“Roberto Clemente, that was the first guy I think I had on my wall as a young kid in the late sixties,” the Dallas Cowboys’ coach said in his office at The Star earlier this week of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Hall of Fame outfielder. “He dominated in the ’60s and the early ’70s in baseball.”

Mention the college football games at Pitt and it is as if he can still see running back Tony Dors-itt — he didn’t become Tony Dors-ett until he came to the Cowboys — run for a touchdown.

“My dad would always be like, ‘Hey, pay attention, keep your eyes open. He’s going to break one. Thirty-three is going to break one,'” McCarthy said. “It was just a matter of when, not if.”

After attending mass on Sundays and cleaning his father’s bar, it was time to watch the Steelers.

“I could name the whole defense [from then] probably still today,” McCarthy said, and then he does.

McCarthy has not lived in Pittsburgh since 1992, but it’s still home. Always will be. He still sounds like he is from there, growing up in Greenfield, just a few miles from dahn-town.

This week, McCarthy returns home for the first time as coach of the Cowboys (2-2) to take on the Steelers (3-1), who still play in the same spot where the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers meet. Gone is Three Rivers Stadium. Acrisure Stadium is the Steelers’ home now.

McCarthy’s parents, Joe and Ellen, still live there, not far from the Greenfield Ave. homes where they raised five children. Now, they’re up on a bluff next to McCarthy’s sisters Ellen and Kellie. Colleen lives nearby too. They will all be at the game Sunday, as well as other friends and family. With help of the Rooney family, McCarthy was able to secure a suite.

“Between our people and their people, we were able to get what we needed,” McCarthy said.

On Saturday night, his first stop will be at the mausoleum at Calvary Catholic Cemetery, where his younger brother, Joe, rests after passing in 2015. Then he will drive to his parents’ house and spend time with family.

“It’s always a special opportunity,” said Kellie McCaffrey, one of Mike’s sisters, who is the senior director at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. “He has been in the NFL for 30 years now and it’s so intense, but we’re always happy to get the chance to see him. I know he’s focused on the business at hand and we’re absolutely thrilled to support him and his team.”

McCarthy wishes the Cowboys were staying closer to downtown Pittsburgh instead of out by the airport.

“I’ll take the scenic route to the house because it’s always cool to ride through the neighborhood,” McCarthy said.

They will have some pizza from his favorite spot, Aiello’s, but his mother will also cook up a feast.

“My mom is a great cook,” Kellie said, adding, “She pretty much sets the menu. He’ll be happy with whatever she makes.”

But he can still claim bragging rights over his hometown team. More on that later.

“Growing up in Pittsburgh, I am so proud to be from there. I think the generation that I grew up in, I don’t know, it couldn’t have been any better growing up right there in the city,” McCarthy said. “Our neighborhood is Greenfield. We’re one of the first neighborhoods right out of downtown Pittsburgh. You can jump on the 56E on a Saturday morning and go run around downtown Pittsburgh. As long as you’re up for dinner, your parents didn’t even know you left the neighborhood. Just so many great times.”

The steel mills were “busting at the seams,” McCarthy said of his childhood. Neighborhoods were filled with kids. The Greenfield Ave. kids would play games against kids on Exeter St. and then Loretto Rd. and so on down the neighborhoods.

Sometimes they would go to Pitt Stadium and grab a football out of the locker room. They would play a pickup game on the same field their sports heroes played. When the grounds crew shooed them away, they would go to Carnegie Mellon University.

“No one was on them fields,” McCarthy said.

In the summertime, the pool at Magee Park would open at 10 a.m. Two baseball fields. Two basketball courts. They were always busy. It was just about a 10-block walk — or sprint — from his home.

“Then you went home for lunch, went back down, went home for dinner, went back down, and then you had to be home when the streetlights came on,” McCarthy said. “But then once you figured out most of the fun started after the streetlights came on, you’d ask to stay out later. But no, hell, I can remember being out there in high school playing basketball ’til 1 o’clock in the morning because the police, they were worried about other people running around.

“Looking back on it, it was like having your own country club.”

McCarthy was almost 8 when the Pirates won the World Series in 1971. The “We Are Family” Pirates won it again in 1979.

He saw the Immaculate Reception by Franco Harris on a black-and-white television when the Steelers beat the Oakland Raiders in 1972. He was devastated a week later when the Steelers lost to the Miami Dolphins in the AFC Championship Game.

But then the Steelers won four Super Bowls in a five-year span. Twice they beat the Cowboys (Super Bowl X and XIII). The Steel Curtain was born.

“It was just such a phenomenal time to grow up in the ’70s in Pittsburgh,” he said.