I can barely write the words, but it’s over. Our relationship has fizzled. Our glowing, burning affair lasted so long, against such long odds, that I couldn’t let this moment pass without expressing what our union meant from my vantage point, considering all you gave from yours.

For 18 years, you never ceased to emit your truest colors, bright, bold and beautiful. Truly, you were one of the best choices I ever made. As times changed — through countless advances and despite the temptation of upgrading — I remained proud to call you mine.

On such a sad day, my mind drifts to all the private times we shared, when I sat idle while you selflessly performed for me. My gaze was fixed as you showed me the world, took me to places I’d never been.

You radiated such warmth. Our relationship was forever electric, from the day in 2007 when I applied for that Target credit card just to get the 10% discount, then carried you across the threshold — with the help of a friend, because you weighed so much.

Today, it’s my heart that’s heavy.

Oh, Maggie. My beautiful, devoted Magnavox Plasma TV. My incomparable first flatscreen.

As time marched on, I always wondered how and when — even if — it might end. I began to believe we’d make it to forever, no matter what was said back then of your flaws when compared to other options. Back when men on the prowl did research and accumulated testimonials from acquaintances for months about who to pursue.

You caught my eye with your perfect measurements, cutting an idyllic figure. And after deciding you were the one, I never looked back.

Then again, when we were together, you were always in front of me. But I digress.

As a boy, I dreamt of a time in the future when someone like you might be mine, in a way completing my journey to manhood. There were others before you, of course. Lesser models. But they meant nothing.

You were always the goal, and I had no doubt we’d be one day be together.

On that fateful morning, though, your incandescent love had dissipated. I knew it as soon as I tried to turn you on one more time and heard a stunning last gasp of sorts.

“POP!”

In disbelief, I stared at you in silence. Like I had for so many tens of thousands of hours before.

But this time your light was gone.

How could this be?

As the years passed, visitors had marveled at the longevity of our bond. No end was in sight. As you beamed in ultraviolet, I simply beamed. The very weekend before, you continued shining in advanced age when my brother in-law looked in awe at both of us.

“How many years has it been?” he asked.

You were gone less than 24 hours later.

I didn’t know what to do.

Oh, Maggie. Don’t hold it against me, but after hugging your lifeless frame (see above), I only let a few minutes pass before thinking of who could be next.

You must understand. Grief works at different rates for everyone.

I mean, is a family room without a big screen for everyone to look up at inbetween staring at our smaller screens even a family room at all?

Please know, Maggie, I was still processing the loss as, almost immediately, I mindlessly grabbed my keys and drove to BJ’s Wholesale to seek your replacement. And as I sat at a red light in the turn lane, so many of our memories played in my head. All of the times I screamed at you while you showed my favorite football team’s games. All of the times the Real Housewives screamed at each other while we laughed. All of the times during summers that I screamed at my son to turn you off and go outside.

And just then, I caught a glimpse of a mid-2000s red Hummer crossing the intersection. It was like a sign from you that I could move on, make new memories with another.

Because, as you know, a red Hummer was what we brought you home in for the first time.

I smiled. A red Hummer. We’d enlisted help from a friend who owned this ridiculous SUV, figuring you wouldn’t fit in our cars.

Oh, Maggie. Remember that day? Your box said to keep you upright at all times so your precious ionized gasses didn’t displace. Or something like that. But you were so big — even for a civilian-fitted military all-terrain vehicle — that we had no choice but to put you on your back for the drive.

I was so nervous the whole ride. Happy and uncertain and worried. The butterflies brought on by a long-sought, exciting new relationship that I desperately hoped would work out.

I’d never done something so crazy — opening a line of credit to buy one of you. But we were finally together. With you there in our family room, you gave my life a high-definition quality.

Laughter. Tears. Thrills. Disappointment. Surprise. You provided so many moments. A gamut of emotions.

Days before you left us, you gave us one more unforgettable memory as the wife and teenage son sat together before you to cheerfully re-watch a modern classic Christmas movie — including the fully nude sex scene that we had forgotten about in “Love Actually.”

Oh, Maggie. You were something. Through it all, strange as it is to say about us, what we shared was a love, actually.

We always knew you’d be there for us, vibrant and crisp. Right until the end.

Now, it’s over. Even though I never saw it coming, eventually there’s always a fade to black.

I long ago paid off that Target loan, and today I sought a way to pay you back, Maggie. For everything. The least I could do is turn the tables and become a projector for you.

So this was me, rolling your final credits.

