Dennis Salvagio rises from his seat and picks up a briefcase full of court documents that never once touched the defendant’s table. They didn’t need to. Most of the facts about his client’s possession of marijuana charge have already been seared into his brain. Now that his client’s time in front of the judge is over for the day, Salvagio starts to saunter toward the door. He turns his head toward the back of the courtroom and locks eyes with his son Chris, who gets up from the bench and joins his father in their walk toward the car.
The Salvagios pass through the front doors of the Orange County courthouse and notice a small group of well-dressed men and women walking a few feet in front of them. At first glance, it looks just like any other group of people. They don’t stand out too much from anyone else who works at that courthouse. But one member of this group catches the elder Salvagio’s attention: another prominent defense attorney in Orlando named Stuart Hyman.
To those who know him, being represented by Hyman is akin to being taught by a Nobel Prize winner. The elder Salvagio had seen Hyman take on plenty of impossible cases and walk away with verdicts in his favor. This is the perfect opportunity to show his son someone at the top of the law industry. But he also wants Hyman to hear, too. So he turns to his son and makes sure his fellow lawyer is in earshot before shouting,
“Hey, Christopher! See that guy over there?”
He waits for his son to respond, who tells his father that he does.
“That guy’s got balls,” Salvagio yells while pretending to hold grapefruits in each of his hands. “And they’re this big!”
Hyman’s head zips behind him and meets Salvagio’s eyes. Without any hesitation, he makes sure Chris is looking his way before turning toward him and opening his mouth.
“Your dad’s got ones just as big,” Hyman told the younger Salvagio. “And they’re made of iron.”
Hyman is not the only person who feels that way about his now-retired colleague. Most of the people in Salvagio’s life know him as a bold, outspoken man who allows himself to say and do anything that comes to his mind. That’s probably how you know him, too. You’ve likely seen him running around the stadium during Orlando Magic games, yelling at people to vacate their chairs and get up off their feet whenever games are close. He’s not too difficult to find. Just look for the short, Italian-American man clad in the most flamboyant blue and white costume you’ve ever seen. If it helps, that costume will almost certainly say “Fat Guy’’ somewhere on it.
Yes, it will say “Fat Guy.” At his heaviest, Salvagio weighed just under 300 pounds. But wearing “Fat Guy” on his clothes is not some twisted form of self-deprecation. It’s his stage name. For almost as long as the Magic have been the Magic, The Fat Guy has captured the hearts and cameras inside the Kia Center and the old Orlando Arena with his antics. He would take his shirt off, whip it over his head and beat his chest to excite the thousands of fans staring at him in awe. He’d sometimes hold up signs and flags to get that crowd cheering for the team he loves. Salvagio is a jumbotron staple during any Magic game, whether it’s a meaningless regular season matinee or a down-to-the-wire playoff match.
“He’s got this charm,” Chris Salvagio said. “To go with that, he has this incredible amount of confidence to do stuff.”
But when Salvagio takes off his Fat Guy costume, he keeps The Fat Guy’s character. Because that character is not The Fat Guy’s. It’s Dennis Salvagio’s. That same gregarious, brash personality that makes The Fat Guy a hit at Kia Center makes Salvagio a warm, fascinating man outside of it. He will walk into an elevator full of people and say, “I bet you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here.” He will strike up a conversation with you and won’t leave until he considers you his friend. As a matter of fact, you’re already his friend — you just don’t know it yet.
“You could throw Dennis into a room of people that he does not know, come back after 30 minutes, and he’s telling a story and everybody’s listening,” said Placide Muhizi, Salvagio’s foster son.
The Fat Guy can’t exist without Salvagio. Without Salvagio’s devotion to making others smile and look his way, The Fat Guy wouldn’t be able to galvanize the Kia Center every game night the way he does. Truth be told, becoming The Fat Guy is something that only could have happened to this lawyer from Philadelphia. Because if that lawyer never learned to become confident in himself as a child, never left home as an adult or decided not to have a little fun at a basketball game, someone else would have become the No. 1 fan of the Orlando Magic.
