This morning on ESPN radio, host Freddie Coleman asked for listeners to write or call him with what sports gift, in a perfect world, they would like to give their fathers.
My dad passed away twelve years ago on June 1. Our primary connection with each other was the world of sports, whether we played golf, he was coaching my Little League team, he was coming to watch me play basketball or baseball, or we were watching games on television.
Dad loved the Boston Celtics. When George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees and when the days of Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra were over, he had a conversion experience and became a Red Sox fan.
Dad loved the parquet floor and the cavernous decay of the Boston Garden. Even more, he loved the Green Monster and the classic lack of symmetry of Fenway Park.
If I could have given my dad the perfect sports gift, I would have taken him to Boston in the spring time and we would have attended a Red Sox game at Fenway one day and watched the Celtics on another.
To make the gift more perfect, I would have given it to him with the added bonus of time travel. We would have watched the 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox, with Carl Yastrzemski in his prime and we would have watched the 1968-69 Celtics, with Bill Russell making his last stand and John Havlicek emerging as one of the NBA's most tireless and reliable players.
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