The Family-Sports Connection

When my high school friends and I get together these days, we have exactly two things to talk about.

The first is the inevitable college comparison conversation, of course. We talk about our campus social scene, popular things to do and places to hang out at school and amount of work and degree of difficulty.

Shared memories are the second unavoidable thread that runs through our conversations, which always start with "Remember when..." and quickly grow like kudzu to encompass anything any of us ever did in our younger years. Inevitably, the conversation ends with raucous cackles about good times or devious tricks that seem rather far away--and rather banal--now.

It's amazing how long you can drag out one of these conversations--a night, a weekend or even an entire summer. The discussion happens over and over again and the stories are always the same, but the peculiar thing is that no one ever gets tired of it. Those conversations still evoke old memories that you thought were long since forgotten, but clearly are not.

I bring up these semi-contemplative thoughts because I have been thinking a lot lately about the role sports plays in my family life in particular and family life in general. I have been thinking about how sports are frequently an outlet of understanding for fathers, son, mothers and daughters.

I have been thinking about how fans--completely unathletic in their own right--find great joy in sports but also use them as a way to shirk their problems.

In the last several weeks, I have experienced two incidents that have put me in this reflective mood. First, I had an extended, private conversation with a friend about why I liked sports and sportswriting. Second, I made my 13th trip in 14 years to the Red Sox's home opener, digging up in the process some old memories of seasons past.

The private conversation started me down this path because my friend asked me a fundamental question that hadn't been asked in a long time. In not so many words, he asked a question for which he assumed I had an easy answer: Why do you like sports?

To my surprise, I couldn't produce one instantaneously.

Although I think that my answer--which emerged from lips after 30 seconds of silence and several umms--was essentially correct, it surprised me nonetheless. I told my friend that I liked sports because it reminded me of fun times that I had with my family. And then, the shared experiences started rushing back.

I remembered my father pitching wiffle balls to his clearly not athletically-talented son in our backyard. I remembered family trips to the ball park, especially sitting two rows back behind home plate one very hot day in late August. I remembered the one professional hockey game that I have attended in my life, to which my father--the quintessential hockey hater--happily took me.

But, what I didn't remember was Larry Bird stealing the ball and dishing to a streaking Dennis Johnson in the 1986 NBA Eastern Conference Championships or the ball going between Bill Buckner's legs in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. No, the memories that flashed through my mind had little to do with extraordinary play or unimaginable blunder. They had everything to do with family.

This year's Opening Day game broadened my thinking about sports even more because I realized that I was uncertain why I had returned to Fenway Park. I paged through the complimentary program (the owners still don't get it, do they?) and recognized maybe half of the names on the Red Sox roster and virtually none on the Twins. Then I remembered that I could have easily named the starting line-ups of the entire American League not too many years ago.

If I'm not the die-hard fan that I once was, why do I keep coming back to Fenway Park in early (or, in this year's case, late) April? The answer, which developed slowly during the game, parallels my earlier response--shared memory.

The Sox's home opener has developed into a rite of Spring for me. In various combinations, my father, myself, our family friend Stevie and her son Christopher have made the early season trek to Kenmore Square. Stevie started the tradition by giving my father and me tickets, which go one sale just in time for the December holidays.

As I sat there in our familiar left field (Section 32 or 33) seats, I realized the unimportance of the Red Sox's roster. I also realized that we weren't talking about today's game and we weren't talking about the season. I also realized why I was there.

Stevie, Chris and I talked about the umpteen other Opening Day games that we had shared. We focused on some of the parking intrigue that we had creating--illegally parking somewhere in Brookline, sneaking into the Harvard Community Health Plan parking lot, parking at Lechmere and Riverside and taking the T. We tried to remember who had missed Opening Day games and for what reasons--for me it was a week of fifth grade camp, for Stevie a postponed game that didn't fit on the schedule.

Like sports in general, the great memories I have of bygone Opening Days do not have to do with what happened on the field. They're all about getting to the ball park, sitting in the stands and just talking.

When was talking to my friend, I turned the question around and asked him if he liked sports. He admitted that in fact he did not. When I asked why, he thought for a minute and said that he didn't know.

Well, I think I have found the reason why he doesn't value a day at the park as much as I do. I suspected that my friend's family wasn't interested in sports, that they never spent time together at sporting events and that father never passed the sports page to son at the breakfast table.

When it comes to sports, parents, family outings and memories accumulated therein make all the difference.