SECTION I: THE BACKSTORY OF DENNIS SALVAGIO
Six-year-old Salvagio sat motionless in his seat, refusing to look away from the helmets on the Philadelphia Phillies players’ heads. They were painted in the most vivid shade of red, a color bright enough to light up the April night sky. He’d seen those helmets many times before on his black-and-white television, but never in this beautiful hue. You could only see that color at a Phillies game, which is where he was. He was sitting next to his father at Connie Mack Stadium for the first time in his life as his beloved Phillies traded hits and runs with the Brooklyn Dodgers. For those two-and-a-half hours in 1955, everything was perfect.
The outcome was a little less than perfect, though. The Phillies lost that game, 6-7. They probably would have won it if centerfielder Richie Ashburn, one of Salvagio’s first-ever idols, was in the lineup that night. It didn’t matter; getting to sit inside the arena where his hometown team played baseball more than made up for the result. It was a moment that Salvagio still remembers to this day as a very good memory that he had with his father.
It was also one of his only good memories with his father.
It’s hard to make those fond memories from deep inside your basement. It’s not like the young Salvagio had much of a chance to do so. Whenever he sat in the basement of his Philadelphia home, all he could focus on was hiding from his drunken father. Because when he wasn’t in that basement, he put himself at risk for whatever his father decided to do to him. Most of the time, he was beaten. Not always for things that were his fault. It became so violent at home that at times, he would knock on his neighbors’ door and ask them if he could sleep on their sofa. At least that sofa made him feel safe.
“We opened our door to him,” said Barbara LaBadie, Salvagio’s childhood next-door neighbor. “He could come over anytime he wanted.”
Salvagio realized that he was not going to grow up with the emotional support of his father, either. Not once would the man ever acknowledge his child’s exceptional grades in school, engage in his budding interest in sports or celebrate an amazing catch he made during his baseball games. The only words that would leave his lips were insults hurled the boy’s way.
But as Salvagio grew up, he learned how to block all of his father’s harsh words out of his ears. Everyone else was telling him how smart and talented he was. What difference did it make if his father didn’t do the same?
Before long, Salvagio decided that he didn’t need his father’s approval; all he really needed was confidence in himself and the fearlessness to achieve anything he wanted despite what others in his life had to say.
“The whole scenario gave me the attitude that I didn’t need anybody else and I could do it all by myself,” Salvagio said. “It was just as much ‘I’ll show you!’ as any benefit that it was to me.”
Salvagio knew that recovering from his home life had to start with him leaving it. He didn’t move too far away at first. Twelve miles away, to be specific. After graduating from high school in 1966, he used scholarship funds to enroll at LaSalle University and began living on campus. But the move wasn’t just an escape for Salvagio; it was also the first step toward achieving his dream of becoming a criminal defense attorney.
He studied as hard as he could to see that dream through, but he took some time away from the books to let his life happen a little. He joined the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and found lifelong friends there. He became the president of the Class of 1970 and eventually president of LaSalle’s student council. He organized and attended several parties, dances and other such events that he still remembers to this day.
At one of these parties, he noticed two young women sitting outside by themselves, one of whom caught his eye. Salvagio walked over to where they were sitting and began a conversation with her, a girl named Mary. It was a pleasant conversation. Roughly 45 minutes from beginning to end. And it was 45 minutes of bliss for Salvagio, who asked her if she wanted to leave the party with him that night.
Mary declined his offer, so Salvagio thanked her for the conversation, said goodbye to her and asked for her phone number. She gave it to him. A few weeks later, Salvagio called her and invited her to a massive party he was organizing for his class, to which she said yes.
“He was fun to be around,” Mary Salvagio said. “And [his] confidence was very admirable to me.”
