“Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later… that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.” ~Tom Wolfe – The Bonfires of the Vanities
Like most of the boys growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I was surrounded by heroes, both fictional and real. There was Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, Roy Rogers, Ivanhoe, Superman and any role John Wayne assumed. Real life heroes tended to be sports figures. One of the biggest was Mickey Mantle. I never put my Dad into such lofty levels of admiration that I had for these cherished icons. I never remember playing Dad in the yard as I did in recreating Davy Crockett at the Alamo. I never dreamed of being Dad as I did imagine what it would be like to be Mickey Mantle. My Dad’s heroic stature didn’t surface until I grew into adulthood and fatherhood. Once my role in life was no longer imaginary, once I became a father, I began to understand and appreciate the awesome role model he was. He wasn’t perfect. He had his warts. But, he did teach me about self-esteem, commitment, responsibility, integrity and courage. Over the years I have come to understand that these real traits were what attracted me to those fictional characters I idolized as a child. In my imaginary world of heroes, there are no flaws; no warts. My icons were not really real as my mind conjured them. My Dad was.
One quote on fatherhood that I treasure is one attributed to the late Coach Jim Valvano. He said, “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”
It has been said that small boys become big men through the influence of big men who care about small boys. Like great teachers, great fathers are invaluable in imparting to those under their tutelage the importance of believing in ourselves with the same fervor that they believe in us. One of my childhood heroes, Mickey Mantle wrote about the heroism he ultimately recognized in his father. With Father’s Day this Sunday, it is a story worth sharing. Mickey called it, The Bravest Man.
The bravest man I ever knew was my father. He died in the winter after my first year in the major leagues, when I was twenty and he was only forty-one. He died of Hodgkin’s disease, a form of cancer like leukemia. He knew he had it. He knew it for a long time He was a tremendously strong man but the disease weakened him so much that he was like a shell of what he used to be. He never told me he was sick, and I believe he never told anybody, until we found out about it by accident.
Here’s how I learned about it. In the second game of the 1951 World Series, which was my first World Series, I fell chasing a fly ball in the outfield in Yankee Stadium, and I hurt my knee badly. I was taken to the hotel I was living in in New York City, and then I had to go to the hospital. My father had come up from home to see the World Series and he left the game with me and accompanied me in the taxi that took me to my hotel room and then to the hospital. Outside the hospital, he got out of the cab first. As I got out, I was on crutches so I couldn’t put any weight on my injured leg. I stumbled and grabbed my father’s shoulder to steady myself. He crumpled to the sidewalk. I couldn’t understand it. He was a very strong man and I didn’t think anything at all about putting my weight on him that way. He was always so strong. Well, the doctors took him into the hospital, too, and examined him and then told me how sick he was. It was incurable, they said, and he only had a few months to live…
My father was brave in a lot of ways. I was the oldest child and I was born in October of 1931, right in the middle of the Depression, in Spavinaw, Oklahoma…It was a hard time to bring up a family, especially where we lived, which was one of the poorest parts of the country. Even in wealthy parts of the country, people were standing in line for food. Finding work and earning money was the hardest thing in the world to do, and keeping a family alive and fed and happy at the same time was even harder. But he did both, he and my mother (she was pretty brave, too; she had to make do without very much – she did all of our cooking on a wood stove, for one thing – but we never felt we were without anything). My father never quit, never admitted defeat…
The thing is, despite all the trouble he and my mother had because of the Depression, we had lots of fun growing up. I had a happy boyhood, and even though I probably make more money now in a year than my father made in his life, I don’t know that my kids are any happier than we were. I didn’t appreciate this as a boy, but as a man I am even more filled with admiration for my father – especially for his courage in the face of trouble…
When I was growing up my father used to take me with him all the way to St. Louis to see major league games. That was the nearest big league town in those days, and he and his friends would drive six hundred miles up and back on a weekend to take in a couple of games. My father always took me with him.
I guess making the major leagues was one of the happiest things that ever happened to my father, and I often think how glad I am that I made it before he died. Though I almost didn’t.
The first year I was with the Yankees, when I was nineteen, I struck out an awful lot. Casey Stengel was the manager and he played me a good part of the time, but even though I got some hits now and then, I kept striking out. It was terrible. Finally, in July, the Yankees decided to send me down to the minors to get rid of the strikeout habit. It was a depressing thing being sent down to the minors, and I felt low. I thought I had missed my big chance. I figured they had looked at me and didn’t want me.
The Yanks sent me to Kansas City, which at that time was a Yankee farm club in the American Association. There I got even worse. I believe I got one hit in my first twenty-two at bats, and that was a bunt. My father came up from home to Kansas City to see me play. I was living in a hotel there and, boy, was I glad to see him. I wanted him to pat me on the back and cheer me up and tell me how badly the Yankees treated me and all that sort of stuff. I guess I was like a little boy, and I wanted him to comfort me.
He asked, “How are things going?”
I replied, “ Awful. The Yankees sent me down to learn how not to strike out, but now I can’t even hit.”
He said, “That so?”
I answered, “ I’m not good enough to play in the major leagues, and I’m not good enough to play here. I’ll never make it. I think I’ll quit and go home with you.”
I guess I wanted him to say, Oh don’t be silly, you’re just in a little slump, you’ll be all right, you’re great. But he just looked at me for a second and then in a quiet voice that cut me in two he said, “Well, Mick, if that’s all the guts you have I think you better quit. You might as well come home right now.
I never felt as ashamed as I did then, to hear my father sound disappointed in me. I shut my mouth. I didn’t say anything more about quitting and going home. I kept playing. Things got better and a month later the Yankees called me back up to the major, and I’ve been there ever since.
I have wondered sometimes exactly what it was. I know that I wanted my father to comfort me. He didn’t. He didn’t give me any advice. He didn’t show me how to swing the bat any different. He didn’t give me inspiring speeches. I think that what happened was that he had so much plain ordinary courage that it spilled over, and I could feel it. All he did was show me that I was acting scared and that you can’t live scared.
A year later he was dead. I realized then that he was dying when he came to see me in Kansas City, though he never gave any sign to me.
As Shakespeare wrote, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” My father didn’t die scared, and he didn’t live scared. He was the bravest man I’ve ever known.
Have an AWE-full Father’s day weekend!
Bill