Sports are a funny thing.

I have been a sports fan my whole life. When I was younger, I'll guess about 8-16 years old I was a die hard Sportsmachine(pre-cable TV) and Sportscenter(post cable TV) follower, checking scores in church, box score reading, jersey wearing fanatic. I guess over the years I have been more of a casual fan, I still take in my share of games and I can still hold my own if I fall into a conversation with the fantasy geeks, but last night I realized what was missing.

I guess it's been building up for about six months, about when Simon started playing football. Slow and steadily he became a football fan. He cannot get enough of it. I love throwing the ball around with him after work, I absolutely loved him coming in and sitting with me to watch the Saturday afternoon College game, (Rachel is fine with me watching sports with my boys, but me by myself, not so much). Naturally he started liking the pro game. NFL games are harder to catch, so his involvement was vicarious through his best buddy Parker. As fate would have it the Cardinals had their historically successful season this year, and Simon was on board. He and Parker would play outside for hours, Parker was Kurt Warner and Simon was Larry Fitzgerald.

A deadly tandem to be sure.

I would watch these two boys play and I'd slip away to the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood California receiving a no look pass from Magic Johnson, (a ricochet off the garage door), catching and shooting at the buzzer to win game seven of the NBA finals. Or to the summer when the Angels needed me to play shortstop, only because I wouldn't dream of taking Rod Carew, Bobby Grich or Doug DeCinces position in the infield, I played center field for the Dodgers after Kenny Landreaux left, I had some monster homers OVER the pavilions! ...It's just a blissful, wonderful time to dream, and dream big.

However all of this came to an apex last night. We had just finished with family prayer and the boys wanted to 'check on the game', so I told Simon he could turn it on and watch whatever was left of it. We were all shocked to see the Cardinals had a lead LATE in the fourth quarter. There was a lot of giddiness on the part of the kids, and disbelief for us parents. Well, it ended rather abruptly for all of us when the Steelers took the lead, except Simon. He knew that the Cards could win, they won that game about a thousand times out in our front yard. He kept repeating "Throw it to Fitzgerald, he'll catch it!" Time ran out. It didn't happen.

As the insensitive dumkof that I am, I gave the,"Well that's the breaks! Exciting anyway. Now go to bed kids". This was the only consoling thing my callous heart could come up with. A little while later Rachel was checking on the kids. She came back she told me that Simon was balling his eyes out. He couldn't believe that they didn't win. He innocently said, "John Madden doesn't know what he's talking about! Kurt Warner didn't fumble that ball! He just needed one more chance!"

My heart sank for a second, and then my eyes welled up. Not because I was sad, I was happy that my boy has that much heart and I had this weird culmination of feelings that I had forgotten existed about how your heart can be connected with a sport, and a team, and a player. Amazing! Sports, in this case, football found my heart again, it took my nine year old son to do it, but none the less, it got to my heart.

.

My Little Larry Fitzgerald.