With all my heart,

Josh

He came toward us with a smile, his curly blond mop-top still banded to keep those wild bangs out of his face when he races, his satisfaction centering on the kid he uncharacteristically swooshed by in the final 60 meters of his long long-distance school year.

“I had to do it,” our 16-year-old son said.

There was really nothing on the line. It was a junior-varsity 800-meter run at the county meet. Not even the fast heat.

But he had seized the chance to go on the offensive for once, to burst past a competitor to the finish and salvage a positive memory from a productive sophomore season.

We were happy that he was happy. When the kid in question isn’t a star, these races don’t come often enough, especially considering how he pushes through so many laps and miles and days prepping for them, continuing to figure out how to run them correctly when he gets the chance.

And rarely do these races end in pleased expressions on the typically straight face of this modern teenager.

So this was a win. In track and field, wins come in various, often tiny forms — most of which are not actual victories.

Did he knock any time off his personal best? Did he start smartly? Did he avoid faltering at any point? Did he finish strong, maybe blowing by a foe? Did his hair look good while doing so?

“We’ll pick up some food for you,” his mother said as twilight was setting in at the bustling high school stadium. “What do you want?”

“Can you get me a pizza?”

Not some pizza. An entire one.

The caloric consumption of a growing, energy-burning, distance-running kid can be a sight to behold — or, frequently for me, to avert eyes from at the dinner table.

But his craving would be fulfilled as a reward.

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I try to sit and put a bow on what I’ve seen my son accomplish as a runner at the close of each season. Not for him. Bruh would deem all of this “cringe.” I do this for me.

He probably has no idea how much I think and hope about how he does out there, how much I root for every minuscule breakthrough. Sure, we talk a bit every day about his training, recovery and teammates. I am careful in my probing and suggesting. I want to provide him some individualized attention outside of (and complementary of) his wise coach’s voice. Overstepping isn’t on my agenda, and I only see him for about a half-hour most days, anyway. Independence and space are things we value giving him as he matures, so long as he keeps handling them responsibly.

But there are moments I think he senses Dad’s investment.

Such as, on those occasions when I can’t attend his meets because of job duties. Thanks to modern tech, I can usually at least follow along online. Occasionally, I can even “watch” his laps in real time, sitting in my home office and anxiously staring at a timer on a screen, talking to myself about his effort.

And as I’m still digesting those races from afar, while he’s still on a high — or a low — from the run, my phone might buzz.

“I went off way too conservative,” he might text.

I have become a sounding board for him.

No matter how he’s done on the track, I always love how that sounds.

Before he delved into all of this a couple of years ago to my great surprise, the father-son dynamic was pretty … un-dynamic. It was no one’s fault. A natural development in the long history of this general relationship. Maybe it was me having unrealistic ideas of what it should be between a middle school-age boy and his dad in the 2020s. Maybe it was our constellation of differences and similarities in the sort of Star Wars that have endured for centuries.

Whatever it was, it just was.

His entrance into the running sports provided an opening onto common ground.

After all, Bruh, I was never going to be able to speak intelligently to him about his other extracurriculars — Airsoft and gaming. But cross-country and track? His old man had something to give, if he was open to receiving it.

And he was. And part of me likes to think he might have even factored that into his decision to start running.

The night before his county meet, we looked up the heat sheets to identify pacers for his mile, opponents who might lead him to another personal-record time. I had hoped it would help pull him out of his own head during those five minutes on the track. We had done something similar a couple of weeks earlier, resulting in him bursting to a long-sought 6-second PR that was followed by high-fives and congrats.

Alas, there was none of that after this go-round. But, later, he produced something of a moment as he closed out his 800, and his outdoor track season, with a surge.

It’s warming to see his progress here, however incremental. It’s simple to gauge. The clock tells us.

Not so in the other areas of life that are coming at him just as fast as he’s running toward them. We’ve gotten him behind the wheel recently. Girls have entered the discussion. His group of friends is solidifying. Higher education is becoming a bigger topic. Part-time job applications are being filled out.

All will take him new places, on pace to who knows what, on a path that has few clearly identified lanes and seldom leads back to the same spot, right where he started.

Destination, unknown. That’s life.

For now, I’ll try to embrace the chances to be there as he tries to improve by circling a track — and I can see how he’s doing the whole way from outside the fence or while nervously staring at numbers ticking on my computer screen.

But I know these times are getting closer to the finish line.

Feels like he just took all of this up yesterday. Yet over two quick years, six separate sports seasons have already passed us by. Swoosh. Hopefully, he has six more to go in high school.

It’s halfway gone.

And as my tired, perpetually evolving, always-hungry son made his way up to bed last Tuesday night, so was that pizza.

