The Best Fan I Know

This is not my normal essay on sports. No reporting on the Yankees, Mets or any MLB team or players. Nope. None of that. 

Even while the end of the NFL season is upon us, there will be no sad or sarcastic comments about the Jets and Giants. Nothing about the playoff contenders. Not even about Drew Brees, Lamar Jackson, Tom Brady or any coach or other team and/or player(s). 

Pro and college hoops are in full swing. As much as I would have liked to discuss the changing landscape in hoops, this is not the time. No recap of Seton Hall-Rutgers. No discussion of the Lakers or Bucks. 

Ditto hockey, golf, Tiger Woods. Plenty to talk about. Just not in this blog.

Same for college football with National Signing Day. Can’t talk about it, Greg Schiano, Chris Ash, bowl games, All-Star teams. Uh uh.

Instead, I am going to talk about a fan. Not a rabid fan, mind you, but a fan who can talk sports. Who knows how to analyze key moments and derives satisfaction when teams win. Yet this fan does not get down when a team of interest loses, which is far different from a lot of my friends, who live and die with the Yankees, Giants, Jets, Rangers and Devils, or Rutgers or even Seton Hall, UVa, etc. 

Understanding and appreciating the subtleties of sports is this fan’s pleasure. And when there is a question to be asked, the question is asked. If criticism is warranted, then the criticism is valid and honest. 

This fan knows baseball. This fan knows football. This fan knows basketball. This fan knows hockey. This fan knows tennis. This fan knows golf. This fan knows gymnastics. All sports which this fan never has played or tried, yet can talk with great expertise on a multitude of related topics.

I grew up a sports fan from an early age. My baseball recollections go back to 1956-57 for Yankees baseball and a brief telecast of the Dodgers. I recall Marty Glickman doing NBA games from Syracuse and Rochester and the Knicks playing at the 69th Regiment Armory.  I followed NHL hockey on CBS with the Saturday afternoon telecasts. I devoured the sports sections of the Daily News, the Daily Mirror, Journal-American, and the Sunday New York Times. Local sports in the Daily Home News. Rutgers football was broadcast on WCTC 1450.

I watched my heroes—Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra. Frank Gifford and Sam Huff of the Giants. Carl Braun and Richie Guerin of the Knickerbockers. I saw enough newsreels on Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. 

I lived, breathed and loved sports—if I could play it I would. Shooting hoops on the basket affixed to the house over the garage door. Having the neighbors throw baseball after baseball to me so I could catch and hit. Swimming laps in the pool developed stamina.

This was what most boys my age did and liked to do. In Highland Park it was the norm.

My love of sports grew exponentially. Baseball cards helped. Talking with my friends about Mantle or other Yankees was great. I watched everything I could on WPIX, the home of the Yankees. I started to go to the Stadium. 60 years ago this past October I was inside Madison Square Garden for my first Rangers game. Back to the Garden to see Wilt Chamberlain demolish the poor old Knicks. More NBA games on TV kept me glued to the TV in the colder months.

When college football or basketball was shown, I was on top of it. Army-Navy. Local college hoops from Manhattan College, Fordham. The NIT with NYU still playing top tier major college basketball. I actually knew where Bradley University was from watching TV. 

Saturday night Rangers or Knicks telecasts were a staple. I even fooled around with the TV to try to get broadcasts from Philadelphia in a grainy, barely visible picture. 

When the Mets arrived, I soaked up their broadcasts. Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy; Kiner’s Corner with Hall of Fame outfielder Ralph Kiner—I watched the Amazins’, with Casey Stengel, lose game after game.

You get the picture. Pun intended. And I still haven’t stopped watching TV or live sports. This is why I have had Rangers, Jets, Devils and Rutgers basketball packages. 

I also have a sister whom I converted into a sports nut. She was every bit the Yankees and Jets fan I was. She could hit a baseball and throw HARD. She played tennis at Monmouth. I don’t know who was the better athlete, but we were highly competitive when it came to sports. She went where I went when it came to attending games. 

Ironically, my father was not as crazy about sports as I was or even my sister. But he watched the Yankees on hot summer nights in our cooler downstairs den, which had a big fan giving us enough of a breeze, eating watermelon or cherries. I can vividly recall games from old Briggs Stadium in Detroit, Washington’s Griffith Stadium with the first incarnation of the Senators, Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox, venerable Fenway Park and Cleveland’s cavernous Municipal Stadium—all before expansion.

Again, this is not about me. I speak of my background so that you can grasp why I am so astonished about this fan I am going to honor. This fan did not have the kind of background I did. Yes, the fan went to the Garden for the Knicks and Rangers, saw the Mets at the Polo Grounds and the Yankees at the old Stadium. Far from the extent that I did.

So who is this best fan I have ever known? It is not my son, who loves his hockey and Jets football along with anything Miami Hurricanes and the tennis majors.

My daughter is very interested in sports—more than he is. She knows baseball, football, Penn State football, hockey. Really well. We share the FOX NFL pool, ruminating over wins or losses. Still, I am not talking about her, despite her great working knowledge of sports and sports broadcasting.

By now you have probably guessed that the person I love to watch anything sports with is the woman I married. Toby Claire Sperber is the best sports fan I have ever known. 

She can’t recite records of teams or players from memory. She has her favorites. And she has some players, coaches, mangers who she disdains.

Toby watches Pardon The Interruption for the humor and sarcasm. She liked the information Ron Jaworski and Steve Young offered. It is her current events for sports. Toby doesn’t need Sports Center. 

I should have known what I was getting into 38 years ago on December 26th when we started a conversation at her cousin’s door on the night we met on a blind date (which her cousin never thought could possibly work), with me trying to leave nicely around 11:00 to get some sleep before the Jets playoff game the next day at 12:00 at Shea Stadium. 

