Beyond the games, our soulful sports connection. My father, my brother, I watch with you
After boycotting the NFL for the last three seasons, I will be watching the Super Bowl on Sunday because of my brother. Or, rather, I’ll be watching the game because I want to spend time with my brother.
The communal act of fellowship, of shared experiences with people who are special to us, has always been the primary attraction of sports for me. For years I’ve enjoyed traditions of watching games in a variety of sports with friends and loved ones who enrich my life.
As I get older, the memories of the games fade but the memories of the people who enjoyed the games with me endure.
The point of it all is to be with the people who mean something to you. The game simply offers the reason to gather.
These emotions are the fuel for multi-billion sports leagues and the Super Bowl itself, even though love, friendship and community get lost in the hype of white noise on sports channels and sports talk radio.
I turn all that off during Super Bowl week, but gravitate toward the people who mean the most to me.
Like me, my brother is a busy guy with kids, responsibilities and pressures on his time. We both shared a love for the San Francisco 49ers years ago but we stopped watching for different reasons. Then we realized that life was slipping by and we were barely seeing each other despite living mere miles apart in the same city.
“You want to watch the Super Bowl?” he asked.
My biases clouded the question but the answer was easy: My love for my brother was stronger than my antipathy toward the NFL for blackballing former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for the last three seasons. His unforgivable offense was kneeling before games during the national anthem in protest of police brutality visited upon African Americans and other racial minorities
I love my brother more than I hate how the NFL knuckled under to President Donald Trump’s vile targeting of Kaepernick. I’ll leave it to historians to sort out the mistreatment of Kaepernick by Trump and the NFL.
Kaepernick probably will never play in the league again and I could easily avoid the games until I die. But there is a big game on Sunday and our schedules are open, so why wouldn’t I be with my only sibling when we are in our 50s and life is short?
“Yes,” I said to my brother. “I would love to watch with you.”
The Super Bowl is the biggest game there is and the 49ers are playing in their first Super Bowl in seven years, back when Kaepernick was their QB and a potentially historic comeback win against the Baltimore Ravens was dashed seven yards from triumph.
Sports traditions shape us
Twenty-five years have passed since the 49ers last won the Super Bowl, back in the glory days when immortals Steve Young and Jerry Rice raised the trophy for the last time in a 49er dynasty that began in the early 1980s. My brother and I were teenagers.
That’s a lot of years and a lot of shared history as an appetizer. My brother, a far superior cook than I, will provide the entree: A spectacular pork shoulder that he will smoke the day before the 49ers face the Kansas City Chiefs in Miami. You never know, but a few beers could be consumed on Sunday. In this eventuality, the beer count will be responsible, I assure you.
There will be kids around. There will be a cat who likes me even though I’m terribly allergic to cats. There will be a big old basset hound named Flash who will, without a doubt, insist on laying his head in my lap no matter how animated I become. If Flash gets impatient in those moments, he hides it well behind his big, sad eyes. He simply waits until I settle down and then melts into his favored angle of repose.
I can’t wait. It’s a tradition in the making.
My favorite Super Bowl memory is of Super Bowl XXXII on Jan. 25, 1998. Green Bay Packers vs. Denver Broncos.
They played in San Diego. That day was glorious and warm and I was sitting on 30-yard line, very close to the field. This was thanks to my old friend R.B. He was an editor at the paper in San Diego and had been given two free tickets by his bosses.
R.B. was such a conscientious boss that he didn’t want to give a ticket to one of his employees because he didn’t want anyone to think he was playing favorites. So he called me and offered me the ticket for free and a room in his apartment for the weekend. All I had to do was fly down.
Our seats were so good, Ray Nitschke –Hall of Fame Packers linebacker from the 1960s – was sitting several rows behind us.
R.B. and I were like two kids at the adult table that day, sitting in expensive seats and enjoying a thrilling game that went down to the wire with a Denver win. Afterward, as we waited for our bus to return to downtown San Diego, I was worried when a bunch of Packer fans piled on. Would there be trouble because their team lost in heartbreaking fashion?
“We’re No. 2! We’re No 2!” they chanted with great humor, as all of us joined in.
Years pass between visits for me and R.B., but we both recall that when we do get together. It all comes back, even though more than 20 years have passed and we are both closer to the end of our careers than the beginning.
Games for all seasons
In my life, I’m blessed to have games for all seasons.
On weekend mornings, sometimes before dawn, I watch English soccer with friends I’ve had for 30 years. Our team – Arsenal – is having its worst season in 40 years, but there we will be, watching at one Midtown pub, with Irish coffees, breakfast burritos, laughter, friendship.
Every January or February I make the trek to Berkeley to see Cal hoops with my pal Mort, even though I didn’t go to Cal and I’m not a college basketball person. He loves going, I love going with him.
Every year I go to a Kings game with the same three colleagues whose names you would recognize if you read this newspaper. Each pilgrimage means more than the last because, well, we’re getting older.
When the San Francisco Giants are playing ball, I text the same buddy multiple times during each game as I watch at my house and he watches at his.
We’re sharing the game – sharing the pain – of how truly bad the Giants have been for the last three seasons. They look to be bad again in 2020, but there we will be. Soon enough I’ll send him the favorite text between us. It involves a word I can’t share in a family newspaper and Brandon Belt, our star-crossed Giants first baseman.
As sure as the sun will rise, Belt will strike out looking in a key situation and I will send the same text: “(Blanking) Belt.”
Our fleeting time together
I have followed the Giants for almost 50 years. My first live baseball game was June 6, 1971. Candlestick Park, San Francisco. Giants vs. Philadelphia Phillies.
My dad took me. We drove up Highway 101 together on a sunny Sunday from our home in San Jose.
That day, the immortal Mays, now 88, hit a walk-off home run in the 12th inning of the second game of a double header to send us home happy after 21 innings of baseball. And really, in all my years of watching sports, nothing has ever topped that first experience.
Dad has been gone for 11 years and I can still see him that day in my mind, smiling in the sunlight. He was a handsome, vibrant and fun man to spend time with before he was taken down by dementia, emphysema and vascular disease. In debilitating pain, he died on the evening of Sept. 12, 2008.
He had been gone a month in October of 2008 when I watched the Boston Red Sox rally late to defeat the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. Without thinking, I picked up the phone to call my dad as I always had after a momentous game or play in baseball.
That’s what I did in 1990, when I witnessed Fernando Valenzuela throw his only no-hitter. Valenzuela and my dad were both Mexican, my dad loved him, and I reached him that day while the Dodger Stadium crowd cheered in the background.
Dad wasn’t there that day but, then again, he was and sharing that moment with him was the most beautiful feeling. It’s what I wanted to do after that Red Sox game, and I think his old number rang about eight times before I remembered that he was gone.
I hung up, and it was then – a full month after he passed – that the full force of the finality of his death hit me. We didn’t have the games to share anymore, they were only memory.
So, yeah, I’ll be with my brother on Super Bowl Sunday. I’ll be at the pubs with my friends watching soccer. I’ll be in Berkeley with Mort as long as we can keep doing it. I’ll be texting my friend during every Giants game. You only get so many seasons in your life, so many games, so many moments.
Life is about enjoying them, sharing them, for as long as we possibly can.
This story was originally published January 31, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
