As we celebrate Father’s Day today, we’d like to take a little time to wax poetic about our dads. This is the last entry in a multi-post series.
–Amanda Staver, Ride Schooner, Ride!, @BCSchick: I don’t even know where I would be without my dad. He has been there for me throughout everything. He is not only one of my best friends, he is also the reason why I am into sports. He made me one the world’s biggest Dallas Cowboys fans by making me watch games with him when I was little. I grew up every Saturday watching college football all day long, but only when I wasn’t out playing soccer.  He explained to me what ‘Option football’ was. He taught me that Barry Switzer IS the King and Jack Mildren was a God. Now that I am older and much wiser, I look back at it as being some of the best memories I have. I will always remember those Saturdays. Now my dad and I spend our Saturdays at Owen Field, along with 86,000 of our closest friends, watching for the future Jack Mildren or maybe the next Billy Sims, experiencing Sooner Nation, together. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Now I don’t have to call him after every play to discuss ‘What the hell was that?’  It will be something I will always cherish and never forget. Thank You Dad, for everything. I love you!
Keep reading after the jump.
–Tara Wellman, contributor to Aaron Miles Fastball, @tarawellman: I wasn’t always the “sporty girl.” I didn’t grow up playing at the top of every sport I could get in to. I wasn’t surrounded by brilliant sports minds. But I was an only child (at least for the first 7 years of my life!), and I did have a dad who would rather watch sports — Â any kind of sports — than just about anything. He’d played most of them, too. And as the singular object of my parents’ attention, I learned to appreciate those same things.
My dad took me to tennis lessons and golf lessons, always standing on the sidelines (trying not to “coach!”) and encouraging me to do my best. He called himself my biggest fan, and #1 cheerleader! An avid golfer himself, he saw potential in my own golf game and got me right into private lessons. I can still hear the conversations where he’d end up dreaming out loud of how I could blow the competition away, tournament after tournament.
I never did compete. But I got up before the sun many weekends to play a round with my dad. That’s why I played, after all.
Flash forward a few years, and I was coming into my own as a sports fan. I was no longer a baseball fan simply because my dad was. I really loved baseball. I didn’t just watch college hoops if my dad had the game on. We made plans to watch it together. Even further, he began to ask me how the Cardinals were faring in Spring Training. Whenever I came across something I didn’t know or understand, he was the first person I asked. And he usually knew the answer, too.
As my career path became clearer, and I began to invest more time in actually covering sports, I still had my #1 fan in my dad. The battle for a woman in this business is — as the wonderful ladies at Aerys know! — long, hard, and frustrating (and I’m just a newbie!), but no one believes in me more than my dad.
He’s the reason I ever watched sports in the first place. He’s the reason I fell in love with certain teams. And today, he’s the voice of reason that reminds me I can even when I start to doubt. No one has influenced my sports fandom more, and win, lose, or draw, he’ll always be my biggest fan.
–Amanda Getz, It’s Always Icy On Broad Street, @ItsAlwaysIcy: I don’t have the best relationship with my dad. In fact, it’s pretty non-existent except for one case, when we’re both watching sports.
I’m the oldest child in my family and was the daughter born when my dad wanted a son. From the family pictures I’ve seen, I was daddy’s little girl until two years later when that son was born, which is when dad’s attention seemed to shift from me to my brother. I understand that, it’s the way he was raised by my grandfather so there are no hard feelings, really.
That being said, it all goes out the window when the Phillies or Flyers are on. The best memories I will have to look back on between my father and I will either have taken place at a sporting event or while watching it.
When I was 15 my dad made sure to get me tickets to my very first hockey game (a win against the Florida Panters) and the Flyers Wives Fight For Lives Carnival for Christmas. During that Carnival I got to meet my favorite players (Brian Boucher and Keith Primeau, thank you very much) and help give money to a great cause all at the same time.
Then several years later when my partner and I had Phillies Sunday Season Tickets, a few games a season would be spent with him and I in the stands cheering on a Phillies team that was FINALLY winning. We still talk about the day that we were at the game and the Phillies had…..someone with a terribly high ERA up on the bullpen. I looked at dad and very loudly proclaimed “Man, this guy is like Rheal Cormier. You put him in when you’re up 22-1 and pray he doesn’t blow it.â€
The couple in front of us laughed, turned around and agreed with me, the gentleman commenting on how impressed he was I made that comparison.
