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OT -- Happy Father's Day!



 
 
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Old June 16th 08, 01:30 AM posted to alt.sports.football.pro.dallas-cowboys,rec.collecting.sport.football
Fred Goodwin, CMA
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Posts: 33
Default OT -- Happy Father's Day!

You dads out there need to read this -- I never had this experience
with my dad, but my son and I come close:

====

Cheering Section: Father-Son Connections Are in the Cards

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/sports/baseball/15cheer.html

Published: June 15, 2008
By ADAM BUCKLEY COHEN

It all started with cards.

When my mother arrived last summer with 5,000 of my old baseball,
football, basketball and hockey trading cards packed into Mother Goose
shoeboxes, my sons opened each flimsy container as if it were the Ark
of the Covenant. Will and Theo, then 8 and 6, searched out the few
superstars they knew from the 1970s — Terry Bradshaw, Hank Aaron —
while I gazed at the largely forgotten images that drew me back to
grade school: Oscar Gamble and his Afro, a toothless Bobby Clarke. The
boxes still smelled like bubble gum.

The boys’ fascination sprung from wanting to learn what these athletes
had done to merit enshrinement as cardboard demigods. But it also
seemed to come from another place, closer to home; if they inspected
these relics of my childhood hard enough, maybe they would catch a
glimpse of me. Not as their father, but as a boy who was once their
age and might have been their friend.

“Who was your favorite player?”

“Why did you sort them by team instead of by number?”

“Did all your friends collect cards, too?”

For the next year, the boys peppered me with questions and kept my
floors carpeted in Topps. It was a small price to pay for the joy
those cards brought. And when my marriage to their mother crumbled,
those cards brought far more.

The boys’ bodies heaved with sobs the day we told them I was moving
out. Yet bit by bit, Will and Theo felt their way into a new dual
life: two sets of clothes, two (identical) videogame consoles, two
homes. But those Mike Schmidts and Tony Dorsetts and the stories they
spawned were something a father alone could share with his sons.

One day, as we flipped through cards while sitting cross-legged on the
floor, I mentioned how some football player or another was in the Hall
of Fame.

“Is there really a football Hall of Fame we can go and see?” Will
said.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s in Canton, Ohio.”

“What about hockey?” Theo chimed in. “Can we go to the Hockey Hall of
Fame, too?”

Within moments, I had promised a trip to the Big Four halls (as
defined by my card collections of three decades ago). It would be a
chance for me to build new, happy memories with my sons. To take them
to a place where the rough edges of the world had been filed off. To a
place where parents did not divorce.

So on Memorial Day weekend, we embarked on our journey.

At the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the boys grew silent upon entering
the chamber housing the bronze busts of the inductees. Then they began
dancing from one great to the next, their voices rising as they
shouted: “Look, Troy Aikman! And here’s Michael Irvin!” I knew they
would be awed by immortals like Thorpe and Unitas, but I would not
have predicted the intoxicating power of Norm Van Brocklin and Steve
Van Buren.

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.,
was packed with interactive exhibits. The boys shot at a model of the
peach baskets Dr. James Naismith once nailed to a gymnasium balcony,
and tried to better Jason Kidd in a one-on-one contest.

“There was a game where you jump and try to pull on a basketball,”
Will wrote in his journal about an exhibit that tested rebounding
ability. “It was my favorite game.”

In Toronto, we watched Game 3 of this year’s Stanley Cup finals while
eating dinner in a pub, all of us rooting hard for Sidney Crosby and
the Pittsburgh Penguins, beloved by Theo ever since Santa left him a
Mario Lemieux card under the tree. The next day, at the Hockey Hall of
Fame, Theo took great pleasure in shooting a puck past the virtual
Toronto goaltender.

“I hate the Maple Leafs,” he said.

It was Cooperstown that cast the strongest spell. In the National
Baseball Hall of Fame, which I had first visited 31 years ago, I could
see all that sports had signified for me. Back then, the statistics,
the stories, the relics — Lou Gehrig’s jersey, a Honus Wagner T-206
card — had helped me forget that my parents’ marriage was falling
apart. Now, I felt that maybe I had given that same overdue gift to my
boys, an escape from the pain and sadness divorce had caused them.

As we drove from the airport to my home, I asked Will and Theo what
makes sports so special. The history? The numbers? Watching your
favorite team?

Will paused a moment. “I guess I just like doing them.”

At that moment, I realized our trip was not complete. So before I
delivered them back to real life, we headed to a park to throw a ball
around. And for one more hour, we were just three boys together,
playing.
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