Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

I have been struggling all week to put down into words on how this country is at a crossroads for its soul and how I can relate it to my first love sports.  This blog isn't about red or blue and who's right or wrong, it’s about getting back to the days of civility.  I have friends that fill both sides of the so-called aisle and the reason they are friends, and might I say dear friends is that their political beliefs don't define who they're as a person.  

I think back to my childhood growing up in the Chicago suburbs and the midwestern values my mom and dad preached and how they've impacted my life.  Those were the days and times when my brother and I left the house at the crack of dawn with our bikes, baseball gloves and ball, and a football.  (For the youth of today, no phones or video games.) We'd play with our neighborhood friends all day until mom rang the dinner bell and we would come home and sit down around the dinner table and talk about the day.  Talk, not with our heads down in a cell phone or tablet to make us behave and take the pressure off mom and dad to parent and be present.

I can remember days when my dad wasn't happy about certain things a president did or said, but he would always follow up with you must respect the office.  If he or she is successful we will all be successful.  Boy, have we lost that in our society.  Just watch TV for an hour and flip channels and you don't see civility on any channel.  My mom always said the country lost its soul the day JFK was assassinated, and civility went out the door.  I truly believe it went to hell in a hand basket with cell phones and the internet.  

In being a father of three athletes and trying to raise them to be respectful, discipline and good fun-loving kids, my ex and I did the best we could in today's world.  We were tasked like most families now a days with our kids playing travel or club sports.  Along with cell phones and video games, this maybe the single biggest challenge on the nuclear family in America.  We did whatever was necessary to get one to volleyball, the other two to baseball and of course in multiple locations.  At times, we were like two ships passing in the night and exhausted from running all over either Chicago and then our days in Phoenix, I loved every second of watching our kids play, compete and most of the time have fun.  However, as the demand for specialized sports and the chase for the college scholarships has grown, it may be at the cost of the nuclear family.  The family values of sitting down around the dinner table and sharing the day, have turned into fast food and how little Johnny on the team sucked but his daddy was coaching and that’s the only reason he played.  The chase for rankings and committing to a college as an eighth grader, yes, an eighth grader have become out of whack!  During our 14U summer with our youngest, we were in West Palm twice, Orlando, Cary, NC, Atlanta twice and Hoover, AL.  All in eight weeks!  For Pete’s sake, that’s more travel than an MLB team.  But to drive up our ranking we had to appear and play well!  However, the one thing missing was that I didn’t see Duke, Alabama, Auburn, FSU, Clemson, LSU, or anyone of the like watching the games. The one thing I wouldn't give back is the time with my kids on these trips, but what did we miss in this process.  

I harken back to the days of when the kids could ride their bikes to school, football was in the fall, basketball the winter, and baseball in the spring.  Summers were spent at camps and family vacations that didn't involve whether we had 10 kills per game or hit .500 for the weekend or if you had 500 likes on a tweet on X about an at bat.  Parents acting like parents and not like a crazed lunatic because little Johnny lost a 14U game.  We need civility to reign over us again and agree to disagree and respect one another.  The act of trying to tear people down just because they don't think like you or have the same beliefs is going to destroy us all from the inside out.  

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

Mike Scully