Fans relate to TB’s pain
Story of sick mom hits home
HOUSTON — We can’t possibly fathom what it’s like to be the greatest quarterback in the history of the National Football League.
We will never break records or throw the big passes that help secure a Super Bowl championship. There is no Hall of Fame in our future.
Mansions? Private jets? The ability to strut into the side door at the White House and have a quality hang with the new president? All of this is beyond us. But then we read that Tom Brady’s mother is sick, that her illness has been a source of family concern for a year and a half, that this might be why Deflategate was not appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
We knew something was amiss with Brady when, during last Monday’s “Opening Night” Super Bowl media extravaganza, he welled up a little as he talked about his father. We assumed that was Brady’s way of telling us about the emotional turmoil that Deflategate had wrought on his family.
It was some of that, sure. But it was also the emotional turmoil of providing care, encouragement and hope for a sick parent. We get it. And for those of you who have reached out in some way — through a personal letter, or via some social media platform, or perhaps your minute or two of air time on one of the talk shows — I’m guessing Brady is aware of your support. I can’t confirm this, and, sure, the man has all that Super Bowl preparation clogging up his week, but two events from the past — one involving Carl Yastrzemski, the other involving Wade Boggs — are relevant to this discussion.
Those of us who were around in the late 1970s remember scenes of Yastrzemski’s ailing mother being carried into Fenway Park to watch her son play for the Red Sox. She could sometimes be seen sitting in the private box of team owner Thomas Yawkey.
She died in January 1978. In 1983, as Yaz was closing out his brilliant, Hall of Fame career, a special day in his honor was held on the final Saturday of the season. There were speeches and poems, proclamations and gifts, until finally Carl Yastrzemski himself stepped to the microphone.
It was at that moment that the very private Yaz invited us to share part of his personal life.
He asked that a moment of silence be observed for two people: For Tom Yawkey and for his mother.
The Boggs family suffered a horrific personal tragedy when, on June 17, 1986, Wade’s mother Sue was killed in an automobile crash in Tampa. Boggs left the Red Sox to join his family in Florida. When he returned to the lineup on June 23 at Fenway Park, he received a rousing standing ovation that lasted several minutes.
“That resonates so much with me right now,” Boggs said last May when he returned to Fenway Park for the retirement of his uniform No. 26. “I looked at the umpire, and I said, ‘Are we going to start the game?’ And he says, ‘No, I’m enjoying this.’
“The fans were so supportive, so wonderful. It just was a piece of the puzzle that fit in in 1986.”
Again: That was Boggs talking more than 30 years after his mother died.
We don’t ask for, and we don’t expect our sports heroes to share their personal lives with us. That’s not part of the arrangement. They get paid millions of dollars to perform athletic deeds, and along the way we see them on a street, in a bar, at a restaurant, at the mall, and for a few moments we can claim them as friends and neighbors.
Rarely do we get a chance to understand their personal struggles. Sometimes, though, we do get that chance. Just this week, the Herald’s Jeff Howe wrote an emotional piece about the Patriots’ Nate Solder and his young son’s battle with cancer. We shared Jon Lester’s plight when the former Red Sox lefty was fighting his own battle with cancer. To this day it’s hard for older Boston sports fans not to get emotional as they recall the brain aneurysm that ended the career of a promising young Bruin named Normand Léveillé.
And then there’s Pete Frates, whose battle with ALS has become our battle.
The run-up to this year’s Super Bowl includes Tom Brady sharing with us the news of his ailing mother.
Boston sports fans are all in. And Brady knows it.