The two had an incredible time at that party, so much so that afterward, Salvagio and Mary began dating and fell in love. That love continued strong even after Salvagio graduated from LaSalle and moved to Winston-Salem, N.C. to attend law school at Wake Forest University, while Mary worked as a medical secretary in multiple hospitals. While the two were apart, Mary decided that her love for Salvagio was too strong for him to just be a long-distance boyfriend. She wanted to get married. And in August 1972, four years after the two met, she took Salvagio’s hand at the altar and became his wife.
Mary moved to Winston-Salem after the wedding. The two stayed there until May 1973 when Salvagio graduated from Wake Forest School of Law. Once he felt that diploma in his hands, all the tedious studying, rigorous testing and brutal schedules became worth it.
All he had to do left was to decide where to practice and start his new life.
While they had plenty of options, only one appealed to Salvagio: Florida. The palm trees and beaches of the Sunshine State captivated him ever since he stumbled across the Jackie Gleason Show as a kid. Once the credits began to roll after that episode, he started telling his parents that he had a new dream home state.
“I don’t ever remember not wanting to live in Florida,” Salvagio said.
That desire stayed in his mind as an adult. It was always sunny there. His future kids could play outside year-round. Disney World had recently opened in Orlando, a city that was now expected to skyrocket in productivity and population with the establishment of the park. Maybe Salvagio’s future law career could grow with it.
The Salvagios moved to Orlando right after graduation while Mary was pregnant with their first child, Anthony. Salvagio needed to support his new family, so he took a job with a law firm led by a group of experienced lawyers who cared for him and paid him well. He considers those people some of his closest friends to this day. But a year and a half later, an end to the firm became inevitable. As the clock started to tick toward the firm’s final hours, one of the partners walked over to Salvagio and asked him what his future plans were.
Salvagio’s answer wasn’t one a typical lawyer with less than two years of experience would be bold enough to say. But it was also the only answer that Salvagio could give.
“I’m going to go out on my own.”
The partner looked at Salvagio as if he had just thrown his briefcase out of the office building’s window. But he admired the young lawyer’s ambition. The partners still had six months left on the rent to their office and now had no use for it. So, as a gift, they gave him the office and encouraged him to keep practicing. From that moment on, Salvagio became a sole practitioner of law.
Now that he had his own firm, he began working and defending to the best of his ability so that his new family could live the best lives they could. And that new family kept growing. The Salvagios welcomed their second child, Chris, in 1977, and took in a Rwandan college student named Placide Muhizi as a foster child just after the turn of the 21st century. He taught his kids all the things a father should teach and took them all across the world on vacations. Now that they are adults, those kids consider him a loving, fair father who made them feel safe and happy.
“My brother and I were always encouraged to speak our mind and let our voices be heard and sort of not care what other people think about us,” Anthony Salvagio said. “We were definitely raised in a very loving household.”
Salvagio’s life was set. No more hiding from his father in his basement. No more having to prove anything to anyone. All the pain and anxiety of his childhood were now over. With a stable career and a happy family, Salvagio had everything he could ever ask for — all because he responded to some key events that happened in his professional and personal life.
Very soon, Salvagio would respond to another important moment in his life, and doing so changed almost everything about it.
SECTION II: THE BEGINNING OF THE FAT GUY
The Flash was struck by lightning. Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider. Captain America was injected with Super Soldier Serum.
And The Fat Guy had a poem written about him.
But this story does not begin with the poem. It actually begins in the checkout line of a Chamberlin’s — the one that used to be in the Winter Park Village. That’s where Salvagio and his son Chris had stopped on their way to purchase season tickets for the newly revealed Orlando-based basketball team in 1986, which was three years before the team would play their first game. Early investors in the team, led by former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Pat Williams, were already selling season tickets to the many soon-to-be fans in Central Florida who had been clamoring for a sports team in the city for years.
Salvagio was one of those excited fans. He had been a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies for as long as he could watch sports. Some of his earliest memories involve lying in his bed at night with a transistor radio underneath his pillow and listening to the sounds of the game until he fell asleep. That fandom only grew the older he became, and attending Phillies games became a routine for him as a teenager. But in Orlando, there were no Phillies. Or Eagles. Or even 76ers.
