It is six days until kickoff of Super Bowl LII Sunday between the Philadelphia Eagles and the defending champions the New England Patriots. If my father were alive, there’s a good chance he would be rooting for the underdog Eagles.
Not that he handicapped any games. He barely knew what football was, the American version, that is. Growing up in Poland he knew football for what we call soccer. But I digress.
After arriving on American shores in 1939, my father had a difficult time learning the intricacies of what was then, and by some still is, considered the national pastime, baseball. Occasionally he would watch parts of a game with my brother Bernie and me. It was our mother who took us to ball games until Bernie was old enough to escort me to Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium without adult supervision.
Football was not a game my father ever spent any time watching. Because of his bald pate, he did, by the way, bear a striking resemblance to Y.A. Tittle, the “Bald Eagle” Hall of Fame quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers and, late in his career, the New York Giants, the team he led to three consecutive NFL Eastern Conference titles in 1961-62-63. Alas, he never was able to win a championship.
Thirty-seven years ago my father got caught up in the frenzy of football memorabilia. As Bernie recalled, in late December 1979, Dad, an independent apparel manufacturer, surprised him by saying he was rooting for Philadelphia to win its next game. Bernie asked if he knew whether the team was playing football, basketball or hockey. “I don’t know, or care,” he replied. “I only know that if Philadelphia wins and plays next week, then I have an order for 10,000 green T-shirts with white sleeves!”
It was the Philadelphia Eagles football team. They played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a divisional playoff game. Philadelphia lost, 24-17.
There are no shirt orders on the line for this Super Bowl matchup. I am rooting for the Patriots. Except when they’re playing the Giants, I favor New England. Their quarterback, Tom Brady, is just the best to watch dissect a defense. There are no other indispensable stars on the team.
I want New England to win, as well, because our grandson Finley has become a Patriots fan and wears a Brady jersey while watching games. He began life as a Giants and Eli Manning fan, as his father, Dan and mother, Allison, and grandfather are. But living outside Boston the transformation into a Patriots booster was inevitable.
To my knowledge, he has not succumbed to becoming a Red Sox devotee. I’m counting on his parents to keep him a Yankees fan.
Sing a Song: When you’re in a reflective mood, do you find yourself humming or singing a song? I often do. But they’re not songs of my youth or adulthood. They are songs my parents sang.
My mother always had music playing in the background. Mostly American standards played on WVNJ-AM or WPAT-FM. She enjoyed Broadway musicals and operas. But the only two songs that resonate among memories of my mother were sung by Kate Smith and Jo Stafford.
“When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” was Kate Smith’s theme song. I remember the lyric Mom sang as,
“When the moon comes over the mountains
Someone waits for me”
but the actual lyrics are,
“When the moon comes over the mountain
I’m alone with my memory
Of you”
When she was in a more jocular mood Mom would sing the Jo Stafford song:
“Shrimp boats is a-comin’
Their sails are in sight
Shrimp boats is a-comin’
There’s dancin’ tonight”
Dad, on the other hand, did a virtuoso performance of “Home on the Range.” He’d belt it out whenever we’d be driving close to home after a family outing. Bernie says he liked that song because it was one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s favorites. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_YK7ebcZ2o)
And Dad would sing late in the afternoon in his factory, usually while repairing a recalcitrant Merrow sewing machine. I can still see him hunched over the black machine, but I cannot place any melody.
Back to Football: There is one other star, maybe even a superstar, player on the Patriots. He’s Rob Gronkowski, a tight end who is a favorite receiver of Tom Brady. But it’s not certain he will play because he is recuperating from a concussion suffered when his helmet was hit by a defender’s helmet during the Patriots’ victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Helmet to helmet hits are the scourge of football especially now that concussions are considered the reason many players develop brain injuries. Yet defenders persist in leading with their heads when making tackles.
There’s a simple way to reduce helmet to helmet injuries and other violent acts that lead to injuries: Suspend without pay the offender for as long as the injured player misses playing time. If the egregious incident occurs late in a season or playoff game the offending player’s punishment carries over to the following year if the injured player has a lingering injury. If it is a career ending injury the guilty party would be suspended for a full year in addition to any games left in the current schedule.
Faced with the loss of salary and playing time, tacklers will not risk butting helmets and coaches will go back to teaching fundamentals of football that do not include head to head contact.
