Havertown native Chris Falcone fought Leafs enforcer Tie Domi in the penalty box 25 years ago — and remains a local legend

Chris Falcone was eating at Chickie’s and Pete’s in Drexel Hill a few weeks ago when a friendly stranger approached him. He’d recently watched a video compilation of the “50 most bizarre moments in sports” and recognized the 61-year-old contractor.

The stranger decided to buy Falcone lunch.

“I think it was a crab cake and a hamburger,” Falcone said with a chuckle. “He says I’m the man.”

This isn’t an atypical occurrence for the Havertown native. Falcone has been routinely stopped in public since the fateful day he dove over — or better to say, through — the glass at what was then called the First Union Center.

It was March 29, 2001. The Flyers were playing the Toronto Maple Leafs, and enforcer Tie Domi was sitting in the penalty box, where he was being heckled by surrounding fans.

Domi, who could not be reached for comment for this story, told reporters after the game that the spectators “threw stuff” at him, and that he warned he’d squirt water if they continued.

They did, and the player made good on his promise. Falcone insists that one squirt wouldn’t have sent him flying. It was the squirts that followed that he took issue with.

“He was squirting the old guy [in the front]. You know?” he said. “Once, OK, great. But he squirted it three times. And the third time I decided to do something.”

Falcone lunged toward the glass, which gave way and sent him tumbling into the penalty box. An unfortunate sequence of events followed. Domi pulled Falcone’s jacket over his eyes, so he couldn’t see. A referee burst in, pulling the fan toward the door, which hit Falcone in the forehead, giving him a bloody gash.

A few more game officials rushed over to separate the notorious NHL bruiser and the concrete worker. Instead of walking off the ice, Falcone climbed over the glass he’d just busted through, before being escorted to a security office.

“I got four older brothers,” he said. “So I can take a beating.”

The moment was instantly immortalized in Philadelphia sports lore. Falcone said his phone didn’t stop ringing for “a week and a half.” People left dozens of voicemails at his concrete business, approximately “90 percent of them positive.”

Falcone heard from cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings. His parents, who were vacationing in Europe, also gave him a call.

They didn’t waste time with niceties.

“My dad just said, ‘Jesus.’ Doesn’t say, ‘Hello,’” Falcone said. “‘What the hell did you do?’

“And then you can hear my mom in the back. ‘Is he all right? Christopher, are you all right?’”

Falcone has been stopped for autographs. He’s been repeatedly told “great job” by people he’s never met.

And 25 years later, the story still comes up, at least “every two weeks.”

“They say stuff to me all the time,” Falcone said.

The moment was not a blur for the concrete worker. Falcone said he was completely sober at the time. He described his emotional state as “good” when he took his legendary leap.

After a brief talking-to from the security guards at the First Union Center, who cautioned that the fan was in “big trouble,” he said he left with no charges.

(Nowadays, he would have been in violation of the NHL Fan Code of Conduct, and could have received a number of punishments, including a lifetime ban from league events. Also, the glass around the penalty box is higher and thicker than it was in the early 2000s.)

Domi received a $1,000 fine from the NHL.

Neither man backed down in the ensuing days.

Domi claimed he was defending linesman Kevin Collins.

“I was just standing up for Kevin,” he told local media. “The guy leaned over and went through the glass and began swinging, and I was not going to let anyone take a swing at me. I don’t care who it was. He was in my territory.”

Falcone had a different version of events: That he didn’t jump into the box, but rather, was after Domi’s water bottle.

“I was drenched,” he told The Inquirer in 2001. “If I wasn’t so wet, I wouldn’t have done anything.”

He added: “You go to the game, you pay good money, and you get a creep like that squirting at you?”

Almost exactly two years later, on March 28, 2003, Falcone filed a lawsuit against Domi, the NHL, the Maple Leafs, and Comcast Spectator.

The suit came just before the two-year statute of limitations ran out. In it, the concrete worker alleged that the incident had cost him business, and that Comcast was negligent for installing a glass partition that didn’t hold up.

The lawsuit was dismissed a few months later, but Falcone appealed, seemingly unwilling to let it go.

Then, in early 2004, he got a phone call from an unknown number.

It was Domi.

“I said, ‘Is this really you?’” Falcone recalled. “I said, ‘Give me your number, and I’ll call you back.’”

Once Falcone had confirmed the NHL player’s identity, Domi proposed an idea. The Maple Leafs were scheduled to play the Flyers in Philadelphia on March 18. Why not meet in person and hash everything out?

Falcone agreed. After the game, he waited for Domi in a hallway in the bowels of the Wachovia Center, accompanied by two friends, and “approximately 20 security guards.”

The extra surveillance wasn’t necessary. The two foes embraced each other like old friends.

“We just laughed, hugged, shook hands,” Falcone said.

“He’s a nice guy, he really is,” Domi told The Toronto Star. “He has four kids, and he works hard. As soon as we met we started laughing at it.”

Falcone decided to drop the lawsuit. As a gift, Domi gave the family four tickets to Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Flyers in Toronto.

(Ironically, the enforcer spent some time in the penalty box for high-sticking that night, but relatively speaking, this was a more leisurely stay.)

The concrete worker harbors no ill will. He said that the issue has been “resolved” and maintains that Domi is a “nice guy.”

But Falcone does have one regret.

“I wouldn’t have worn a jacket,” he said. “That’s it.”