Founders' Choice: Games With My Dad
On Fathers Day, I want to introduce you to the man who showed me my first stadiums.
Today’s piece is the next in our “Founders Choice” series for the summer where we will regularly write about topics that different founding subscribers have suggested they would very much like to have me address. This one is from a Founder named John Preston who requested a piece about fathers/sons and sporting events. Let me give it a shot on this Father’s Day.
I occasionally get asked about how big of a sports home I came from. Was my dad in sports media? What sort of setting put you on this path?
Well, the fact of the matter is that my dad has always had an interest in sports, but it has always been significantly different than mine. I won’t speak for him, but from my perspective as his oldest son, I will tell you that he has always enjoyed it more when it wasn’t making him miserable.
He always worked overnights on the railroad when I was growing up, so he would sleep most days and wake up about dinner time. Then, he would have several hours at home before it was off to work from 10pm until about 7am and then back to sleep and do it again. He seemed to enjoy sports to a degree, but on his terms. The best way for me to explain this would be with this anecdote.
He used to wake up to see certain games and the Packers were part of the routine. Of course, they would only play noon games back then and therefore waking up to be disappointed was not a great treat for him. When I was very young I noticed two things. I was really happy when sports were on and dad was often not. He seemed annoyed at just about every part of the sports experience and while I seemed thrilled to watch our teams, it seemed like an unpleasant part of his day.
Then, one day, the VCR was invented. I can’t tell you when the first one was invented, but I can tell you when it reached our house. 1987. I was 14 and it changed everything for my dad and sports. Because that was the first year that he realized his game watching experience was going to start being on his terms. Now, as long as his son would not screw it up – by changing the channel during recordings like I did for the Kirk Gibson World Series home run – he would watch the game when he woke up.
But, he could rig it even better yet. My dad would only watch games of his teams if he was given the head nod from mom or me that it was a happy game. Meaning that from now on, he was only going to watch the wins. So, for years and years, he would go to work, get his full sleep, wake up and someone would tell him the news. “You are going to want to see this one, dad” or the alternative, “don’t bother with the game. You won’t be very interested.”
I didn’t understand it because I wanted to know the next chapter for my teams no matter what happened, but I will admit, there is something to that strategy of how to avoid being irritated by your team. Of course, it might mean that he was only seeing three or four games a year some seasons. He didn’t seem to mind too much, though.
I was obsessed with sports as a kid. Just about everything in my entire childhood revolved around my teams, my card collection, my hopes of playing sports for a living some day, my posters of basketball stars, and my video tapes of games I started recording so I could watch happy games anytime I wanted. I was a sports nerd (with a fair amount of Star Wars nerd mixed in, too), but it wasn’t because I came from a long line of sports nerds. No, I think it was more because I could see that working all night and sleeping all day to support the family seemed like a hard way to make a living and I guess I preferred this approach to life where every day there was a new game to watch and describe like those guys on TV.
My dad had a real job where he had to sleep all day to recover and all of my friends’ dads had jobs they didn’t seem to love that much, neither. But, these guys on TV and in the newspaper who were talking to athletes and watching games every night were apparently “working”, too. I wonder if I could do that idea of sports “work” if I cannot play in the NBA? My wheels started turning on that idea and here I type to you as I close in on my 52nd birthday and having never had to work a real job in my life. I have always made a living covering games that talented people play and I must tell you, it has never stopped being something I love.
My dad did not seem to love going to work and my goal – probably from viewing how hard his work life seemed – was to find something that would be a bit more fun.