no products coming in from the west and the western world. Once communism was overthrown Christmas Eve (1989) -- I was 3 1/2 years old -- and after that hyperinflation set in. You had products coming in and then you’re money wasn’t worth anything. On both ends, it was a rough life.”
Last week, Mesko was caught in a much different money problem. Due more to his hefty $1.3-million price tag than anything performance-related, Mesko was a salary cap casualty. His Patriots’ successor, rookie Ryan Allen, will make just $405,000. The popular Mesko’s release probably would have been a bigger story in Boston that day but the Patriots’ also cut a left-handed quarterback by the name of Tim Tebow.
“Anything in life is a possibility,” Mesko said. “It was a little bit of a curveball. I’m a strong believer in things happening for a reason.”
Landing in Pittsburgh, as it was in America nearly two decades earlier, is also a blessing. On the day he was picked up by the Steelers he tweeted: “There will be moments in your life where you will not be able to describe your joy and gratitude. I had one of those today. Go @ steelers !!!”
Mesko, who speaks with no trace of an accent -- Romanian, Hungarian or otherwise -- says he’s basically your typical 27-year-old American.
“I love it here,” Mesko said. “It is the land of opportunity, if you put your hard work into it. You have to be resilient when times get tough. That’s the one thing I’ve learned. It’s a very awesome vehicle to success.”
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