Remembering Dad

It was easy thinking of my father, who passed away in 1989, this weekend as his favorite teams all posted memorable wins.  Dad was a huge fan of Notre Dame football, having gladly joined the ranks of the subway alumni 70 years ago after seeing the movie Knute Rockne-All American.  That movie came out in the fall of 1940 and by the following year Frank Leahy was beginning his legendary coaching career in South Bend with a 8-0-1 mark.  By 1943 the Irish won their first of four national championships under Leahy and eight-year-old Bobby Guido was hooked.  He was loyal to the team through good and bad and was proud that they addressed him as an alumni on mailings despite his not matriculating there (he became a very important person locally in Jersey without going to college until proudly getting his degree as his 40s approached at nearby FDU).  Notre Dame has not won a title since my father died and there is something to that I think.  He would be very happy that they have returned to the national top ten on the backs of a hard-hitting defense and tough offense and not some gimmicky crap.  And beating Oklahoma this weekend in Norman would have been cause to celebrate.  He remembered the days when playing teams like OU had a little extra something to them based not only on how talented the programs were when the rivalry began in the 1950s but also because of a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment directed at the Fighting Irish on trips to the Bible Belt or Deep South.
My father's favorite professional team was the baseball Giants, who played just north of his East Harlem home as he was growing up.  He told me about watching games through holes in the fence or by sneaking into the Polo Grounds.  He fondly remembered running up and down his street screaming after Bobby Thomson's home run in 1951.  The stunning sweep of the Indians in the 1954 World Series, as my father's teen years came to end, must have opened the eyes of the then high school dropout to the possibilities of life.  Their move to San Francisco a few years later brought life's realities home.  That the Giants, once the epitome of National League success, would endure 50-plus years of frustration and failure was somehow fitting punishment for their abandonment of the City.  And again, like ND football, the Giants would return to glory the old-fashioned way, with great pitching, good fielding and timely hitting.  He would have enjoyed the team's spirited October runs in 2010 and this fall.  That the Irish would beat Oklahoma on the same night that San Fran would take a commanding 3-0 lead on Detroit would have made my dad ecstatic.
Once the baseball Giants moved to California my father was left with only one local favorite (he liked the Knicks too but without the same passion as the others) in the New York football Giants (he stuck with the Giants as his baseball team and did not switch to the Mets when they were formed).  The football Giants were very good at his birth, very good when he became an adult and then very good during the last years of his life.  They had some bad years in between but he was there every Sunday watching anyway.  This Sunday's win over Dallas was not a pretty one but he would have enjoyed any win over Dallas after enduring many losses to the Cowboys back in the 60s and 70s.  That it led right into game four of the World Series made it even sweeter.
So, all in all, it was a pretty wonderful weekend of sports for me as proxy for my father.  As the fourth of five kids born to an extremely busy couple I learned at an early age that if I wanted my dad's attention I needed to like everything he liked.  And so I became a loyal fan of Notre Dame and both Giants teams, listening to Mutual radio broadcasts of the Irish with him (you could hear the loudness of Lindsay Nelson's jackets through the radio) or traveling to Shea with my dad and brother Bob to watch the Giants play the Mets (Jim Barr always seemed to be starting for SF).  While we did have fun watching the Irish upset Alabama to win the title in 1973 and then Texas for the 1977 championship, the game I remember watching with my dad the most from my younger days was the 1979 Cotton Bowl when Joe Montana led the rally past Houston.  To this day I can see him yelling at the Zenith when they showed some happy Cougar cheerleaders midway through the game that it was not over yet.  He was right.  And just how big a Notre Dame fan he was was cemented in 1987 when the surprising Giants under manager Roger Craig won the NL West and took on the Cardinals.  Game four of that entertaining series took place on the same day that a 3-0 ND team was playing Pitt.  While I went back and forth from the living room, where I had the baseball game on the television, to his room, where he was listening to the football game, he never lost focus on the football game (eventually lost by the Irish 30-22).  The Irish were his number one, even if Mike Krukow was pitching a gem.  I was home that day and not at a sports bar in the City because we had all lost my sister Jane on July 4th of that year and bonding again with him through sports was a way of supporting each other.
I am glad he got to enjoy Notre Dame's 1988 title-winning season. His own health spiralled down pretty quickly in the early part of 1989 and he died that April.  I miss him greatly and will light a candle for him and Jane at the grotto on Notre Dame's campus in November when I go for the Wake Forest game.