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There was a back-corner room in the crowded warehouse at 8250 Preston Court in Jessup, Maryland. The door came open around 12:35 p.m., and those of us in line saw a seemingly headless figure move into the frame, his shoulders coming even with the top.

Then, he ducked his head, down and under and out through the opening.

All Gheorghe Muresan has to do to make an entrance is walk into a room.

Sometimes, like here, he comes in sorta headfirst — because he has to, because standard door-frame construction code is insufficient for him.

Because he’s 7-foot-7.

I was among the minority who didn’t hold up a phone to record the man simply arriving at the card show where he was contracted to sign autographs Sunday.

I was behind a dad who had brought along some elementary school-age children to meet the tallest player in NBA history.

After catching a glimpse, one of the boys said, “OH. MY. GOD!”

Exactly. Long ago, I was that kid.

My Big Gheorghe baptism was in the early 1990s, when I was a foolishly faithful watcher of the Washington Bullets on a 13-inch TV in my parents’ bedroom. It was on the top floor of our house, and through shoddy reception I could make out an equally shoddy team’s nightly action on Channel 20.

They won about 80 total games over the three years I was tuning in. For context, there are 82 games in one NBA season.

But they were the only pro team I could see regularly. So they became mine.

They had some fun players, even though few basketball fans of that time were curious about those Bullets in general.

But Muresan, specifically, was the definition of a curiosity.

Even among NBA sequoias, this Bullets big man towered. His features were abnormally enormous. Every move was abundantly awkward and plodding. Jogging down the court felt like a battle. “Mark Eaton looks like Carl Lewis next to him,” a scout once said of Muresan. His biology seemed taxed as it fired the electrodes and flowed the blood all the way through those tree-branch arms and legs to create movement.

Muresan got so big due to something rare called acromegaly, or pituitary gigantism. A benign tumor on a gland essentially caused him to grow to outlandish proportions. Neither of his parents even stood 5-foot-10.

The Bullets, upon drafting him, arranged to have the tumor surgically removed, halting his unstoppable growth and perhaps saving his life.

What we were seeing in him at that juncture was the end result, but it was far from the finished product.

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It wouldn’t be entirely true to say no one had seen anything like Muresan. For instance, Manute Bol and his 7 feet, 6 inches of skin and bones had been in the league several years by 1993. That’s when Big Gheorghe arrived as a second-round selection in Washington from Romania, where he grew up in places largely devoid of running water or electricity.

But Bol, of Sudan, weighed 100-plus pounds less than Muresan.

Back then, as a kid, I weighed about 100 pounds. Back then, there were times I remember thinking Muresan couldn’t really be real.

Such as: One night early on, I saw him dunk.

Without jumping.

The screen was small and fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure it happened.

At school, I told my friends about him. I was fascinated by this peculiarity.

Oh, he was real, all right. And to be real here, he was something called a “project.”

Pro sports projects — unrefined athletes who boast rare attributes and potential to develop — seldom result in success stories of any sort. Often, they are abandoned before completion.

In spite of his mind-boggling listed measurements, Muresan was unformed in the sense that — while he literally had several inches on superstar 7-footers like David Robinson and Shaquille O’Neal — he figuratively still required sooooo much growth.

And The Association has never been a great place for raw players to find their bearings along with a comfortable place on a roster, especially one who spoke little English and could barely jog.

But damned if Muresan didn’t reach heights nearly as impressive as, well, his height.

He went from playing 12 mostly inconsequential minutes a game as a rookie in 1993-94 to becoming a Washington starter and the league’s Most Improved Player by 1995-96.

In March 1996, I was a senior in high school who — for whatever reason given my ridiculous interest in this poor NBA team — had never made the short trip from central Maryland to a Bullets game.

But I got an invite from one of my best friends. An Army enlistee, he’d received a pair of tickets to Spurs-Bullets as part of some kind of military recruit recognition at the arena.

Truthfully, I remember little of the evening other than the chiseled Robinson leading a San Antonio win and Muresan looking unimaginably large — even among the NBA’s freakish physical outliers, even from my vantage point in our upper-level seats.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I was spurred to investigation after making plans to catch up with my buddy Allen at the I-95 Card Fest on March 22. We are both sports memorabilia collectors, and we were overdue for a hang session. An ad for the event had appeared in one of my feeds, featuring a photo of another dude I hadn’t seen in too long: Gheorghe Muresan.

He would be the show’s special guest, signing autographs, shaking comparably tiny hands and shocking children to OMGs by simply entering the room.