I told her where I was going and asked her if she liked sports. She said “Yes.” I asked her who her favorite sportscaster was and she said Len Berman, who was on WNBC. 

That led to two hours of non-stop talking and a weary me heading to Queens. And a lifetime with the best partner this man could ever have found.

We didn’t really talk much about sports when we dated. I did take her to the Garden to see the Rangers. Once we married, she loved to meet me at our seats in Section 302, Row F, seats 1 & 2, bringing sandwiches from the Second Avenue Deli. She instantly became addicted to the fervor at Rangers games.

She learned that I was a sports junkie. Throughout the years, she watched countless games, went with me to college and pro stadiums and arenas everywhere, with nary a complaint. It was part of partnership which she thought was fun and exciting.

We took our children to many games in many places. My daughter, as I said, was like me, and she talked her way into a closed Stanford Stadium, a 1984 Olympic venue, for her “father to see.” Whether it was a Saturday night game in the Metrodome, the Division III Final Four in Salem, Virginia, or a simple F&M-Moravian basketball game in Bethlehem, she enjoyed the excitement. 

Even the dog was dragged into the sports miasma. Lady loved her spot on the grass peering under the fence from beyond the North end zone at F&M’s Williamson Field. Restrained by Toby, watching the contest unfold.

What I didn’t know was Toby was learning about the games and how they were played. She watched intently, listened to my dialogue and eventually the quietness was replaced by pertinent questions and those questions were then replaced by sophisticated observations.

Toby has watched over 37 years of sports in varying degrees. Not to the extent that I do. Nonetheless, I absolutely love watching or going to a Yankees game with her. She has really gotten into my stadium tour (she loves Pittsburgh and Houston). 

Not overly demonstrative like me, she was really into the Seton Hall-Rutgers game on Saturday. The woman knows a 2-3 zone, a zone press and trap, and switching man-to man defenses.

When the NBA playoffs came around, she would watch the Warriors with great fascination. She loves what Klay Thompson can do on a court, describing him as underrated.  While she understood the money ramifications, Toby hoped that Kevin Durant would stay a Warrior. 

Toby shakes her head in disgust when we talk about the Knicks. Then again, doesn’t everyone?

She asks about Seth Curry—not Steph Curry, who she truly appreciates. She understood the significance of what Drew Brees did with his 29 for 30 passing on Monday night. Toby feels for Eli Manning, until I remind her he is making $18 million.

We were in South Africa and she became enthralled with the World Cup. It might be boring at times. To her, it had major importance. Toby is fully aware of the USA’s decline and is mystified why we can’t be better. 

Toby became a serious watcher of gymnastics from our daughter’s participation. She knows vaulting, floor, the uneven bars and beam. Toby will score the event and let me know if she disagrees with the judge’s opinion.

My wife knows when she sees pass interference—better than the NFL officials. Her thought on past and present Jets head coaches cannot be printed. 

Toby understood the greatness of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. She’s not very fond of Novak Djokovic. 

She always thought that Joe Girardi overused his bullpen. To her, Derek Jeter was more a real baseball player than simply good looking. She loved the character and hustle of Didi Gregorius. Don’t ask for her opinion on Gary Sanchez. 

Toby is not a big fan of Rutgers AD Pat Hobbs. Her dislike started when he banned outside food from the RAC. The Schiano affair and other things which have happened under his watch have soured her. 

No one sees this blog until Toby has read it. She questions things I write or tells me I have done a good job. Because she really knows the subjects I write about. 

Toby is out playing mah jongg while I write this piece. I didn’t turn on any games tonight. I would rather have her stop and peer at the score and offer a comment which would cause me to think how lucky I am to have her knowledge of sports. 

This woman will ask me when I make my weekly NFL selections why I picked the Jets or went with Buffalo over New England (What were you thinking?). Even if she can’t stand Tom Brady, Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick. 

Toby believes that the salaries for athletes are obscene. She was instrumental in my not spending money on a Jets seat license—because she knew it was a bad investment for the product I was getting.  Although the facilities are gleaming, she believes governments could better spend their money on more appropriate things which impact the citizens for generations.

Her pragmatism does not detract from her objectively and subjectively watching games and traveling to so many arenas and stadiums. Toby has sympathy and empathy for the participants and the fans who freeze themselves at Met Life Stadium and other venues (she still dislikes the Giants for not agreeing to enclose the stadium with a roof).

She’ll come back tonight and asked what games did I watch. She will be a bit perplexed that I didn’t watch any tonight. It’s not as much fun without her input. 

She might be sad to know that there was a 30 for 30 on ESPN. Then again, she will ask me to find out if it will be on again. 

I know she will follow the College Football Playoffs. Toby thinks that it is time that someone else other than Alabama participates—perhaps Clemson might repeat, but she hasn’t yet shared that with me.

Her birthday, our meeting and our anniversary all fall between December 22 and 30. I learned early that I made a sizable mistake wanting to go to a Flyers-Rangers game without her on our anniversary. After all, it was a big rivalry in the early ’80’s. She would have enjoyed the Garden crowds’ nasty, throaty castigating of the visitors. And she might have agreed with their opinion based on how the game was going.

Thanks, Toby, for being the best fan I could ever talk sports with. You have allowed me to be me in a way that we fully shared the experience. Your passion and love for sports is something I respect and cherish. Thanks for taking the time to learn the intricacies of the sports and to appreciate the gifted athletes we watch along with questioning the many facets of sports as a business regarding the NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL.

And yes, dear, I concur that Lebron is great, not as wonderful as Michael Jordan, and he whines too much.