SALSA TIME

“Get out of here!”

That was Victor Cruz’s reaction when he came off a practice field in Indianapolis and was told that earlier in the day, while giving a press conference for her upcoming performance in the Super Bowl XLVI Halftime Show, none other than Madonna had broken into a salsa dance on stage in his honor.

Shock. Awe. Bewilderment.

That’s when you know you’ve made it.

By the time Madonna was shimmying her hips and shuffling her feet, of course, Cruz had become an NFL sensation. His unique way of celebrating his touchdown receptions and honoring his Puerto Rican heritage had already become legendary. The Madonna homage put it over the top, made it mainstream. But it was just four months earlier that Cruz was a virtual unknown, a player who had blown his first opportunity to make an impression in a regular-season game, was awaiting his second, and knew that he would not get a third.

That first chance came in the 2011 opener against the Redskins when Cruz dropped what would have been a crucial first down in a loss. The Giants didn’t want to stick around to see if an undrafted player from the University of Massachusetts would rebound and become a productive member of their team, so they signed veteran Brandon Stokley who was an experienced slot receiver. He helped them win their Week 2 game against the Rams but was injured in the process. The Giants had no choice but to turn back to Cruz as they faced the Eagles in Philadelphia in Week 3.

He started and wound up catching three passes for 110 yards with touchdowns of 74 and 28 yards. But what really caught everyone’s eye was what he did when he reached the end zone.

Victor Cruz emerged from nowhere and became one of the most beloved Giants of all time thanks to his timely catches and his posttouchdown salsa dancing. (Newsday LLC/Jim McIsaac)

Mike Sullivan, the Giants’ wide receivers coach, had been in Cruz’s ear leading up to that September 25 game. It was Hispanic Heritage Month, and Sullivan wanted Cruz to do something special that would represent his culture and ethnicity, something to honor not only Puerto Ricans, but all Latin people.

“He was like, ‘You gotta dance in the end zone!’” Cruz said.

Cruz said he would but later admitted it was just to get Sullivan out of his face.

“Low and behold, early in the game, I catch a pass and I’m going down the sideline and I’m about at the 5-yard line, and in my head I am like, ‘Man, I gotta do this dance now,’” Cruz said. “I put the ball down and I just started dancing. I got really into it once I started doing it, and it kind of took a life of its own after that.”

It was Cruz’s grandmother who taught him the dance. In his autobiography, Out of the Blue, he wrote that she used dance instruction to focus his attention and energy when he was a rambunctious five-year-old bouncing off the walls of the family’s apartment.

“We did it all—the merengue, the bachata, and the samba,” he wrote. “My favorite dance of all, though, was the salsa. She’d put her favorite Tito Puente vinyl record on the record player, and we’d dance for hours in the kitchen. Papi would smile and laugh, sipping on his black coffee in his rocking chair.”

After that first touchdown, breaking tackle attempts from Kurt Coleman and Nnamdi Asomugha, Cruz wrote in his book: “Without much second thought, I broke out the very same salsa dance my grandmother had taught me on East Twentieth Street twenty years before. Step, step, step. Move your arms. Shake your hips. The salsa!”

The Giants won the game, and afterward, when Cruz spoke with his mother, he was told that his grandmother loved the tribute. Not only that, but she now wanted him to do it after every touchdown he scored.

“It was kind of the first game for me,” Cruz said of that day in Philadelphia. “Obviously I got a start, I got an opportunity, and I made the best of it. It’s kind of where the Victor Cruz story originated.”

It was actually a little over a year earlier that Victor Cruz was introduced to most of the sports-watching, NFL-following world. On August 16, 2010, he scored three second-half touchdowns in a preseason win over the Jets on national television. LeBron James tweeted about it, adding to the sensation. Rex Ryan, the coach of the Jets, told Tom Coughlin after the game: “I don’t know who number 3 is, but holy shit!”

The headlines in the papers the following day were all about… Eli Manning. The Giants quarterback had been knocked out of the exhibition game early, taking a hit from linebacker Calvin Pace that jarred his helmet loose and caused a bloody gash on his forehead. Cruz was an after-deadline afterthought.

But it was a week before that game—August 11, to be exact—that Cruz first entered anyone’s consciousness. It was a hot day in Albany at Giants training camp, and the team was suffering a spate of injuries at wide receiver. Steve Smith was unavailable. So too was Sinorice Moss. Coughlin was asked about the status of the group.

“Victor Cruz!” he shouted. “What do we need anybody for? We’ve got Victor Cruz!”

Then, after a beat and in response to a mix of polite giggles and blank stares from the audience, Coughlin added: “I’m serious.”

Cruz had made a one-handed “catch” along the sideline in practice that morning (he landed out of bounds but held onto the ball) and had shown an ability to get open on some deep passes throughout camp, but there was no real indication yet that the undrafted rookie who wore the number 3 jersey would become one of the most popular players in team history. Only Coughlin’s words.

“It feels good just to get in there and get some reps,” Cruz said that day. “Some of the guys are hurt, so I’m just filling in and trying to get the plays down pat and play my role a little bit.”

It turned out, all those years later, Cruz remembered that day, too. For all the passes he caught, all the accolades he achieved, even for the championship he helped win, Cruz said on the day he was released by the team in 2017 that his “favorite moment” as a Giant was catching Coughlin’s eye on that day in Albany.

“Rookies don’t impress Coach Coughlin very often,” Cruz recalled. “To be able to turn Coach Coughlin’s head and have him say something about me and really appreciate my talent level was a beautiful thing.”

Cruz went from an obscure kid out of UMass and nearby Paterson, New Jersey, all the way to superstardom and a Super Bowl.

“Justice has been served,” Coughlin said the night Cruz, the hustling rookie, caught those three preseason touchdowns against the Jets and cannonballed into New York’s sports lore.

He made the team that year—the Giants couldn’t very well cut him and try to get him on the practice squad without other teams gobbling him up, most notably the Jets, where Ryan had vowed to sign him if the Giants got rid of him—but was stashed on injured reserve with a hamstring injury a month into the season. The following season, 2011, he was back.

Despite the slow start, he wound up catching 82 passes for 1,536 yards and earned a Pro Bowl invite. He also caught nine touchdowns that season. Nine salsas.

And then, after going three postseason games without reaching the end zone, he caught a touchdown against the Patriots in the biggest game of the season.

Madonna never did do the salsa on the actual Super Bowl Sunday stage as part of her show.

But Victor Cruz did.