Thoughts of my lone Bullets game threw sparks in my brain as it fritzed while searching for details about how Gheorghe had fared. To the internet I went, knowing it would be a snap to find the box score from Washington’s only home game that season against a Western counterpart.

Back in the day, I always wondered why my guy Muresan wasn’t able to crush the competition consistently with his superior size and improving skills, which included great hands and decent touch. On the little TV that barely got the signal, Muresan seldom took over games like the star NBA centers during that rugged era.

But sometimes he could.

Such as on the night I saw him against the Spurs. Not that I’d retained copious mental notes.

As I pored over more of Big Gheorghe’s career arc and where that game fit, I figured the man himself would have a clearer recollection. I would have to find out.

Allen showed up while I was not far back in a line that was about 50 deep. Allen is younger, and he is a sane person, which is to say he did not follow the mid-1990s Washington Bullets and therefore wasn’t so interested in the guest.

“Give me your phone,” Allen said, ready to document his friend’s moment.

Muresan was seated at a table. When my turn arrived, I pushed across a photo of him posting up Shaq.

Big Gheorghe reached for a Sharpie.

“What color?” he asked.

“White.”

He started to affix his signature.

“I saw you play live one time in my life in 1996 against the Spurs,” I said, standing in front of him and leaning forward on the table. “You dropped 30 points on David Robinson.”

And this is when Gheorghe Muresan formed the type of stunned facial expression he has drawn from most normal people over the past 40 years.

“Are you kidding me?” Muresan said, appearing almost dumbfounded about himself — which, if you think about it, doesn’t seem so crazy.

“YOU DID,” I said through laughter. “It was almost exactly 30 years ago today!”

On March 20, 1996, at USAir Arena in Landover, Muresan put together one of the best games of his six-season NBA career — which included just three 30-point outings in 307 appearances. He went 14-of-18 from the field and collected 12 rebounds, three blocks and two assists against The Admiral, who was reigning league MVP.

To be fair, Robinson actually bested Muresan that night, going for 33 points as, of course, his Spurs beat my Bullets 112-101.

Still, it was an unforgettable Muresan performance.

Except …

“I don’t remember that game,” Muresan said with his still-thick accent and a great grin as we both turned to Allen for a toothy pose.

The moment could not have been more charming. For me, at least. On top of his hoops legend, Muresan has always been known as jovial. His persona added to a total package that Hollywood noticed. About two years after the night I saw him play, he starred alongside Billy Crystal in the 1998 film “My Giant.”

While responding to my fun fact, maybe Big Gheorghe was just acting.

Who knows.

What I do know is that night against the Spurs, I might’ve witnessed Muresan at the peak of his powers. No one in the NBA hit a higher percentage of his field goals in 1995-96 (58%) and 1996-97 (60%) than Muresan. And that March 20 contest ended a five-game streak in which he averaged 23.6 points — which was almost 14 more than his career average — and 10.3 rebounds.

In that stretch, he crushed the competition consistently, like I’d always known he could.

It wouldn’t last. No surprise, injuries soon took their toll on his cartoonishly huge body. A nerve problem in his back, initially misdiagnosed in Washington, scuttled his progress, frustrated his mentality. He missed all of 1997-98. He left the Bullets. After two empty seasons with the New Jersey Nets, he was done in the NBA.

When you go to these signings, in your brief time with the athlete during what is basically a business transaction, you hope to show appreciation beyond the dollars exchanged by bringing up a fond memory for them.

But in this case, my attempt was a virtual air ball.

Oh, well. I’ll surely remember this moment better than either of us recalled the one time I saw Muresan as a Bullet in person.

Plus, Allen got some great photos. I might print and hang one in particular, because it’s a snapshot of something that has possibly never before happened to anyone on earth.

In it, Gheorghe Muresan is staring up at me in disbelief.

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On Christmas Day, as the Minnesota Vikings wrapped up the win and Harrison Smith was collecting his flowers, it was like I was celebrating with family.

Big-time sports have a tendency to fill followers with illogical ideations of connectedness. We contrive imaginary one-sided bonds with random people employed by teams that are glued to our identities.

It makes zero sense. It feels feeble-minded. But we can’t help it.

I’m guilty. Whenever one of his patented splashes has occurred over the past 14 years, I’d hear a broadcaster announce this splendid gentleman as the culprit, I’d see the letters spell it out on his back and I’d feel a rush of pride course through my blood.

SMITH!

I don’t just root for the Vikings’ veteran safety. Unbeknownst to him, I have also claimed him as a brother.