He missed that. He attended several games at Tinker Field, home of the minor league Orlando Twins, but where could he go to revel in the atmosphere and intensity of a major sports game? For the first decade since he moved to Orlando, he didn’t have an answer. That would change once he purchased season tickets for this upstart basketball team.
As Salvagio and Chris ate at a sitting area inside the Chamberlin’s, a lanky man with a lampshade mustache walked through the doors. That mustache was enough for Salvagio to recognize the man, who was now walking in the pair’s direction.
“Hey, Pat Williams!” Salvagio called out. “We were just going to go over to your office and buy some season tickets!”
Williams’s face lit up. He told Salvagio to wait where they sat and walked out of the store. A few moments later, he came back to the father and son holding four applications for season tickets, one for each member of the Salvagio family at the time.
“Sign them!” Williams said.
Salvagio did as he was told. He filled out a check for $400 — $100 for each ticket — and handed it to Williams. As soon as that check touched Williams’ fingers, Salvagio became one of the first people ever to purchase tickets for the Orlando Magic.
“I thought it was amazing that my father really truly was there before the Magic even broke ground,” Chris Salvagio said.
Three years later, Salvagio and his family put those tickets to use. They walked into the brand new Orlando Arena on Oct. 13, 1989, as the Magic prepared for their first game: a preseason match against the Detroit Pistons. And what a daunting first-ever opponent for this brand-new basketball team. The Pistons had hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy as NBA champions just a few short months prior, and they had retained most of their roster stacked with future Hall of Famers.
The Magic did not have future Hall of Famers. They had a ragbag of players no longer needed by their former teams. This game was about to be a baptism by fire for a basketball team full of castaways that had never touched the court together before that point.
And they trudged out of that fire with their first-ever victory.
The fledgling Magic narrowly defeated the reigning champions by a score of 118-109. It was merely a preseason game, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell. Around 15,000 raucous fans, sitting from courtside to the nosebleeds, erupted once the final buzzer sounded. Forward Nick Anderson compared the environment to an NBA Finals game.
This magical first game was enough to turn thousands of Orlando residents like Salvagio into Magic fans.
“Everyone was excited,” Salvagio said. “And I remember the excitement because the whole crowd was excited. Everybody was excited. The whole town. We had won the first game we played.”
Salvagio knew right away that those tickets were some of the best $400 he had ever spent. This was the exhilarating feeling and vibrant atmosphere from a sports game he had been missing since he left Philadelphia. The euphoria that would rush through his body after leaving Connie Mack Stadium as a kid started to resurge after he left that first Magic game as an adult. He needed to experience that feeling again.
So he did. He would attend every Magic game he could — which was most, if not all, of the games in their early years — and become enamored with the bright lights and the Magic moments on the court every time. Going to games became a ritual for Salvagio’s family and friends. They all became Magic fans and had just about every game circled on their calendar.
A Saturday night game against the Washington Bullets on March 3, 1990, was one of those circled games. Salvagio arrived home from work that evening, scooped up Anthony from his house and went back to his car without even changing out of his work clothes. They made it to Orlando Arena about thirty minutes later, where they met up with a friend and his girlfriend.
They couldn’t have picked a better game to go to. It was a thrilling shootout from beginning to end, with the nets swishing after each possession. The scoring on both sides had been so remarkable throughout the game that a winner couldn’t be determined by the end of regulation. The game had to go into overtime. Not even that was enough. It went into double overtime. The intensity on the court during that second overtime was palpable, but the crowd’s indifferent reactions and apathetic energy did not reflect that fervor.
That didn’t sit right with Salvagio. How were the Magic supposed to win this game if they didn’t even have the support of their own fans? He didn’t want to find out.
