Happy Dad's Day!

So, last month we talked about moms, and now it's the dads' turn to get the old Desperation Hockey treatment for their contributions to their kids' sports lives. Since he's the best dad I know, I'll mainly be focusing on my dad, but doing so is my way of saying "Thank You" to all the dads out there today, and wishing them a great Father's Day!

As I may have mentioned before, both my parents were big into sports in school, and both went into sports-related professions (my mom teaches gym, and my dad is a sports physician), which means that, though you wouldn't know it from watching me throw, kick, or catch anything, sports is in my blood. It's somewhat of a latent gene, though, and I'm not just talking about my lack of coordination. For the better part of my young life I took a strictly participatory interest in sports, and spectatorship was only occasionally on my agenda. Mostly, those occasional times were because of my dad. While my mom was the one driving me to my soccer practices in the summer, and picking me up from my lacrosse games in the spring, my dad was usually the one who took me to see the Sabres, Bisons, or the Blizzard (man the Blizzard were cool) at various points during the year. But, while I usually enjoyed the games once I got there, I really only went because I wanted an excuse to eat hot dogs and ice cream. I remember one time we got to see a no-hitter at Dunn Tire park (or whatever the hell it was called then, it was a really long time ago), and it was while watching my dad be completely enthralled by the last tense minutes of that perfect game that I really realized for the first time that sports is more than just an excuse to eat junk food and visit with mascots. Still, it would be a long time before I totally caught on to the whole sport spectator thing, but it wasn't for lack of trying on my dad's part.

Eventually, obviously, I did become a huge hockey fan, which just happened to coincide with my dad's office buying and sharing season tickets in HSBC. They were perfect: lower bowl, fourteen rows up, right behind the visitors' bench, incredible view of everything on the ice. There was only one problem: there were four tickets, and five people in our family. It was fine, as long as I was away at school, when my parents and siblings could go without me, but as soon as I came home, I laid claim to one of those tickets, and fast, which meant that someone else was the odd man (or woman) out. In May of 2007, I got my first opportunity to go to a playoff game, specifically Game One of the Eastern Conference Final with Ottawa. Instead of drawing straws or having a round robin Rock Paper Scissors tournament, my dad graciously bowed out and let my mom take the kids. (It turned out to be his gain, since that game stunk, and was only the beginning of the can of suck the Sabres had opened.) Another time, when those four tickets had been allotted to someone else for the Ice Bowl, that guy decided to only use two of them, and offered the other two to someone else in the office. It was shortly before Christmas, and my dad immediately had his eye on the tickets as the perfect gift for my sister and me, who were both bummed when we failed to get tickets the good old-fashioned way. Unfortunately, my dad's partner at the practice was also interested in the tickets for his kids, though in a much more casual, half-hearted way. So desperate was my dad to get a hold of those tickets that he considered offering the guy money outright to buy tickets that he had technically already payed for, but he ultimately decided to trust in the coin toss. Of course he won, because, obviously, it was meant to be that Meghan and I would go to that game. And it was pretty much the best Christmas present ever. But my favorite story regarding my dad and those tickets was when one of his partners approached him about using the tickets to help the business: to court clients and potential new fellows and whatever. My dad resisted the urge to laugh in his face (I hope), and made it very clear that he had no interest in using those tickets for anything but having fun with his family. "Look, I have three kids who are all very interested in the Sabres, and we have a lot of fun going down to the games and enjoying ourselves. I'm not going to give that up," he quoted himself when he shared this story with me, and I perfectly understood. He'd spent a long time getting his children interested in attending live sporting events, going back to all of those nights at Marine Midland Arena (I never did get to go to the Aud) and whatever-it-was-called-then park, and now that he no longer had to lure us there with promises of nachos and Sabretooth, he wanted to enjoy it to the fullest. "Besides," he continued, "I want you to be there to see the look on my wife's face when I tell her she can't go to the games anymore."

So, here's to you, Dad! Even though you wouldn't let me follow my dream of playing hockey in high school (a good call on your part--I probably would have just embarrassed myself, anyway), I still love you to pieces for, among many other things, bringing me live hockey (repeatedly), and eventually making me love it. Thanks! Ich würde sagen, dass ich ein Bier für dich heute trinken werde, aber Bier (besonders österriechisches Bier) mag ich wirklich nicht, also stattdessen werde ich ein Glas Grüner Veltliner für dich heben. Prost!