My First Baseball Glove, A Selmar Mark VI Saxophone And Alabama Football
About the first memory I have of my dad being a dad was when he took me into the yard and presented me with a brand new baseball glove.
My dad loves baseball and he wanted to teach his son how to play the game.
So he taught me how to throw and catch – turns out I was all glove and no bat and when he tried to correct the latter, I conked my mom in the head with the bat and sent her to the hospital to get stitches – and signed me up for the league.
My arm earned me a starting position at shortstop on the best team and we won consecutive league championships, tho I can still picture classmate and friend Mark Matlock knocking a double over my head to drive in the winning run to win the title a few years later.
Sports turned out to be something I was better at writing about than playing and by high school, I was in the band instead of on the football team. Needing a new sax my dad – not rich by any means – pulled out the checkbook and bought me what turned out to be the best saxophone ever made, a Selmer Mark VI. I still have it today and it is the envy of sax players in some big-time rock bands.
My dad also sent me to college, paying the out-of-state fees to follow in his footsteps at the University of Alabama. I played that sax in the Million Dollar Band but eventually followed his steps into journalism. He was an excellent writer and, as head of communications for the Tennessee Valley Authority, published a monthly newsletter and a beautiful quarterly magazine.
I am forever grateful for him sending me to college, let alone to Alabama which – as any of my friends will tell you who have seen me watching the Crimson Tide play a football game – is a point of tremendous pride and passion to me.
Speaking of Alabama football, one of my highlights with my dad was taking him to the Rose Bowl for the 2009 National Championship game, the first under Nick Saban. My dad has never been one to ask for much but he wanted badly to go to that game. Alabama built its football tradition in the Rose Bowl in the 1920s and 30s and seeing the Tide play a championship game in that stadium was on his lifelong bucket list.
I scored tickets from a friend and we watched the Tide win its first title in 15 years. The football team was back and I was with my dad to experience that magical moment.
At the time, I realized that us children can never repay our parents for what they have given and provided us, but there can be great satisfaction in being able to give them something that otherwise they could not get without us.
I was able to give my dad another gift he could not have gotten anywhere else and it makes be beam to this day. I got him a ride in a pace car around Portland International Raceway – on Father’s Day, no less – when I was doing Public Relations for the IndyCar World Series. On race day.
Today, I can only offer this column but the sentiments are the same.
Happy Father’s Day dad!
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