‘Basketball Bo’ a way for Sidewalk Sam to fight mental illness
Adam Jack Pelley wears several hats: custodian, wrestler, and writer. He showcased his writing skills with his most recent book, Basketball Bo, the story of a basketball player dealing with schizophrenia.
Pelley, who wrestles as Sidewalk Sam, got the idea for this book from his personal experiences as he also deals with schizophrenia.
“The battle of schizophrenia teaches you different aspects, inspirations and ideas. And I try to put that on paper,” Pelley told SlamWrestling.net from his home in Halifax. “I said in an interview a couple of weeks ago schizophrenia can be a burden and a blessing, but I try to put that on the page.”
Pelley, originally from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1999 at the age of 19. He decided to try his hand at writing when he had a relapse with his mental illness in 2007; while confined to a hospital bed, he put pen to paper, describing his own experiences.
The idea for Basketball Bo came from Pelley growing up playing basketball throughout high school and also his own times dealing with grief. The main character in the novel, Bo Tanner, goes through many ups and downs throughout the book. He deals with mental illness, death and homelessness; but how he faces these issues is what Pelley wants the readers to remember.
“Writing could be therapy as well, but just trying to get the stigma off of mental illness, and let people know how Basketball Bo can relate to my own story. I just write to try to relate what I’ve experienced to the world and hopefully, people can take that and learn a lesson from it,” he said. “If somebody can read my experience, relate to it, maybe if they have problems, they get help, just try to be an inspiration.”
Tanner faces loss on multiple occasions throughout Basketball Bo: he loses his mother to cancer, and his first love Sarah, who was named after Pelley’s high school girlfriend.
Pelley faced a loss of his own back in 2010 when he lost his father to cancer. “He was a big inspiration to me, meant a lot, great relationship. We started going to church together.”
His father also played a role in his love for basketball, as every time he would visit his father in Halifax he would get to play basketball at the Dalplex at Dalhousie University.
“I started playing ball when I was a kid and I grew up in a little community called Stoner, 10 miles outside of Lunenburg. We had a couple of baskets set up, so I’d go up to my friends and play and then come to Halifax to visit my dad and I’d play at the Dalplex,” said Pelley. “Basketball was my first love, even before wrestling. So I played a lot of basketball, learned a lot of things. I think I put that out there with Basketball Bo.”
Despite Bo Tanner facing so many tough situations, Pelley still wants there to be a positive outlook to the novel. He also credits Basketball Bo as being the first book he ever wrote (not the first he published) and also the most special to him.
“It kind of relates to my own situation as well, with schizophrenia and my love for basketball, I try to be an advocate for the homeless people here in Halifax and winding that all together. Hopefully, everything can be positive and when people read it, they can say, Hey, this is a great book,” he expressed. “The positive thing is love. And I think in Basketball Bo, the reader will read in the end that love was with him the whole time.”
When it comes to his writing, love is important, but the same cannot be said for one of Pelley’s other jobs. When he is not writing or working as a custodian at All Nations Church, he is beating down opponents as Sidewalk Sam.
The 45-year-old, Pelley has been wrestling since 2002. Starting his wrestling career as CN Power from Toronto (despite never actually having been to Toronto), but he eventually evolved into the homeless-like Sidewalk Sam.
“I just grew up loving it [wrestling]. I was looking through a paper one day and I saw an advertisement for MainStream Wrestling in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I went to the show, they had an advertisement for the training program and I did that. And then after a few months, I started wrestling,” he recalled.
Pelley credits Devin Chittick as his trainer and that came full circle for him as Chittick (working as X-Ray Kyle Kruze) was the person he faced in his first match.
“I think it was in the spring of 2003, he [Pelley] came in that afternoon and did an in-ring assessment, slash tryout, whatever you want to call it,” said Chittick. “And I had my reservations about him, just because of his look and his disposition, but he blew me out of the water, and he took a beating and came back the next week for more.”
From there, said Chittick, Pelley really started rolling. “Then he made his debut, I think, a year later. And, all of a sudden, as time went on, he became probably the most travelled Maritime wrestler there was at the time.”
Chittick was the one who trained him, but Pelley says nobody taught him more about the world of professional wrestling than Jason Rumble. They met each other in Maine at a wrestling show 20 years ago and have remained friends since. “The one person who taught me the most about wrestling and how the psychology in the ring goes would be Jason Rumble. If anybody taught me the most about pro wrestling, it would probably be him,” said Pelley.
Another big inspiration for Pelley was Vance Nevada (Vern May) from British Columbia. Pelley lived with Nevada for a month in the early 2000s while they worked with each other 20 different times across the province. Nevada is also responsible for getting Pelley the biggest opportunity of his career.
“He took me under his wing, he was the one that offered me the chance to work The Honky Tonk Man,” said Pelley. “He was working The Honky Tonk Man the whole tour and he came up to me after the last show of the tour and said, you worked so hard on this tour tonight you’re wrestling The Honky Tonk Man. So if it wasn’t for Vance, maybe I never would’ve wrestled. Honky.” HTM and Sidewalk Sam ended up working each other twice, in Digby, Nova Scotia, then in Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Pelley grew up a fan of The Honky Tonk Man and he ended up getting to wrestle him more than 20 times on tours of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. On top of the achievement of wrestling a WWE Hall of Famer, Pelley has also held several titles throughout his career. Including the New Wrestling Horizons Maine State Championship and the MainStream Wrestling Heavyweight Championship.
Dealing with schizophrenia, Pelley tries to not let that interfere with his wrestling, but he is forced to deal with it in every aspect of life. Being able to become a wrestler with the illness, has been a dream come true for Pelley.
“Wrestling’s like therapy and it gets me out and I’ve gotten back in the gym and it’s fun travelling from town to town, entertaining different people,” revealed Pelley. “I try not to get the illness in the way, but sometimes it’s there, but sometimes maybe wrestling’s one of the best things for the illness. It tries to give me a positive outlook on putting matches together and wrestling in front of crowds.”
Chittick believes fans watching Pelley as Sidewalk Sam would never know he was dealing with schizophrenia. So many wrestlers struggle to differentiate their real self to their character, but with Pelley that is not the case.
“When his music hits and he’s ready to crack that curtain, it’s like he has a switch that he can just turn off and he goes out there and performs like nobody’s business,” said Chittick. “You’d never think that he had any kind of ailment and then it’s just when he’s back through the curtain somehow he can just turn the switch off and he’s just the same humble Adam Pelley as before he went into the curtain.”
Basketball Bo becomes that much more special to Pelley because it is a combination of all versions of himself. Despite the book being fiction, the parts that are not true combined with Pelley’s real experiences created the life of Bo Tanner.
“My experience with schizophrenia, writing Basketball Bo, people I’ve met, my dad, and playing basketball as a kid, all came together and that’s why I put it on paper,” Pelley concluded. “So, I try not to get the stigma, people have a stigma about that [schizophrenia], and I try to maybe alleviate that through my writing and wrestling.”
