DiMasi, the House's first Italian-American speaker, grew up next to the Old North Church in the North End, in a cold-water tenement heated by a kerosene stove in the kitchen. His grandparents lived downstairs. The toilet was in the hallway. The shower was two blocks away, at the neighborhood bathhouse. He says he started playing football and basketball in school so he wouldn't have to feel ashamed about showering there.

"We used to play pimpleball against the church wall," DiMasi says, standing outside his boyhood home. "Every time I walk through this fence, I feel like I'm going to get chased out by the vicars." (The church long ago took its revenge: When Hurricane Carol hit in 1954, the steeple fell on top of DiMasi's father's car.) Back then, DiMasi says, "all the kids were afraid of our parents," though it's his grandmother who sounds particularly terrifying: "She could hit you with a shoe from 20 feet away. She was better than Tom Brady!" DiMasi wasn't bad himself: Before an injury derailed his football career, he received a call from a recruiter representing Notre Dame—"back when that meant something."

DiMasi returns to stories about his neighborhood often when explaining his political views. "If somebody was out of work injured, we'd bring food over," he says. "When much has been given to you, much is expected for you to give in return. That's what we do around here." His friends and House colleagues frequently repeat this spiel verbatim, retelling the stories of Sal's youth, and not a detail out of place. It's become lore. But just because it's well rehearsed doesn't mean it's an act. Jack Connors, the legendary cofounder of Hill, Holliday, and chairman of Partners HealthCare, saw firsthand DiMasi's empathy when the speaker was brokering the state's healthcare reform. "When people began to talk about what a difference this would make in the lives of those who didn't have healthcare, I saw tears well up in his eyes. This is a guy who really cares. This is not some game he's playing."

In 1976, a 31-year-old DiMasi lost his first race for state representative. He was challenging an incumbent, and came up 140 votes short in a four-way contest. Two years later, the seat opened up, and he won it in a tight seven-way race. He wasted little time establishing a reputation for being willing to take swings at heavyweights. In 1981, Kevin White, the most powerful mayor Boston had ever seen, pressed the State House to pass a $75 million budget bailout, claiming he needed the money to hire cops. DiMasi intimated that White might just funnel the money back into his sprawling political machine, and called for restrictions on how the funds could be spent. White responded by calling DiMasi a quisling in the papers, and took out a billboard against the young rep that essentially said if residents called 9-1-1 and nobody showed up, it was this guy's fault. Boston cops began ticketing and towing the cars of DiMasi's campaign contributors. And through it all, DiMasi basked in the limelight the conflict brought. He gave a television interview and said, "The mayor is harassing people in my neighborhood to extort my vote. I said, ‘People in my community voted for me to be in office so that I would do the right thing, and that's what I'm gonna do.'" In the end, the bailout went through, with the restrictions.

Four years later, DiMasi would be presented with the opportunity to take a whack at another giant when he and his buddy Tom Finneran (the two sat next to each other as freshmen reps) put themselves on the track to leadership by helping overthrow Tom McGee, the autocratic House boss from Lynn. "He was a strong, do-as-I-say speaker, and he wouldn't leave," DiMasi recalls. "Even though his time had come." The last House revolt, 20 years earlier, had failed, and the retribution that followed shattered careers. This time, however, the rebellion, led by Everett's George Keverian, succeeded. DiMasi and Finneran both netted chairmanships; just over a year later, DiMasi was heading the influential Judiciary Committee. However bold the move appears in retrospect, the pair likely wouldn't have risked angering McGee if the speaker had had the votes to hold on to his post. But they read the political winds correctly, broke in front of them, and profited handsomely.

During his 30 years in the legislature, DiMasi has come to deeply respect the House's role in shaping state affairs, as he'll tell you, repeatedly. He has also seen how well-intentioned but myopic policy can have disastrous consequences for the chamber's standing (not to mention its members' reelection campaigns), such as when, back in 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis pushed through a bill mandating universal healthcare. The business community had opposed the legislation fiercely, and after the bill was passed against their wishes, they rallied and managed to get it repealed before it was ever implemented. The lesson was that big legislation has to be consensus legislation, or else it won't survive.

Things would get worse in the years that followed, as the state suffered through a fiscal crisis brought on by chronic overspending. With the economy crippled, social programs had to be cut, and Speaker Keverian found himself in the unenviable position of having to enlist support for a multibillion-dollar tax increase. Twenty-five representatives and state senators lost their seats in the aftermath, and another 32 chose not to seek reelection. DiMasi, though, was spared: He was home recuperating from a minor cardiac episode. Keverian had called him up and asked if he was well enough to come to Beacon Hill and help vote through the hike. DiMasi's response prefigured his dealings with Deval Patrick: "Mr. Speaker," he said, "with all due respect, I'm home recovering from a heart attack, not a lobotomy."