We're here to be there when our kid has three goals and an assist. And especially when he doesn't. We're here to watch the Rocket peer in for the sign, two out, bases loaded, bottom of the career. We're here to witness Tiger's lining up the foot double breaker to win and not need his autograph afterward to prove it.
Or to stand at the top of our favorite double-black on a double-blue morning and overhear those five wonderful words: 'Highway's closed. Too much snow. The really good stuff never does. Like leaving Wrigley at on a perfect summer afternoon and walking straight into Murphy's with half of section Or finding ourselves with a free afternoon, a little red fuel-injected Corvette convertible and an unopened map of Vermont's back roads. I got that scar stealing a home run from Consolidated Plumbers!
We're not here to find a way to heaven. And then one day, out of the blue, maybe 25 years ago, my dad went to one AA meeting and quit drinking. Never had a drop after that. It was five more years before I finally believed it. Then I invited him to the Masters. He was 70, I was And it was on that two-and-a-half-hour ride from Atlanta to Augusta that we finally met. He told me his life story, how he drank and fought to get the attention of his distant father, how he'd kept from us that he'd been married before, and how sorry he was to have let his family grow up while he was holding down the 19th hole with his elbows.
Suddenly he understood. He went home to Boulder, Colo. They finally got to tell him how much he hurt them. He wrote us a poem about his love for us and his shame and why nobody would cry the day he died.
It took a lot of guts and a lot of courage, and the only lousy part was that it came so late. By the time I saw him for who he was—a strong man who took most of a lifetime to understand his crushing weakness—I was ears deep into my own family and career.
So we didn't play much golf together before the warranty on his heart started to expire. I never got to really see the swing that won all those trophies. By then, the only time he used his putter was as a cane. Two months ago, on the final night of his life, I sat alone in a chair next to his hospice bed, holding his hand and a box of Kleenex and proving how wrong poems can be sometimes. As I looked at him, I realized that for better and worse, he'd shaped me.
I think I'm a good father borne of his rotten example. I'm a storyteller out of surviving him. I'm a man with more flaws than a Yugo, but I try to own up to them, because a very good Irish tenor showed me how.
To access Rick Reilly's Mailbag, go here. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Life of Reilly: Meet my dad Jack. Tua helps Dolphins to win after Brissett injured. Miami Dolphins. Four players ejected after Gobert, Turner tussle. Utah Jazz. Tiger needs to play well to return, Thomas says. Ruggs' lawyers: Witness says firefighting slow.
Las Vegas Raiders. Rams add Beckham Jr. After Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. We are through the looking glass, people. Sports are the only true reality TV. No writer scripts Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson. Read: A quick guide to streaming movies while in a quarantine. Disney Plus? Sports have 10 times more drama, tragedy, and plot resolution, and nobody is acting. Sports have more passion, emotion, and tears than The Bachelorette , and the rings actually mean something. I give you Ali-Frazier II vs.
Caddyshack 2. Now, real sports without fans? I was drooling for that. The players would have heard every single thing the announcers were saying:. Sports fans need something, anything.
0コメント