Like Father, Like Son

Because I’ve been battling some health issues, I have been pretty much house-bound since early August and have stepped into The Post-Journal office only once briefly a week before I learned of my diagnosis.I’ve been able to do a little work from home between stays and then return visits to Roswell Park Cancer Institute, but coverage ended abruptly. I missed the entire final month of the Jamestown Jammers season. I also missed reporting their not-unexpected departure from Jamestown, which might not have been a bad thing.

The next beat on my schedule would have been Jamestown High School football. I missed the opening road and home games for the first time since I began covering the Red Raiders in 1980. It was strange not to be at the games, particularly the opener at Sweet Home, one of three day road games this season which would have been perfect for photos.

That game at Sweet Home would have involved packing the car with plenty of rain gear because the weather was looking iffy that day. Then I would have left about 10 a.m. even though the game began at 2 p.m. I would have wanted to get something to eat somewhere close to the field (and I heard Fudruckers, always the Sweet Home stop, had closed!) and then I would have wanted to be at the Sweet Home parking lot by 1 p.m. so I could get a prime spot.

Instead I listened to the game on the radio in my living room and I did the same for the home opener the following Friday night.

And listening to those games reminded me of my late father as I flashed back to the 1957 season opener of the University of Pittsburgh football season.

On that day, my dad was also housebound inn East Liverpool, Ohio, with the flu and he was miserable. Not so much from the flu, but mainly because he wasn’t sitting in his 48-yard-line season ticket seat at the game.

It wasn’t just any game, but the opponent was No. 1-ranked Oklahoma, which had won 40 straight games since 1953.

Meanwhile, Pitt came into the game ranked No. 8.

I can recall my dad wearing a robe and a pained expression on his face because he really wanted to be at the game. I knew he was really sick. But instead he was fiddling with the dials on his fancy hi-fi system tuning the game in on an FM station from Pittsburgh. And we had stereo speakers all over the house so the game could be heard in just about every room.

If that had been 2014, that Oklahoma-Pitt game would have certainly been on TV and the 1 p.m. start time would have been switched to prime time since it was No. 1 versus No. 8. But it was 1957, when we got one college football game on television every Saturday and that was the game you watched. And on that Saturday in our area, it wasn’t Oklahoma-Pitt.

Now days, on any Saturday we have a choice of practically 25 different games, including East Overshoe State versus West Overshoe State!

While I watched the game of the week on TV on that 1957 day, I also watched my dad pace back and forth from our den into our living room listening to Pitt try to pull off an upset against Oklahoma. It didn’t happen as the Sooners won 26-0, and they went on to win 47 straight before a 7-0 loss at Notre Dame on November 16.

It’s probably better that Pitt didn’t win or my dad would have been in more agony. He would have missed being at the upset game of 1957.

My dad was a football fanatic and had turned me into one. Along with a complete football uniform, I received a white Sun 44 football for my fifth Christmas and used to spend hours in our backyard throwing the ball up in the air and catching it while doing my own play-by-play of scoring touchdowns.

I recall being a bit embarrassed to have a white football with black stripes around each end, but I didn’t know that was a popular ball used in pro football at the time. White balls were used in many games because of poor lighting at the stadiums. The white balls were eventually outlawed in 1956, mainly because the ball carriers wearing white uniforms had an advantage camouflaging a white ball.

My dad was not much into pro football, but when I discovered there was an N.F.L. game on TV every Sunday at 2 p.m., I was in heaven. That completed my triple-header of weekend football.

On Friday night, if there was a home game, we went to Patterson Field and used our season tickets to watch the East Liverpool High School Potters play a game against opponents such as Salem, Toronto, Martins Ferry, Steubenville, Niles or Youngstown Rayen. We sat in large concrete stands that ran from goal line to goal line. Then on Saturday, I watched the NCAA game of the week on TV with play-by-play from Lindsey Nelson and Red Grange. And there was only one game and I watched it no matter who the teams were.

I recall the Colgate-Brown game was shown every year and I rooted for Colgate because that was the toothpaste I used. For other games in which I had no interest in either team, I rooted for the one with the best looking uniforms.

My dad would watch the games with me if Pitt didn’t have a home game. But even when the Panthers were on the road, he and my mom often made the trip to the game. They saw Navy games at Annapolis, Michigan State games at East Lansing, West Virginia games at Morgantown and Syracuse games. When Pitt played at the Miami Hurricanes, the always made the trip to Florida.

Then came the Sunday’s NFL games to complete my weekend. While watching the games, I would go through my growing stack of football cards and pick out the players who were actually on TV that day.

Soon all my infatuation with football turned to my artistic skills as I was always drawing pictures of football players, even in school. The highlight of my football artwork was when I mailed one of my drawings to “Captain Jim’s Popeye Club” at a Pittsburgh TV station and Captain Jim showed it live on air. He even turned the event into a commercial by promoting that the station would be showing the college game of the week the next day.

My fascination with football wasn’t overlooked at school. I recall my first day in the second and third grades when the teachers from the previous grade stopped into the room and talked with my new teacher. Soon the new teacher would come over to me and comment that my previous teacher had informed her that I was quite a football fan.

I felt like a 1950s version of Brick Heck from “The Middle,” but I didn’t put my head down and whisper “football.”

So I became known as the “football guy,” thanks to my dad who always remained a football guy. My dad had no interest in baseball, but Bill Mazeroski’s famous 1960 World Series home run literally changed my whole life and I became a total baseball fanatic, but Dad helped spur on my interest. He belonged to the Pittsburgh Athletic Club which held an annual father-son night at a Pirates game every May. He always wanted to go, but I never had an interest until after 1960 and we went numerous times.

And he learned to put up with hearing Bob Prince’s voice constantly coming from a transistor radio permanently attached to my hand.

But as I grew older, football didn’t go away. Soon I joined my mom and dad on Saturdays at Pitt home games in the 1960s. Those were some pretty dismal years for the Panthers, except for 1963 when they were 9-1 and ranked No. 3 in the nation, but were not invited to a bowl game.

Those were great Saturdays and Pitt used to play one of the toughest schedules in the country, so we saw some of the best teams. Dad would always note how the opponents sure looked big, but added players always looked larger in the white uniforms of the visiting team.

I still wished he could have been there to see Oklahoma looking large at that 1957 home opener. Instead, he was at home listening on the radio.

I’ll be in the same boat next Friday when Canisius visits the Red Raiders for what is being called “The Game of the Decade.”

I’ll be listening on the radio, just like Dad.