Salvagio left his seat and started to prance around a few of the rows near him, pestering anyone who dared to sit down. “Come on!” He would yell at the people surrounding him. “Get up!” As he shouted, they followed his instructions. They started to get up. Within minutes, everyone in the arena stood up, even people located in sections hundreds of feet away from where he was. The entire crowd began cheering on the Magic.
“You’re on the screen!” Salvagio’s friend pointed out to him.
Salvagio looked up at the jumbotron and, to his sheer bewilderment, saw his own image looking back at him. The cameras had found him running around his section, and they were taking advantage of that passion to invigorate the crowd. At that point, the camera had cut to Stuff the Magic Dragon, the team’s mascot, with the word “Stuff!” overlaid onto it. The cameras then cut back to him with the words “More Stuff,” a reference to his 300-pound weight at the time.
As soon as Salvagio saw what was going on, he fell right back into his seat. He just wanted to have a little fun, but not like this! He’s a lawyer! What would his clients think if they saw that their lawyer was out making a fool out of himself at a Magic game? Hopefully nothing, he thought. He was only shown for a few minutes, at most. The Magic even lost that game in double-overtime, 132-128. There’s no chance that anyone will remember this game or any of Salvagio’s hijinks by the next morning.
Nothing special was going on that morning, anyway. All that Salvagio had to do that day was attend Sunday Mass, and he didn’t even have to drive there himself. He let Anthony, who had recently celebrated his 15th birthday, take the wheel so he could practice driving with his new learner’s permit. Salvagio sat in the passenger seat with that day’s copy of The Orlando Sentinel in his hands.
While Anthony drove, Salvagio flipped to the paper’s sports section. His eyes darted to the box score of the Magic-Bullets game, as they usually do, but he noticed something unusual on that page. Right next to Nick Anderson’s and Reggie Theus’ statlines was an article with the headline, “The Highest Decibel Reading Ever Recorded at the O-Rena Was Recorded Last Night When Stuff the Magic Dragon Hugged an Unidentified Dancing Man.”
Oh, people did remember.
But they shouldn’t remember for too long. It was a brief event that, sure, may have been newsworthy enough to write about. But it was only next to the box score, a place where only die-hard basketball fans looked. Besides, every team has fans who do stuff like that. You could find fans a dime a dozen who perform similar — if not worse — stunts at Phillies or Eagles games. This wasn’t anything special. It was a fun moment, nothing more, and people would soon forget about it.
Salvagio took that mindset to work the following day. He focused on bringing the judge an order to dismiss a case he was on. He told his client to wait in the courthouse’s snack bar while he did so, and he would come and join him after his job was done. Once the judge signed the order, Salvagio filed it, ending his duties on the case. He then walked over to the snack bar to meet his client, who looked him dead in the eyes.
“Sit down,” his client said.
Salvagio’s eyebrow raised. “What’s wrong?” He asked. “Everything went okay and according to plan.”
“No, sit down,” his client repeated.
He sat down. His client took out that day’s copy of the Sentinel and gave it to him. Salvagio looked at the paper and found a poem from columnist Bill Marx titled: “Ode to the Fat Guy Shuffle.”
“Orlando’s first cult hero emerged Saturday night at Orlando Arena,” read its opening line. This wasn’t a flattering poem. It told the story of a paunchy man at the Magic-Bullets game who invigorated the crowd with his mesmerizing dancing and prancing, which Marx dubbed ‘The Fat Guy Shuffle.’ “Weight left — BOOM!” Marx described the motions, “Weight right — BOOM! Shimmy shimmy shake shake, Boom boom boom!” It was complete with sardonic praise for this man’s moves, jabs at his weight almost every other line and even an identification of his exact seat in the arena.
Oh no.
When Salvagio finished reading, he noticed Marx left a note at the bottom of the poem. It wasn’t a line of this poem, but a genuine request.
“If the Fat Guy’s out there, please give me a ring.”
But should he?