Check my byline. I am a Smith, too. One of about 2.5 million in the country. It’s something else that’s glued to my identity that I have no control over. Much like my sports fandom.

You probably personally know a Smith or 12. On my little street alone, there are three sets of us. Might be more, but who talks to their neighbors? Regardless, we have the United States’ most common surname, a fact I’ve come to embrace.

I love to meet new Smiths. I pull for Smiths. I get pumped when my Vikings draft or sign Smiths. While playing “Madden” in 1994, I replaced starting defensive end Roy Barker with a backup because his name was Fernando Smith. Robert Smith holds a special place in my heart. Onterrio Smith was carving a spot there, too, until he ushered a prosthetic product into the national consciousness that whizzed all over our good name. I stood staunchly on the Irv Smith Jr. bandwagon no matter how badly that wagon conked out.

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So, you can imagine how I’ve felt watching Harrison Smith steadily become one of the franchise’s most dependable, loyal, all-time greats — doing so in a way that is both in line with and at odds with his (our) ordinary surname.

Meaning, he has been both easy to overlook and difficult to ignore.

I like to put myself in that same Smith Subdivision.

What was it I said about illogical ideations of connectedness?

Quintessentially Smith

Whatever.

Harrison, a playmaking, omnipresent safety, might be the most professionally versatile Smith alive, perhaps barely edging Phyllida Crowley Smith, an English ballerina, theatre actress and choreographer.

I learned of her on a Wikipedia “notable” Smiths list — a list, mind you, that also includes Irv Smith Jr. but inconceivably excludes that playmaking, omnipresent Vikings safety.

This is a crime. Because Harrison isn’t just notable — he is quintessentially Smith.

What do I mean?

Well, Smith is a name derived from the word smite, which, when boiled down, essentially means to strike or hit.

Harrison is the Hitman. He strikes fear in opposition as an icy assassin of offensive play design. A calculated agent of defensive disguise and disruption.

I mean, he’s gotta be related to me. Why? I also serve the Vikings as a cool and calculated Smith — because I make sure to superstitiously freeze in the same seated position when things are going well for them as I watch on game days.

Harrison is like the ultimate smiter, someone who attacks suddenly or injuriously. His movements get into the head of opponents, coercing reactions he turns into his advantage.

He possesses plenty of gifts in his 6-foot-2, 211-pound body, but his superiority is derived from his brain. Watching him play over the years, you can almost see his football intellect, as if it’s a physical trait.

He’s up at the line of scrimmage, threatening to burst into the backfield. NO! He’s dropping to the deep middle to break up a pass. He’s everywhere all at once in Minnesota’s defense.

Like Smiths in the real world.

Even though we’re everywhere, I have always felt a special way about being a Smith. It’s instilled by family. There’s a tale my late grandfather relayed regarding the commonness and pride associated with our name. The tale has a debatable basis, and I don’t think it has ever been published in the long history of Smiths but, what the hell, I might as well tell it here:

Once upon a time, Pop said, everyone in the whole world had the last name Smith. But if you made a mistake, you were forced to change it.

Now, I’m not so sure Onterrio is still a Smith. But Phyllida, Harrison and me? We’re survivors.

Case closed

Speaking of survival, there were times in September and October when it seemed like Harrison’s legacy wouldn’t survive intact during this season he had agreed to play after calling coach Kevin O’Connell to say, “Hey bossman, I think I got one more in me.”

An undisclosed health issue kept Smith out of camp practice, then limited his snaps once games began. Glimpses of his usual greatness were few and far between.

There was valid talk that he made a mistake coming back as the season fell apart.

Eventually, though, he regained full health. Eventually, his dual ability as a calming influence and creator of chaos helped the defense find its groove, put the Jared Goffs of the world in a blender and salvage a respectable record from the clutches of Minnesota’s trio of calamitous quarterbacks.

At age 36, he was back to being the same, old Harrison Smith.

There are few like him in NFL annals. He might not be as distinguishable as Troy Polamalu or as intimidating as Brian Dawkins or as game-breaking as Ed Reed.

But how many other players fluidly combine similar attributes of all three of those bronze-busted men, especially in this era of offensive innovation?

And how many have at least 39 interceptions and 21.5 career sacks?

Just one: Ronde Barber, another Hall of Famer.

To boot: How many other players have a set, weekly coffee date with his head coach? How many are granted freedom within a defensive coordinator’s scheme to roam wherever he pleases, act on instincts and conduct so much confusion in the critical final moments leading up to the snap?

There are arguments for and against Harrison Smith’s Hall of Fame credentials based on the select few pure safeties who have been inducted (around 12) and the high bar they’ve set. Right now, he seems like a borderline candidate for a waiting room that is overflowing.

