On the Life of a Sports Fan… And His Son

Talked to my father on FaceTime yesterday. We caught up on Pitt basketball – they might actually be good enough to make this year’s tourney – and the Penguins – how soon will their three best defensemen return, and will it be too late to make the playoffs? 

He asked if I agreed if Kenny Pickett’s Steelers would’ve beaten Buffalo if they coulda just snuck in as a wildcard. (My answer: One hundred-and-EIGHT percent.)

Long story short, pretty standard stuff for us. Except it wasn’t. Matter of fact, my mother and sister marveled at how lucid he’d become talking about our teams. And I guess it was kinda surprising, given how he’s struggling these days to understand how the clock in his hospital room works.

He can’t tell time but he can tell you the Steelers would win a hypothetical game next Sunday. 

Lot of irony like that going around these days. He’s a retired doctor lying in the hospital where he worked. The man who taught me it’s polite to stand when adults approach to say hello is now gonna have to learn to stand on his own again. Long story short, he’s in a tough spot.

Johnny Cash lamented being stuck in Folsom Prison while that train outside kept on rollin’ ‘round the bend. My father can probably empathize right now, but of course sports are a better mode of transportation than that whistle-blowin’ train. We can all jump on for the endless ride that lets us revisit past stations and look ahead to what’s around the bend. Sports make sure time doesn’t keep draggin’ on. They leave us unbound: They take us back, and give us something to look forward to tomorrow or next week or next season. They give us something to hope for…and like that other jailbird Andy Dufresne counseled, hope is the good thing. 

They say life is short, but it can be long, too. The older I get, I think I remember the memory of some memories more than the actual memories. Know what I mean? But not with sports. Those memories couldn’t be clearer.

And when I say ‘sports’, I mean walking up Cardiac Hill with him into Pitt Stadium for a game. And the notes he’d leave me on Tuesday mornings with the final score of the Monday Night Football game. (I was only allowed to watch through Cosell’s halftime highlights.)  And how when I was in the third grade he got me into his office’s NFL confidence pool – and even paid my buy-in! And how sometimes on nights the Pens were playing in the Igloo, he’d drive from downtown in rush hour to pick up my sister and me, then drive right back downtown so we could go to the game. Pretty nice of him considering he’d leave the house for work before 5 every morning. 

I’m (fairly) sure the proudest achievement of his life is his kids, unless it was becoming an oncologist best known not for knowing more than his colleagues about white blood cell counts, but for how he dealt with sick patients and their families, and how to talk with and amuse and distract those people from the gravity of their personal circumstances. In other words, he did for them what sports have done for him…and for the rest of us fans, too.

Mentioned in this space a couple weeks ago that he attended the Immaculate Reception game, and not many years after that he started bringing my sister and me along with him. A half century later, on Christmas eve, my sister and her two grown boys went to the stadium in subzero temps to pay tribute to Franco Harris, but by the end, whether they grasp it or not, Kenny Pickett threw my nephews a memory they’ll hold onto for the rest of their lives.

By the way, for all my waxing, none of it’s to suggest sports serve as mere distraction. I’m certainly not coming at this from the “Lighten up, it’s just sports” point of view. No-no. Whatever else ails him, my old man can still summon the strength to bellyache about Bucky Dent in Fenway, the Pens almost upsetting the Islanders in ‘82, or the Steelers passing on Dan Marino in the ‘84 Draft.  And because the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I’ll concede the degree to which my emotional wellbeing depends upon the success or failure of my teams is, according to some people (my wife), silly. 

Don’t let me get in the way of your complaints about who should be your team’s offensive coordinator, or who needs to be cut, or how your team is doomed for the next decade. I will, though, encourage you to at least drink in the good moments. Take some actual pleasure from ‘em. If your favorite football team is playing a (real, not hypothetical) Divisional Round game this weekend, enjoy it, preferably with your family and pals who care as much as you do. Otherwise, and I ask this sincerely, why are you wasting your time? In the end it’s the journey – those moments in time you capture along the way – that matter more than the destination on this ride.

Over the weekend I sent my father videos of some of his favorite games: Red Sox over the Yanks in G7 of the ’04 ALCS. Steelers over Vikings in Super Bowl IX. Pitt over Syracuse to win their first Big East title in ’88. Pens over Bruins to get to the Stanley Cup Final in ’91. Probably was redundant, though, because what’s clear, at least clearer than most of his thoughts these days, is how he’s held onto all those games and seasons, good and bad. He’ll bend your ear about any of it, from arch nemeses like Joe Paterno, Jim Boeheim and Enos Slaughter to his favorites, Ted Williams, Tony Dorsett and Mario Lemieux, the last of whom he’d tell you has the greatest golf swing he’s ever seen. 

Ah yes, I should mention my old man also loved golf. Taught me how to swing a club, but I never got as good as he was: Six holes-in-one lifetime, seven if you count the one he got at a Delaware-based par 3. (He does.) Ugly hitch in his swing and not a big hitter, but a wiz around the green, which he explained was his secret in beating guys who were longer off the tee: “They think they’ve got you when they’re on the green in regulation while you’re 20 yards off in the rough. But when I throw it close to the pin for an up-and-down, the pressure to two-putt really gets ‘em.” (No one said sports aren’t more fun when you win.)

For the record, he’s been around to see his teams – the Celtics, Red Sox, Steelers, Pitt, Pirates and Penguins – win a combined 33 titles. But now he talks like he’s looking forward to another one. One way or the other, he’ll be with us when it happens.

Life is long, but it can be short, too. All of sudden, the clock feels like it’s moving more quickly than usual. C’mon, time, keep draggin’ on! The pressure’s on my old man. He’s 20 yards in the rough. Hope he’s got one more ugly swing left in him. It sure would be great to keep this ride going.

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(Last week: 5-1 ATS)

The Picks:

Chiefs -8.5

JAX/KC u53

The Picks:

Eagles -7.5

NYG/PHI o48

The Picks:

Bengals +5.5

CIN/BUF o48

The Picks:

Cowboys +4

DAL/SF o46