On one hand, this was not how Salvagio wanted to be remembered. He was a criminal defense attorney. A professional. Not some maniac like those past few articles made him out to be. But on the other hand, Marx’s poem proved that people weren’t forgetting about what happened on Saturday night. How could they when it’s being written about in his city’s newspaper every day? There was no way that this incident was going to be just a flash in the pan, as Salvagio hoped. But maybe it wasn’t supposed to be. Maybe Salvagio’s antics on Saturday were the doors to his new destiny: a character that he was supposed to play.
He’s walked through several of these doors before, and his life changed for the better every time he did. Choosing not to listen to his father’s disparagement of him gave him the confidence and courage to do anything that he wanted to do. Agreeing to Mary’s proposal gave him his beautiful family. Telling one of his bosses that he felt ready to take on an entire law firm gave him his career.
Marx’s poem entrenched Saturday’s game as another significant moment in his life. Perhaps it would somehow benefit him and his family if he called the writer and allowed the story of The Fat Guy to continue.
So Salvagio picked up the phone and dialed Marx’s number.
Marx didn’t answer Salvagio’s call, but he called back around five minutes later. He asked Salvagio if the lawyer took offense to being forever etched in Orlando Magic history as “The Fat Guy,” a thought that petrified the writer. Salvagio told him not to worry about it, saying that he already knew he was overweight. The columnist then asked Salvagio what he thought of the poem, to which he said it was funny. The two talked for a while before the conversation ended. Marx passed Salvagio’s information onto Jerry Greene, a sportswriter for the Sentinel at the time, who would interview Salvagio shortly afterward. This was out of Salvagio’s hands now. He was about to let all of this happen.
The next day, the Sentinel published a feature written by Greene about The Fat Guy and his efforts to hype up the Orlando Arena crowd on Saturday night. This article, titled “It ain’t overtime ‘til ‘Fat Guy’ swings,’’ revealed to the city Salvagio’s name, occupation, section at the arena and his portrait, which was a picture of him cheering at the game with his arms outstretched. The story even ran in color on the paper’s front page, so plenty of readers were about to learn exactly who this man was.
That night, Salvagio attended the Magic’s game against the Utah Jazz, which was their first game since their loss to the Bullets. But this was no ordinary game for Salvagio. From where he was sitting, he noticed people holding up signs that read “Fat Guy” on them. Soon after the game ended, he would become inundated with requests to appear on local TV shows and radio broadcasts. Everyone wanted even a chance to interview The Fat Guy. At that point, there was no one in the city more popular than he was.
“It was like putting rocket boosters on a jet plane,” Salvagio’s eldest son Anthony said. “It was immeasurable, the amount of more people who knew him for being The Fat Guy than being an attorney.”
Giving Marx that call propelled him into a level of fame he never imagined was possible. Interview requests. Autographs at games. Complete strangers knowing his name and what he does for a living. This was his new life that he had to adjust to, a new life that he let happen.
So now that it’s happened, why not let it happen his way?
SECTION III: THE AFTERMATH
Salvagio believes that the building where the Orlando Magic play basketball is a sacred place. Whether it be the old Orlando Arena or the Kia Center of today, any stadium that houses Magic basketball is not just a stadium to him; it is a temple for some of the most exciting basketball around the world. Like any temple, Salvagio expects proper reverence and behavior from those who walk into the doors of Church Street’s finest place of basketball worship. When someone on the Magic makes a contested three-pointer, celebrate as though you just won the NBA Finals. When public address announcer Paul Porter tells you to stand and cheer, you better be on your feet. And most importantly, you must follow the dress code. Magic jerseys, shirts and any other blue and white clothing are mandatory.
Renowned director Spike Lee apparently did not receive Salvagio’s rules of entry before attending a Magic game against his New York Knicks. Salvagio spotted him sitting in his section at the Orlando Arena five rows ahead of him, clad in Knicks attire from head to toe. Salvagio scoffed. Not only was Lee wearing orange and blue inside this place of Magic worship, but he was doing so in Salvagio’s section. It didn’t matter if he was more famous than Salvagio, who had begun to bring headshots of himself to Magic games to sign autographs for kids who would ask. Lee was still breaking one of his rules. He had to be humbled. So Salvagio found a marker, signed the headshots and gave them to Lee as if the director were a fan.
