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When your elderly father calls you, doesn’t get an answer, and then calls again immediately, you think there’s an emergency.
That’s what happened in January of last year.
“What’s wrong?!?” I said when I picked up the second time.
“Turn on Fox, there’s a snow game!” my dad said.
There was a football game (Rams vs. Eagles in the playoffs, if you must know) and there was snow on the field and this made for appointment viewing. Every time.
That was my dad.
I wouldn’t be writing this column, and you wouldn’t be reading it, if not for that man.
Football. Baseball. Basketball. Wrestling. We watched it all. He even got into golf, especially once my parents got their first flatscreen TV at the house.
“All the green is so soothing,” he said. Was that a stance aided by Famous Grouse and edibles? We may never know.
Back when I wrote for the newspaper, I’d get a call or a text most Mondays. “You had a good do on that column, son,” was a common refrain.
Last year, when his health took a turn, he still wanted to keep up with the Vols, and March Madness. If the basketball team was playing or, later in his convalescence, the baseball team in the postseason, I made sure he knew which channel it would be on in his room. In March of 2025, as his body started to weaken, his mind and his wit were as sharp as ever when Florida faced UConn in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Dad didn’t like Bobby Hurley. And as a UT grad, he couldn’t stand Florida, either.
The dilemmas of fandom …
We were fortunate he got the opportunity and had the financial means to come home last June. I was working on my usual freelance assignments, among other things, but whenever possible, we scheduled our days around Chicago Cubs games. Cubs play in the afternoon? “Make me something good for lunch,” he’d say. Cubs play at night? “OK, I’m gonna take a nap,” he’d say.
We’d watch from his bedroom, the one my mother and I shared before she passed the previous fall. Him from his hospital bed, and me from a chair brought in from the dining room. Comfortable? Not really.
Would I have rather been anywhere else? Hell no.
We traveled to games. He tagged along on dozens of high school game assignments in my early years as a sports writer. We went to a WrestleMania. To Neyland Stadium. To Dayton, Ohio, to watch a wrestling show in a venue located on a fairground that was so notoriously hot among fans that they called it “The Oven.” We went to baseball games at Wrigley and Great American Ball Park. The second game of our Reds trip, it was overcast as the game began. “You better put on sunscreen before we head in,” he told me as we parked. I declined. By the time the game was over – a loss; plenty of those in 2005 for my Cubs – I looked like Hellboy.
I’ve been a Cubs fan almost as far back as I can remember. When we moved from our house in Hiltons to Kingsport, and got a magnificent thing called cable TV, my first memory of watching something was seeing the Cubs beat the Dodgers and Fernando Valenzuela on a summer afternoon at Wrigley Field. Toward the end of his days, I asked him, “am I a Cubs fan because of you, or are you a Cubs fan because of me?” His voice – booming, bold, during the height of his band director days, able to reach a timbre that rattled the snare wires on a drum at midfield (I heard it; it happened; don’t message me) – had weakened by that point. Some days it was little more than a whisper. He mustered up no small amount of gusto and croaked out,.“You’re a Cubs fan because of me.”
Forty-two years of mostly misery. I wouldn’t trade it.
His passion for the Vols didn’t take with me; sorry. Still, he enjoyed my coverage of Tennessee during my years chasing the football program for the Times-News, and took my jibes in better spirits than my mother did. Tennessee football remained appointment viewing for him for as long as he was able. Looking back now, I think it’s poetic that they were together again by the start of the 2025 season.
My biggest fan. My best friend. It’s not the same without him.
Especially on Father’s Day.
Miss you, Dad.