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SALT LAKE CITY — My hero, a man without much renown, died last week. Hardly anybody knew him, which was a darned shame.
Today’s sports world seems to be about deviance or power. From Ray Rice to Johnny Manziel and Jameis Winston, the more afoul the better. Power, usually manifest in the form of self-important college coaches, also garners most of the attention.
The common man, who lives a decent life in obscurity, deserves some acclaim. He’s going to get it right now.
My hero lived for 85 years, more than 65 of those years spent as a husband and father. During his life he had one wife and three children. Imagine that, Kardashians and all you other Hollywood types.
One of those children was a son, upon whom he left an indelible impression that will extend to a reach far beyond that which both ever could imagine.
The old man is gone now, his legacy cemented in the tremendous foundation he left. Goodbye, Dad; miss you so much already.
The man never had a fancy job, hardly made more than $30,000 a year. But he always had job — two jobs simultaneously, actually — whether they were as a factory worker, shoe salesman or janitor. I prefer to refer to the last job as a "custodial engineer," a position he held for some 40 years and well into his 80's.
“If you don’t have a job, get a job — whatever it is,” was one piece of life counsel he gave.
At one point, after losing work, the man took the first job he could find — as a garbage collector. We’re not talking the current version of a garbage man, who sits in a gigantic truck and controls levers. This was old fashioned, the kind that required holding on to the back of a truck and manually lifting each trash can.
Pride never interfered with responsibility.
The point of work was provide for his family, which didn’t have much but never wanted for the basics. If love was money, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett would have had nothing on him.
After being hard on his two daughters, he was guilty of coddling the youngest. OK, downright spoiling is the most accurate description.
The boy was the golden child, sort of a stand-in for another son who died shortly after birth years earlier. This boy was a December baby, born eight days before Christmas and doted on from a mother and the two sisters who were about a decade older.
The father waited patiently for the son to come of age, ready to transfer the finer points of basketball, baseball and golf. He was not a helicopter parent, living through his only boy, but rather one to find comfort in the shadows.
Baseball was the boy’s first love, which meant his father had to brush up on teaching the game. Not that it was much of a problem, considering he grew up in the golden age of the sport as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He had even played hooky from work one afternoon to attend a World Series game in 1955 and never got over the hurt of seeing the beloved Bums bolt the city for Los Angeles.
The week before the boy made his first start on the mound as a 10-year-old, his dad spent most of his time off work bent in a catcher’s stance. The two cut dirt spots in the backyard in preparation for the big day — not that it mattered much when the kid walked the first three batters he ever faced.
Despite the less-than-stellar performance the boy went on to play four years of high school baseball, which was done — get this, parents of today’s youth — without one telephone call or any other form of communication between the dad and the coach.
From there, with him lacking the sufficient talent to advance, baseball broke the boy’s heart, so he turned to golf. The sport brought father and son together like nothing else, as they spent hours discussing the intricacies of the golf swing.
More accurately, one talked and the younger one listened. What the kid wouldn’t give now for just one more lesson.
As the years rolled on the man grew smarter, though not of his own accord. It was more like the boy matured, discovering the wisdom in all those life lessons taught in the backyard or over a delicious homemade Italian meal.
The old man is gone now, his legacy cemented in the tremendous foundation he left. Goodbye, Dad; miss you so much already.
Love, your son.