But … really?

Hopefully, anyone with a vote tuned in recently as Smith — at an advanced age and stage of NFL play — has been deployed by Brian Flores to toy with and knock off-kilter two premier modern-day offenses in a pair of nationally televised Vikings wins.

On Christmas Day, he was at his cold-blooded best, effectively killing the Lions’ season with a display that ended with him breaking character and blowing kisses to an adoring audience.

Come on. Case closed.

That performance was the kind of thing he’s done for so long and at such a level that it might be taken for granted, or at least gets sloughed off as impertinent because he hasn’t been doing it for a regular contender.

And, dammit, you can’t convince me that’s not some kind of subconscious Smith discrimination.

Perfect fit

Call me nonconformist or frugal, but a juncture of adulthood arrived years ago where it just felt cringy to purchase and don clothing so inherently and definitively tied to other individual men.

Especially ones I know so little of except for their athletic prowess and exploits. Particularly ones who now also happen to be significantly my junior, who truly aren’t anything more in my eyes than action figures scurrying on a field of play. Even if those figures’ actions are directly influential to teams that irrationally influence my state of mind.

So I swore off sports jerseys.

It was some point in the aughts. Around my 30th birthday. In my closet at that time hung a purple trio symbolizing, roundabout, three epochs of my favorite football team.

Cris Carter to Randy Moss to Adrian Peterson.

Add up their jersey numbers (80+84+28) and you get a figure (192) roughly representing the quantity of times, over several decades, that Carter, Moss, Peterson and their band of behemoths have let down, disappointed or smashed my hopes into Smithereens.

I seldom pulled on any of those gigantic jerseys anyway, for no other reason than they make this pencil-neck look like a complete dork.

Near the end of this period in question, the final jersey was adopted by my educator wife. It became her wardrobe for Team Sportswear Fridays at her elementary school, joining a multitude of kids in advertising their devotions.

Until, that is, we learned Peterson liked to beat his children with switches.

With magic happening in 2017, though, I got swept up. I couldn’t resist one of those Fanatics sales on Facebook. After all, the wife did need a new Friday jersey. And even if Harrison moved on from Minnesota, at least the name on the back was a match.

At such a mature phase of sports-fan adulthood, we look for more in our jersey reflections than just spectacular feats and explosive TDs. It becomes more about virtues we might strive to emulate. Trustworthiness. Leadership. Reliability. Certitude. Calmness. Wile.

So our new SMITH 22s were a perfect fit. Not that I break mine out more than once a year or so. I don’t need help looking like a dork — even while I’m alone, frozen on my couch in front of the Vikings game.

I might closet his jersey for awhile and return to it only for a special occasion.

It feels like the end for Harrison Smith’s career. I almost hope it is. He should let that Netflix gem stand as his coda. Because it was a blessed encapsulation of the player he has been. He’s given us enough. And, in 2026, it’s not like JJ McCarthy or Jacoby Brissett will give him the one thing his portfolio is missing.

But who knows what’s next. Maybe Sunday’s Packers scrimmage is it for Harrison. Maybe he’ll surprise us and tell KOC he’s got yet another season in him. After Flores leaves for Dallas, maybe Harrison will take over for him and become the NFL’s first player/coordinator.

Would you put it past him?

No matter what, I’m certain that one day I will make a pilgrimage to Canton, Ohio. And when I go, it will be to watch Harrison Smith don a gold jacket.

As for my attire, I’ll proudly wear the last jersey I’ll ever buy. The one with my last name. The one representing the common name of one of the most uncommon Vikings we’ve had the pleasure of watching.

And I’ll celebrate once again with family.

I could go on Ancestry.com and research bloodlines to see where/if we’re related. But, given the surplus of Smiths, that would take longer than it’s taken the Vikings to win a Super Bowl.

Whatever. I’ll admit it: In the wide world of us survivors, I’m probably not related to Harrison.

But to a Smith fan like me, it’s all relative.

This also appeared at Purple Insider:

At age 16, behind the wheel of my land yacht 1979 Chrysler Cordoba, I noticed a strangely long line of cars in the rear-view while patrolling a Bumfuck outskirt of suburbia.

We were on a hunt. My high school buddy Dave was shotgun, and within minutes we’d literally be staring at the barrel of one.

But I’ll get there soon.

It was late. We had no idea where we were going. We had nowhere else to be around 9 p.m. on a Friday in 1995. And we were not stopping until we found the destination.