My all time favorite memories though revolve around two of my teams winning championships. Dad went with me for Game Four of the Calder Cup Finals when the Philadelphia Phantoms completed the sweep of the Chicago Wolves to bring home the cup. I had followed the Phantoms religiously (attending 50+ home and away games that season), and being able to see them bring home that honor in person was one of the best days in my sports life.
The second, as you all can probably guess, is the Phillies winning the World Series in 2008. Before Game 5 version 1.0 my partner and I went out and bought 8 bottles of the cheapest champagne we could find. Of course we had to wait a few extra days to use it, but when we finally got the chance, it was epic.
My partner, dad, brother, several friends, and I sat in the living room for Game 5 version 2.0 of 2008 holding our breath. I can honestly say I didn’t watch the last out live because I had my head between my legs, convinced the Phillies were going to blow it. When I heard the strikeout, before I knew what was happening I was in the middle of a huge huddle/group hug, the five of us screaming and jumping up and down like idiots. Then we took it outside where in the freezing weather we used all eight bottles of champagne plus several bottles of beer to do a long distance celebratory shower with our team. Then at my dad’s urging, we changed (didn’t shower, just put on dry clothes) and went out for drinks. That night we partied with our fellow Phillies fans.
None of that would have mattered to me if it wasn’t for my father’s love and knowledge of sports. Because of his unending patience I’ve learned to understand things such as the infield fly rule, a balk, and a double switch.  While he’s more passive with the game, he lets me rant and rave on about the injustice of being a Flyers fan and how the league is biased against them.
My dad will allow me to go on for hours and hours about it if I have to, even though deep down both of us know that bias doesn’t really exist. He’ll let me vent my frustrations on bad umpiring or horrible fans of other teams, and he does most of it with an amused smile.
I may not have been the boy he wanted and I may do a lot of things he doesn’t understand (like my love of choir and table top roleplaying games) but we share that one thing, that love of sports, and that’s a lot more than some girls have with their fathers.
–Sarah Tyson, Cowbell Clankers, @SarahSeesSports: Late in the spring of 1998, my dad was asked a number of times if he wished he had a son.  He’d been asked the question before due to his job as a baseball coach, but that spring was different.  He was the father of two girls and his baseball team, the Florida Air Academy Falcons, won the Class 3A State Championship.  Several months earlier, the Falcons’ basketball team won a state championship of their own.  Head coach Kevin Dunne happened to be the father of three girls.
Sarah and her parents, celebrating the team's State Championship
When I go back to that time in my memory vault, I remember the ten-year-old version of myself running through the Hall of Flags at Florida Air, an all-boys preparatory school at the time.  I remember the dog pile of players at the plate when the Falcons won the championship.  I remember hosting a pool party at the end of the baseball season and shooting Super Soakers at some of my first crushes.  I remember boys named Jorge Padilla and Edgar “Gallo†Salgado.  I remember watching as an “F†was shaved into Dad’s chest hair because of a bet made with his team earlier that season that hinged on them winning the title.  I remember so much about that spring.
What I don’t remember is ever feeling insecure, or less-than, because I was a girl and I would never be able to be coached by my dad.
And for that, I owe my dad a very heartfelt thank you.  Reporters, fans, and friends asked my dad, “Don’t you wish you had a boy of your own to coach?†I know this because sometimes that question, or a variation of it, was asked while my dad was with my sister and me.  Dad always found a way to brush off the somewhat awkward inquiry and make it clear that Hannah and I were more than enough to make him happy.
State Champs
He never pushed us to try out for a softball team so that he could share some of his knowledge with us.  In fact, during that same school year I picked up soccer on my own at recess and before long, my sister and I were on recreation league teams.
When Hannah and I became runners in high school, he immersed himself in the sport.  Last fall, Dad ran a 5K with Hannah during Parent’s Weekend at Florida State.
Despite the fact that my dad says my sister and I have a line-drive kind of swing, he let us go our own way in the wide world of sports.  I like to think that part of what keeps us coming back to baseball is the freedom of choice we were given in our youth.
Happy Father’s Day to the man who has always made me feel like he couldn’t have asked for anything other than my sister and me.  Someday, way down the road, I hope to give you grandkids.  I’d like for us all to hit the batting cages together, and I know you won’t care if the children in tow are boys or girls.
–Sarah’s father, Wayne, is a contributor on Cowbell Clankers. His Father’s Day post can be found here.
If you’d like to read a couple more posts about dads, check out Katie at Blake Street Buzz, Stacey at Spreadin’ The News, and a tribute to Jack Buck from Chris at Aaron Miles’ Fastball.