“I’ll never forget it,” said Chris Salvagio, who was with his father at that game. “I’m just like, ‘Oh my God,’ I’m floored. I’m like, ‘My dad is so badass.’”
When he’s sitting in Sec. 116 of the Kia Center, Salvagio is no longer just Salvagio. He becomes The Fat Guy, the No. 1 fan of the Orlando Magic, the unofficial king of the crowd. It doesn’t matter if you’re a celebrity, a fan of an opposing team or both. At the stadium, anything Salvagio says goes. If he yells at you to scream your lungs out for his team, it is your sworn duty to do as you’re told. If he finds you sitting in your seat whenever the Magic are down late, you won’t be in that seat for much longer. Anyone present at a Magic game must cheer for the Magic. It’s Salvagio’s job to enforce that rule.
This job isn’t one that Salvagio takes out of reluctance. He shines the spotlight on himself, and he does so with great pleasure. It’s a job he’s cherished ever since the Bullets game over 30 years ago. He loves sharing his passion with the crowd, and few things make him happier than seeing fans show that passion back. In his younger years, he would run and visit every corner of the stadium to excite the crowd, stopping only to catch his breath. When he wasn’t running around, he would perform stunts with Stuff. The stadium would turn from a lackluster gathering to a vibrant jamboree because of Salvagio’s motivation. Over the last thirty years, he’s become the motivator. The instigator. The heart and soul of the audience. The Fat Guy.
His legacy in Orlando is just as strong as the players themselves. Many in Orlando are fans of the Magic’s biggest fan. He’s regularly greeted by Magic fans who recognize him on the walk back from Magic games, at the mall, at restaurants, and anywhere else they see him. Sometimes he’ll even get recognized in places he travels to while on vacation, places he says people should not recognize him in.
“When you hear somebody yelling, ‘Hey fat guy! Hey fat guy!’ in the Colosseum,” Salvagio said, “You gotta wonder whether it’s you or not.”
Salvagio didn’t want any of this attention at first, but he still let it happen with that first call to Marx. But for years after becoming The Fat Guy, he never figured out why he was supposed to let this happen. Sure, he now gets treated like royalty by wait staff that know of him, and he’s even received more clients at his work because of it. But surely, the changes couldn’t only result in a little more prestige. There’s got to be some kind of greater purpose.
It hit him eventually. Why not use his stardom to make the world a better place?
Salvagio established “A Night Out With The Fat Guy,” where he would auction off two Magic tickets with proceeds going to a different charity for each game. He would take the winning bidders out to dinner at Kres Chophouse in Orlando before attending that night’s game with them. He also helped initiate “The Fat Guy’s Open,” a golf tournament that lasted for 25 years and raised money for the Foundation for Seminole County Public Schools and their Frank J. Bracco Memorial Scholarship.
Salvagio particularly enjoyed attending local schools and speaking to their students. He would regularly tell kids some stories from his life, often with lessons about allowing life to happen instead of forcing an outcome. Sometimes he’d give out school-wide awards, and other times he would captivate students with anecdotes of his many travel episodes or even about the Magic. But every time, he makes a lasting impression on those kids.
“People come up to him after the games and they go, ‘Hey, I remember you came to our school when I was a kid,’” Mary Salvagio said. “And here they are, they’re in their 30s and 40s.”
Salvagio hasn’t just used his newfound fame to better the lives of others; he’s also used it to better himself. Ever since the cameras first pointed his way, he’s recognized that he has a newfound responsibility to be kind to those who admire him, influencing him to become more aware of how he treats others. He does his best to sign autographs and talk basketball with those who approach him.
However, Salvagio’s primary goal — which he has had long before he became The Fat Guy — is to create a better version of himself each day. He takes time to understand and show compassion to others, even if he disagrees with some of their actions or behaviors. That level of empathy isn’t always innate for Salvagio, but pursuing that empathy has allowed him to become a better husband, a better friend and a better father.