First, I pulled off so those folks behind me could pass on a road that didn’t deserve such traffic at such an hour.

But the first car curiously stopped alongside my driver’s side, and a dude about our age hand-cranked his window.

“Hey, you looking for the party?”

Damn straight we were.

Word of mouth had done the job as only it could back then, spreading fast and far without any sort of electronic messaging. Just good, old-fashioned talking to each other, speaking sketchy details — of what might have originated as a modest gathering — into a full-on blowout.

As us strangers in the night shared shreds of intel on the location, another car approached from the opposite direction, then halted beside us, effectively forming a teenage backwoods roadblock.

Another window rolled down. Another query about the party.

Believing I knew the hotspot’s general whereabouts, sensing the urgency of the moment, I spoke up.

Big mistake. Because I suddenly felt a collection of desperate, glowing eyes fixed upon me.

With a gush of hormonal adrenaline inducing pit stains under my track windbreaker, and with a line of cars awaiting our next move, I pressed the gas, forming the tip of a Friday night spearhead toward something glorified in movies and TV of the time. Toward a right of passage where anything could happen and careless classmates cut loose on someone else’s parents’ property and septic systems. Where “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would blast and we would be in nirvana as Zimas flowed like Boone’s Farm wine.

Somebody stop us.

The Legend of the House Party

Dave, the shotgun rider, sent me a video last week about the dream of dropping our kids in the 1990s to see how long they could survive where we thrived.

Left to their own devices rather than handheld super-computers, could they entertain themselves for hours on end? Could they make a mixtape? Could they create and carry out plans with friends? Could they even get wind of, much less find a rumored House Party?

My kid can’t even find a bottle of ketchup in the fridge.

If a modern boy’s parents go out of town, would he put down the Xbox controller for 30 seconds to consider inviting at least one other human into his space? In this age of overly supervised, overly stimulated, overly isolated children, is the House Party — of any sort — even still a thing?

As the father of a teenager and an owner of a house, part of me hopes not.

But as the offspring of an era that allowed kids incredible freedom, independence and discovery, a bigger part of me hopes so — despite what that might mean for my fellow parents’ gray sectional sofas, full liquor cabinets and painstakingly constructed Ikea furniture.

The Legend of the House Party was strong in my day, even if legitimate ones were hard to come by. Stories of them, first-hand or fictional, and the chicanery they birthed were everywhere.

Rap duo Kid & Play built a franchise on House Party movies in the 1990s. Eighties flicks like Teen Wolf, Say Anything, Risky Business and Weird Science all had impressionable House Party scenes.

I remember a Very Special 1987 episode of Growing Pains where Kirk Cameron’s character went to a Very Special Cocaine House Party Loaded With High Hot Girls. I saw it at age 9, and I figured high school was going to be wild. All full of friends named Boner, walking mullets and ragers with readily available blow carried in keychain containers owned by blonde babes.

Soon it was our turn. Sure enough, my big brother and I once hosted a high school “House Party” when our parents left for a weekend.

I put the term in quotes because there was no coke and not a single girl at our “House Party.” But a few buddies came over. We were amateurs. All I really remember is that someone dribbled my father’s Canadian Mist on a countertop, then quickly wiped it off — then poured some leftover coffee on it as a masking agent. Maybe he thought our suspicious, hooch-hound dad would come home from his getaway and sniff the counters to detect if we’d been sampling and/or spilling his booze.

As my core friend-group solidified, we produced and carried out tame versions of the mythic House Party. Initially, we limited them to our inner circle and a bottle of Wild Turkey.

Emboldened, though, we worked our way up. Females were invited and actually attended(!). The circle grew. Beverage options were expanded and acquired. Lies were told to parents. Safety measures were implemented (my buddy took our car keys when we arrived) to protect each other — if not my buddy’s parents’ property and septic system — as we all further educated ourselves on our ability to handle the sauce.

The party that sticks with me most involved: 1. Bottomless Coors Lights. 2. An angry friend successfully putting his fist through the drywall of our buddy’s parent’s foyer. 3. My abject failure to comprehend or properly respond to the shock of a girl’s overt advances.

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For me, it ended the next morning with a splitting headache, an upset stomach and many questions.

For my buddy, the host, it ended the next morning with a shovel in his backyard — where he went to work digging after our endless toilet-flushing had overwhelmed his parents’ septic tank.

Somebody stop us.

Lost, then found

Back to Bumfuck.

How did my Cordoba end up leading a procession of House Party-hungry peers? How in the hell was I going to find this place with no real directions? And was it even real?

