JOHN GALLAGHER
SPORTS EDITOR
Dear Dad,
Mom always wanted me to get out of the kitchen. To be fair, I was parading around the house in those new cleats you bought me. Every night at 7:30, you’d leave just enough room for me in the car next to all the sporting equipment, and while Mom graciously cleaned the mud off the kitchen floor, we went to get more at the park. I think you got the better end of the deal.
Dear Dad,
I know now that the light was on in your office long after you helped me into my bunk bed at night, solely due to the fact that you chased your sons around a playground during the day. That’s the kind of father I want to become.
Dear Dad,
I hated baseball. I hated the dirt that accumulated beneath my fingernails, I hated pretending I knew how to slide into home plate, and I hated how afraid I was of getting nailed by the baseball hurled inches from my chin every time I swung. I hated that anyone’s idea of a good time involves wearing a plastic cup. But after I stepped into the ball and somehow hit it with that bat you bought me, and after I somehow made it to first base, the voice of my proud father made me want to do it all again.
Dear Dad,
That tennis racket you bought me? The one I hinted at for months, the one you wrapped in a box to keep me guessing, the one to which I deliberately under-reacted because I was 14 and that’s how I handled things? I slept with it in my bed for half a week.
Dear Dad,
You wore a sky blue, long-sleeve button up shirt, with charcoal, pleated suit pants and black dress shoes, the day you drove a half hour during the middle of a work day to watch your son play the last five minutes of a middle school basketball game. And it made my week.
Dear Dad,
You paid a tennis instructor $50 an hour, twice a week, for three months, before I realized the guy was saying the same things you were saying. Thanks for waiting.
Dear Dad,
When you took me off the tennis team in high school after my grades slipped, I didn’t understand. Now I do.
Dear Dad,
Your son made the NCAAs. And while everyone else was fixing their hair next to the tournament banner for a new profile picture, I was choking back tears in the bathroom, because I’ll never be too old to wish the man responsible for everything I’d accomplished was on the other side of the court, instead of the other side of the country.
Dear Dad,
No one’s buying the “I’m old” excuse. The last time we played a full set of tennis, you beat me 6-2. You were 57. I was playing college #1 doubles. Nice try.
– John
P.S. Dear Mom,
Washing shin guards steeped in an entire soccer season’s worth of sweat is not an undertaking that I would wish upon my worst enemy. You are a saint.