MY DAD

3) Two years later, I'm the point guard on an undefeated Catholic school hoops team, St. James, in central New Jersey. On the afternoon of our big tourney game against St. Mary's, I'm horsing around and get my head slammed into a desk. Twelve stitches to the forehead. My dad not only leaves work to come to Riverview Hospital to be with me but, more importantly, persuades my mom to let me play in the game that evening. We win on John Gilmartin's buzzer-beating 25-footer.

4) The NFL. I'm a HUGE Roger Staubach fan and so my dad takes us three kids to our first NFL game, a late December contest at Shea Stadium between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets. It is absolutely fleezing at Shea, where there is no refuge from the wind. My brother, sister and I had whined so much about not wanting to be too bundled up before leaving home that we were all classically underdressed. It was like "Into The Wild" there. So, of course, my dad, who did dress adequately, peels off layers of his own clothing so we'll be warm. I believe he later came down with pneumonia.

5) Pop Warner football. I'm playing quarterback for the Middletown Junior Pee Wee football team and we have a big game against similarly unbeaten Marlboro. All week leading up to the game my dad and I play catch, and he implores me to call a bomb pass on the game's first play because they'll never expect it (apparently, Marlboro has been scouting us and knows of someone's ragdoll arm). Anyway, I call a straight dive on the opening play. It goes for not much. Marlboro beats us 7-0. I've always regretted not having listened to my dad on that one, and these days I call the bomb on the game's opening play all the time.

6) Joe DiMaggio. My dad took my brother and I to a Mets Old-Timer's game in the mid-70s, I think it was 1975. Anyway, I'm searching around for autographs but not having much luck getting anyone to sign. Between the Old-Timer's game and the actual game we head up in an elevator to the club lounge for lunch. I've got that typically crestfallen 9 year-old look on my face, disappointed that I never got an autograph. My dad can see it. But he's smiling because what he knows, that I don't, is that I happen to be standing next to Joe DiMaggio (answering, momentarily, Simon & Garfunkel's question). He waits until we get off the elevator and then directs me over to him, where I secure the most valuable autograph I've ever gotten.

7) High School Football. My high school in Phoenix was 20 miles from our home in Mesa, Arizona. And, unfortunately, none of my teammates lived anywhere near me (that and, of course, I was wildly unpopular). To avoid the nasty heat, we often practiced from 6:30 to 9 p.m. For my dad, that meant getting to his job at the Maricopa County Jail by 8 a.m., then sticking around after work waiting for my practice to begin, and not getting home until 10 p.m. We both put in long days back then, but at least I got to hit somebody every afternoon. Then again, he never explained in great detail what he did at the jail, so maybe he got to hit people, too.

8) Hoops. When I was home in Arizona during the summers of my college years, I usually worked at night. And my dad worked until about 2:30 or 3. In that interim when we were both home, from about 3 to 5, I'd convince him to play basketball with me at the park across the street from our house. This was June, July and August in the Arizona desert, in the most debilitating heat of the afternoon. And this 50 year-old man would play two to three games of one-on-one with me, games up to 15, almost every day. Sometimes I even won.

My dad lost his own dad when he was barely past kindergarten. But, without any personal blueprint as to how to be a super dad, he somehow became one any way. Happy Father's Day, Shoebooty.