The Boob Tube

Funny how something could be considered evil at one point in a life and, years later, be considered a Godsend. I'm talking about television. When I was a wee lad, my mother hated everything about it, from the steady cacophonous noise to the poor program selection to the killing fields of radiation spewing out into my eyeballs, resting 6 inches away.

Part of the problem, I know, was our TV was in black & white. Dad - "Red" - was traveling all the time, so he could watch color TVs in his hotel rooms. The family set was secondary to him. In fact, even when he was home he wasn't around us enough to watch the thing. He'd spend most of his time in another room in our apartment (usually mine) working on "plans" for some new business, idea or invention (more than once I had to push his sleeping body onto my floor so I could crawl under the covers of my bed and pray my mother didn't kill the man).

I don't think he realized our TV was black & white until he started one year - I think 1980 - unemployed. Playing career over for 2 years by then, he kicked around a St. Louis radio booth in 1979 filling in 4 to 5 times a week for the hard-drinking Harry Gallo and trying not to cough through the cigarette smoke of five-pack-a-day Rich Grodin. Not getting along well with either man, "Red" started the '80 season in our rented home in Medfield, MA. While Mom and I worried his lack of income would get us kicked out of the first house we'd lived in for 5 years, "Red" sat in his leather chair and watched Boston play opening day. I still remember his eyes fluttering, his lips quivering, and his hair, somehow, shaking independently from his head. "Peggy," he called, "something's wrong with the TV!" She ran into the room and saw my almost 12 year old face in my hands. "What?" she asked. "Red" didn't take his eyes from the screen. "Didn't you ever buy us a color TV?" Mom rolled her eyes and left the room to go back to ironing his underpants.

Criticize him all you want - please, I beg you to - but he's always been a huge baseball fan. If he had a gun at his head and was given the choice of letting his family survive or the game of baseball, he'd choose the latter. I'd yell and stammer bad things at the man. But he'd just nod and say nobody is bigger than the game, not even himself. That is his definition of loyalty.

"Red" tried watching games at pubs and by inviting himself into other people's homes, desperate to get as close as possible to the lush green field and hazy blue sky of a ballgame. But it wasn't the same. By May 1, he'd reached into his pocket and spilled for a full-color Magnavox set. The screen was only 13-inches and the back of the set protruded about five feet. Trying hanging that 50-pound box on a wall. The house would've fallen down. His timing, however, was perfect. Dad got a radio job for Texas about two weeks later. After the school year, we moved to a new apartment outside of Dallas. Sitting shotgun in the car next to Mom on the 20-hour drive was our 50-pound Magnavox, seatbelt secured.

I sat in the back on a box containing "Red's" colored and numbered thumbtack collection.

I think the post-playing career moving for Dad's fledgling radio/TV career added to Mom's dislike of "the boob tube," as she called it. She thought when he was done playing, we'd be done moving. We'd finally be able to settle down in one town and she'd be able to make a friendship that lasted longer than a nine inning game. But "Red" was starting from scratch, with no agent, so he had to move around and find openings with last place clubs as radio fill in, part-time pre-game host... whatever he could get. The money wasn't very good, but he loved being around the players, being around the game. We had to go along for the ride.

Mom loves TV now. Not because "Red," after many years, became a fairly well-respected television announcer making a very good salary. She grew to like it when she started seeing her son make an appearance every fifth day inside "the boob tube." Thanks to cable, videocassettes, and eventually satellite, my mother has seen, by her count, 465 of my career 484 starts. She's seen my public service announcements, my local and national television commercials. She even goes to YouTube now on her Mac to fire up old video of me doing post-game interviews. I know she's going to be watching ABC's Diane Sawyer tonight talk to Vanessa and me in our home, filmed here last week. And I know she'll be watching the Pepsi spot Alyssa and I are filming today when it airs in late-February.

She doesn't call it "the boob tube" anymore. Mom calls it "Jimmy's box" because she's proud.

And what did she do if I was playing in one city and "Red" was announcing a game in another at the same time? She always chose her son. That, to me, is the definition of loyalty.