The Sound of the Suburbs

My father is 88 and has been in failing health for some time. Saturday night I got a call and knew instinctively I needed to go to him with the end near.

I arrived Sunday morning along with other family members to find him still somewhat alert and responsive to our love and my bad jokes, which he received with a wan grin, raised eyebrows or both.

He fell into a coma that night and as I write this he is still hanging on although time is almost out, and there will be no overtime in this contest.

My Dad never had the sports gene. He went to Ohio State University, the youngest of ten children from a Depression-era clan in a small town not far away. He put himself through college, met my mother and had three kids with her, two boys, one girl. He served in WWII and is one of the many great veterans who allow us to live in this great country, free to pursue our dreams.

He toiled tirelessly his entire life, an old-fashioned Provider. He worked in the airline business and moved around a lot: Denver, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh. At one point he commuted from Boston to Pittsburgh every week. Talk about a hassle.

My brother and I were, and are, athletes. Mark is a tennis pro and I still play hoop with guys a third my age whom I can take to the rack on a good day -- or night. Our father busted his butt working day after day, week after week, year after year. He didn't make it to all our sporting events, but when he did we darn well knew he was there, and we took pride in doing our best, looking for him in the stands, doing him proud.

My brother and I fought over the sports page for as long as I can remember. We grew up Yankee fans on Long Island, because baseball was all that mattered then, in the 1960s; everything else came later.

He took my brother to the 1964 Yankees-St. Louis Cardinals World Series. He took me to a regular-season game a year later and I will never forget his ire when Joe Pepitone refused to give us an autograph as we begged from five feet away. Never trust an athlete who will mainly be remembered for his hair dryer.

He took us to spring training one year in Tampa ... for some reason we all found hilarity in the name of the local paper, The Tampa Times. Our first exposure to alliteration, apparently.

I will never forget getting Bob Gibson's autograph, his bullethead haircut sweating in the Southern heat, the best starting pitcher I have ever seen.

My Dad also had been to an Indians-Yankees game when he was young, and he and his brother not only caught a home run ball hit by Lou Gehrig, but somehow got it signed at a hotel that night. The ball has vanished into the twilight along with his memory, but it's the thought that counts, as we say.

And to me he WAS the real Lou Gehrig; working a nonstop life, thousands of days, weeks and hours, enabling we three to be educated, grow up with a sense of old-fashioned family values and always, always, being a sound marital unit with our beloved mother as we grew up into adults with our own spouses and children.

This is a sports column and I beg any readers' forgiveness in taking time for a personal essay, but the fact is, like most of us, I learned more about winning, losing and a sense of fair play from my father than any ballgame I ever watched.

I never saw him hit a baseball or sink a free throw. I never saw him play golf or knock a guy off his block on the gridiron. I got enough of that from TV, the sports page and the swirling world of athleticism that continues to envelop my life.

But he taught me what really matters is what's inside, what you bring to the table -- literally and figuratively -- and what it means to grow from a boy into a man.

Godspeed, Dad. Rest in peace. I'll see you on the other side ...