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The beginnings of why I'm indebted to my father and sports

(the first GOAT I knew, not the last)

I mention elsewhere in this substack (probably in my bio) that I’ll write about sports, tell you about sports, and/or read you in on why some sporting events have me feeling some type of way. I think it is very important to not throw sports at folks here who don’t understand it, don’t care for it, don’t want to read it, but rather give context to the why.

And the why I’m so so connected to sports is because sports is the portal through which my father found the language to love me, to raise me. Quite simply, without sports, I am not sure I would’ve received affection of any kind from my father. But dammit we had sports and so I had a man who loved on me the best way he knew how, and I am forever grateful for that.

I am speaking in past tense, not because my father has passed (he is alive), but because somewhere between my navigating through adulthood and my father divorcing my mother we lost our connection through sports, together. That is not something I’m ready to write about publicly. My therapist has me once a week and that’s that. More to come.

But sports… It is the portal through which I learned work ethic (alongside watching my ma every day – another post for another day) and developed language. My pops, when I was very young, would allow me to stay up late on a school night only if I kept a scorecard for the Atlanta Braves baseball game we watched. So I learned how to keep a scorecard at the age of 7. For context, most adult men don’t know how to keep a scorecard.

I was allowed to attend amateur league, fast-pitch softball games on school nights as well; I was the bat boy for my dad’s club. The language came from listening to his teammates in the dugout and hearing color commentary during games on our black-and-white TV. Words such as extraordinary, benchwarmer, cusp, or inclined, and phrases like frozen rope, hail mary, line drive, take a seat, 5-tool player (among others) were big for me as a child. I’d take those words, and others, to school and use them in stories and essays, assignments that received A’s and B’s respectively.

One thing I couldn’t prepare for was the other parts of watching games that rubbed off on me. When I’d get upset over a B or even an C later in middle school, or an A- in undergrad, it was less about the baggage that came with those letter grades and more that I’d wanted A+; I had a goal, an expectation, and not getting there was not enough. This is who I am now, because the flash and celebrity of a Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, Roger Federer weren’t enough. I was deeply curious about what made those athletes so good at what they did. I’d later learn that what made them great made folks, in other professions not sports-related, great too: obsession.

Even now in my work to help talented folks find their path to success, I catch myself setting goals that can sometimes be a little too ambitious, for me and for others (not always). These are all remnants from those early days with my pops, and the tentacles of sports that even he couldn’t have seen bleeding into my DNA, giving me language and vision for how to live in this world and be with my people.

In all this rambling, and more in posts to come, whenever I’m writing about sports I’m writing about my father. I’m writing to a portal that I can no longer open but will never stop being fond of. Maybe one day we can have the conversation on Why here. But for now, this is the most I know can give on the man who raised me, who I still love in all his best ways and not so best ways.

Y’all be well. Speak soon.

Randy