Salvagio even learned to understand why his father wronged him as a child. Throughout his law career, he would listen to the testimonies of his clients, asking them not just whether they committed the crimes they were accused of, but what drove them to commit them if so. Many of those clients gave Salvagio stomach-churning details about their childhood and backgrounds, and several of them claimed to have lost a parent when they were young.
These stories sounded familiar to Salvagio. They sounded like the story of his father, whose mother died shortly after he was born. He never received the emotional support of a mother growing up, like many others in his life did. Realizing this helped Salvagio gain a different perspective on the man who tormented his childhood. His father became less of a villain to him, and more of a man who never had an opportunity to be a hero. Salvagio was thankful to have made that mental shift before his father died in 1999, even if contact between them became limited once he moved from Philadelphia.
That didn’t excuse any of the trauma Salvagio experienced as a child. Long before he even had kids, he swore to Mary that he was going to right the wrongs of his father. He made good on that promise. Salvagio never once disciplined them with any act of violence. He made sure to keep his temper in control and made sure that punishments for his kids were fair and just. He even stopped drinking a few days after Anthony was born. Salvagio raised his kids the way he wishes he was raised.
“Everything I did was based on the fact that I wanted to be better than [my father] was.”
Even years after they have moved out of the house, Salvagio’s children still maintain a close relationship with their father. They visit him whenever they can, often eating out and seeing movies together. Though Muhizi lives in Charlotte now, Muhizi’s children look forward to seeing their Papa D whenever they find themselves in the same place.
Being a grandfather has been an additional blessing for Salvagio. There are few greater joys for him than watching Muhizi’s kids grow the same way Salvagio watched his own kids grow. But that joy came with some struggle, especially early on. He couldn’t keep up with his grandkids being The Fat Guy. Even moving around the house became a strain with his increasing age and stagnant weight.
Salvagio had been trying to lose weight even before he became a Magic fan. He worked out regularly and tried dieting on multiple occasions. But every time he lost a significant amount of weight, he gained it all back. Around two and a half years ago, he cut out sugar and white bread from his diet while continuing to work out. He noticed progress. Sustainable progress. The number on his scale kept getting lower and lower until it reached 167 pounds, where it sits now. He comes out of workouts feeling much more rejuvenated than ever before. He’s in far less pain when he moves around. He feels happier and stronger than he’s ever been, especially when he plays with his grandkids. At 75 years old, Salvagio is nearly unrecognizable from the 42-year-old man Bill Marx devoted his poem to.
“Everybody tells me at the games, ‘What are you gonna do? They can’t call you The Fat Guy anymore!’” Salvagio said. “Well, The Fat Guy’s been established. He’s just thinner.”
The Fat Guy has never been an insult to Salvagio. It was — and is — a way of life. To be a fat guy does not mean weighing more than some of the seven-foot centers on the basketball court. It means that you fight for what you love and turn pivotal moments in your life into blessings for yourself and your loved ones. Are you fueled by the love of your family and friends and will do anything to see them happy? Then you’re a fat guy. Will you change your lifestyle after contracting a serious illness or disease? You’re a fat guy. Do you work, practice, study or train harder after someone tells you that you’re not good enough at something you’re passionate about? You are, without a doubt, one fat guy.
Anyone can be a fat guy if they heed the lessons that Salvagio learned throughout his life. That’s why he still goes to games wearing those bright blue and white costumes that say “Fat Guy” on them. Because he will always be The Fat Guy, even if he no longer looks like one. Salvagio embodies every characteristic of The Fat Guy to its fullest no matter where he sits, whether it’s the seat he used to have at his law office, his seat at his dinner table or his seat at Kia Center. He’ll always rise from that seat whenever his former clients, his family or the Magic are down with one quarter to go.
“He always comes out on top,” Chris Salvagio said. “No matter personally, professionally, or, you know, magically.”
