Happy Father's Day from Revenge of the Birds

Father's Day is a fun time of the year for many of us.  I am lucky enough to be a father of five kids, they may or may not agree on their luck to have me as one, but I can say what I am very fortunate for is having a father who loved me and taught me how to love sports.

My dad was a high school baseball coach before he gave that up to become a school administrator, time and monetary returns are just better than being a teacher and a coach.

He coached me in every single sport I played from the time I was four until I started sports in school, and since he was my principal freshman year he even thought he coached me then.

I was also fortunate that he instilled into me a love of Arizona sports franchises.  I had season tickets for five seasons growing up to the Cardinals, I was there when Chris Jacke sent the Arizona Cardinals to the playoffs for the first time. I didn't rush the field, my dad wasn't going to let a 12 year old hanging in the south endzone at Sun Devil Stadium on the field with a bunch of hooligans, but I got to witness something incredible.

But, you made a decision after that year that we couldn't afford both Cardinals and Diamondbacks tickets, so we decided to stick with the Diamondbacks.

From opening day of game one in franchise history to Game 1 of the 2001 World Series, there were so many amazing games we were able to witness. We had tickets with a group of four others, so we went to 20 games a year, and I remember how we would try and pick as many Johnson and Schilling games as possible.  You'll never understand how hard it is to do the math of when a guy is supposed to pitch on an 81 game home schedule and you don't know when an extra rest day, or throwing them short will come into play, so we ended up with a lot of Brian Anderson, Omar Daal, and the worst, Armando Reynoso games.  If you want to see if a 14 year old likes baseball, see what they do watching a game Armando Reynoso pitched.

I wouldn't be writing on this site now if it wasn't for my dad sharing his love of sports with me.  Hopefully I can do similarly with mine.

Happy Father's Day to all of you.