The city of Stamford, CT is known for corporate headquarters and a popular stop on the commuter train to New York. Just north of downtown stands Scalzi Park, named in honor of a 1931 Georgetown alumnus who starred in three sports over his time at the Hilltop, including basketball.

"Collectively speaking, Scalzi was probably the greatest competitor in Stamford history," wrote Stamford Advocate sports editor Moe Magliola in 1983. Scalzi earned as many as 14 letters for sports at Stamford HS in football, basketball, and baseball, owing to the fact that he entered school a year early in 1922. Upon his graduation in 1927, he enrolled at Georgetown, where his success was legendary in very sport he played.

The 5-7, 170 lb. Scalzi competed as a quarterback, punter, and kick returner on the gridiron, and excelled at both. A 95 yard kickoff return against West Virginia and Michigan State brought Scalzi and the Hoyas national recognition, while Scalzi would also deal with the coverage of a 2-0 loss to NYU at Yankee Stadium when it was determined that Scalzi stepped on the goal line for a punt, leading to a safety and the margin of defeat.

"Johnny Scalzi, quarterback, who distinguished himself time and time again by his long runs, accurate passing and punting," wrote the 1931 Ye Domesday Booke, "and who at the end of the season was awarded the Joseph A. Wilner Trophy as Georgetown's most valuable player by vote of the student body."

Scalzi played two seasons on the basketball team, with his junior year lost to an appendectomy. He saw action in 20 of 21 games as a senior with a 3.2 points per game average. Following college, he played club basketball with the Stamford University Club for five seasons, part of a busy post-graduate tenure in which he played for the National League's Boston Braves, the NFL's Brooklyn Dodgers, and as an assistant football coach at Columbia and Manhattan.

Despite his renown in football and basketball, Scalzi was best known in baseball, and was signed right out of graduation in 1931 by the Boston Braves for the 1931 season. He later served as an umpire in the minor leagues and the president of the Colonial league, a Class B league in New England, from 1948 to 1950. The owner of the Scalzi Brothers paint supply business in Stamford, he enjoyed a long career supporting baseball in Stamford, and was invited by the New York Mets to serve as a scout during the 1962 season. On September 27, 1962, returning home to Stamford from the Polo Grounds following a player tryout, Scalzi was killed in an auto accident on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

For his efforts in football, John Scalzi was posthumously selected to the Georgetown University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1964.