Happy Father's Day

Hello All,

My brother called me the other day with the following message:

“Hey man I am on the can with a real shy s*** right now, talk me through it. Dad didn’t pick up.”

My natural reaction, before hanging up, was to ask why I was the second choice to dad.

“I always call dad when I’m on the crapper. It’s our designated talk time. I like it because he helps me kill some time and he likes it because that means we talk like three times a day.”

I said "does he know this?"

To which my brother replied "would that ever not be the first thing I announced when on the phone with anyone?"

And then I hung up.

This is my family.

My brother and I are lucky enough to be able to say that our dad is our friend. Our mother has her own relationship with us, and it is equally great (I know, I know, if this were a Twitter feed it would be “white person problems” or something like that). But since it is Father’s Day coming up, that is what I am writing about.

I was a quirky kid.

Some might call it OCD. Whatever it was (is?), it manifested itself in sports.

Exhibit A: my dad bought a case of Budweiser and it came with a small brochure previewing the 1994 football season. It had the full schedule for every pro and college team, as well as their colors, head coach, mascot, etc. I memorized the entire thing in about a week. I could tell you who Dartmouth was playing in Week 6 and who Louisiana- Lafayette’s head coach was. I was 7.

Exhibit B: I at one point had roughly 56419845132198451 baseball cards. My dad told me one time that he kept his rubber banded by team when he was a kid. So I decided I would do the same. However, I did not sort them by the team they were on in the picture…I sorted them by actual, current roster. Every morning I woke up and scanned the transactions for every major league and minor league team before retreating upstairs to make the changes necessary to my shoe box. And they were in batting order. It went past fun and turned into labor fairly quickly.

Exhibit C: I was given a set of pencils as a gift once, one for every NFL team. Did I do what normal kids do and use them at school? Nope. Instead, I kept them together as a set and every Tuesday would rearrange them so that teams that were playing each other that weekend were lined up.

Some people might have their kid go see a shrink or join the Boy Scouts. Not my dad. He LOVED it. He would ask me for random statistics at odd times. He started calling me “The Book”. He indulged me, and by doing so, created a monster.

My dad taught me a lot over the years.

He taught me what it meant to be a ‘Cane and is the reason some of my first memories are of watching early 90’s college football games.

On the flip side, he also taught me to root for the Orioles and the Dolphins. Thank God I had my mother to teach me that we root for Duke in basketball.

He taught me that there was a time when pitchers intimidated hitters. He taught me to throw the high and inside fastball if some kid showed you up…and then laughed his ass off when I beaned the only girl in Little League after her teammate stared me down.

He played countless hours of Little Tikes basketball with us, which I am sure was not good on the big man’s surgically repaired knee.

He spent long summer nights hitting us endless games of pepper in the backyard; in the fall we switched to driveway basketball, where I learned that the arm extended scoop shot is literally impossible to block.

He taught me about the Baltimore Chop and the “Air Gait” goal and Unitas to Berry and “Wide Right”.

(that link never gets old)

He sat with me for Warren Fucking Morris and Willis McGahee's knee.

We went to his last game at the Orange Bowl together, a thoroughly unimpressive victory over FIU (which he will admit only at gunpoint is his Alma Mater).

He taught us to love beer (even though I think that was more a genetic thing) and love Buffett and The Stones and love to grill a mean steak.

(Smirnoff on the rocks hasn't quite caught on, partly because my brother and I haven't really started to hate the whiskey hangover yet and mostly because Smirnoff tastes like lighter fluid)

Sure, there is plenty off the sports field he taught us. But sports were the once constant for my family as we moved in and out of state after state after state.

In addition to the moving, every summer our family piled into the car and took a long road trip. One year it was across Canada. Another it was to California. Another it was a Midwest Swing through Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago.

During those car trips, my dad would reach a point every day when he grew sick of me asking if he thought Craig Biggio was a Hall of Famer or not or “Who would you name the starter if you could have any quarterback from any season in ‘Canes history?”

(The answers, of course, are “no” and 2001 Ken Dorsey, narrowly edging ’87 Steve Walsh and ’84 Bernie Kosar…’07 Kirby Freeman is not on the list)

(Also, my brother was usually listening to "New York Groove" on repeat and was not contributing)

(Felt like I would put in another parenthetical paragraph...why the hell not?)

He would throw his hands up after a couple of hours and say that these were arguments with no end and no right answer. The conversation would die down, because I knew not to push the man having to stop the car every 30 miles so my mother could use the ladies’ room.

And then the next day we would wake up, get back in the car and start driving again. And after a couple of hours, I would start up again, this time subbing in Fred McGriff (absolutely and resoundingly "yes") and whether or not Ed Reed was the greatest ‘Cane of all time (Top 3, with Michael Irvin and Alonzo Highsmith).

And sure enough, the conversation would start up all over again.

As much as he had created a monster, it was his monster. And he knew better than to stifle it.

Happy Father’s Day dad.