Canvassing the farm country as we cruised, Dave and I scoped for clusters of cars or crowds of kids or spotlights signaling the target. Anything.

In the open distance, I saw a house lit up at the end of a long, dirt driveway.

I turned on my right blinker and motored, several vehicles in tow, to what was surely the shindig. We rolled closer, kicking up dust along the way. At about 100 yards, I saw several people milling about the front porch of a two-story house.

“This has to be it,” I confidently said, thinking I’d freakin’ nailed my shot-in-the-dark.

Then, I noticed the people — adults — seemed to be yelling and waving at us.

Unable to understand, I cranked down my window just as a proprietor of the residence brandished that aforementioned shotgun and clarified, several times, what he had been communicating.

“GET THE FUCK OFF MY PROPERTY!”

Before a literal shot-in-the-dark could be fired from our new acquaintance’s barrel, I screeched to a stop.

Throwing the column shifter into reverse, I forced a chain reaction in our caterpillar of cars. If viewed from the house’s front porch, it would have looked like someone pressed stop, then rewind on a VCR as our convoy receded from whence it came with that squiggly line of fuzz amid the screen.

The best thing about nearly getting shot by a redneck protecting his land? I was no longer the leader of the pack as we retreated into the night.

Someone else took over. Someone who found the party down the road a piece.

To use parlance of the day: Whoomp, there it is.

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We pulled up to a house set in the woods — with a parking lot of cars filling every available square foot of space out front.

Dave and I were giddy. As I scanned for a spot that could accommodate my boat, it seemed like our entire school was in attendance. We couldn’t wait to get inside. Who knows what was going on in there. Beers galore. Teenage debauchery. Crazy, drunk-girl shenanigans.

I saw someone else come up the drive, tuck neatly into a little spot, exit his ride and head directly for the festivities. It was our school’s varsity quarterback.

This was clearly the place to be! This is the stuff movies were made of, for crissakes! Thoughts of an unforgettable night of revelry danced in our heads.

Shockingly, though, a drunk guy stumbling around outside for a place to urinate offered no cogent advice on the parking situation.

I couldn’t spot a suitable solution, not wanting to leave the car in a place where we could easily get blocked in — or risk hitting or scraping other parked cars when leaving. Over the past year, I had already done that twice in this behemoth my father owned and continued letting me captain despite a bare-minimum capability of safely maneuvering.

I decided to turn around and find a spot farther down the long, one-lane driveway. Problem: There was no room for me to three-point turn the monstrous 20-footer I was wheeling.

Creeping forward, I saw an opening to the left off the gravel. I turned off next to a large bush and was in the clear as I began doubling back on some soft grass.

And that’s when we realized I was driving directly across the neighbor’s backyard.

Then — with a House Party full of our peers likely at peak fever, with those neighbors probably readying their own shotguns to aim at that giant, easily identifiable gold-rimmed target making tire marks in their yard — I relented.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Sensing Dave’s disappointment, I was surprised he didn’t slap me. Or just open the door and jump ship to join the fun himself.

While exiting, a couple more vehicles turned onto the driveway, headlights beaming toward the no-doubt legendary event that we’d desperately sought, stared down the barrel of a gun to find, and that I’d chosen to decamp because my car was too big.

Somebody stop us.

I kept moving but pulled aside so they could enter, these lucky kids on their way to fulfilling fantasies only seen on our TVs, to forming epic memories, to experiencing something that would make a story they could tell deep into the future.

Kind of like the one I’m wrapping up right here.

Dave and I were already full of regret for merely driving by the biggest House Party we’d ever legitimately seen as we sullenly passed those other cars.

And that’s when we realized it was the cops.

A soda can wrapped in aluminum foil.

That’s it.

That’s the thought that had me mindlessly slowing down to 5 mph under the speed limit as I listened to a podcast called “Super Retro” during my midnight commute home, on roads that were empty but for my creeping Camry and wandering brain.

A soda can wrapped in aluminum foil.

Man, I hadn’t thought about that in decades. I had certainly never considered the feeling it represented: The freedom and glee of an elementary school Field Trip Day — which was accompanied by an inevitable brown-bag lunch weighed down by those coveted 12 liquid ounces, snug in a Reynolds Wrap jacket.

I could envision my much smaller self cracking it open, holding up a Coke Classic to cheers one of my pals at a picnic table outside of some museum that had no prayer of holding our attention that day.

I was there again. The memory of it had me smiling — and unconsciously driving slower, lost in the moment on that dark asphalt.

A soda can wrapped in aluminum foil.

Discussed by a pair of cronies, Tuck and Will, who I’ve never met but who are locked into my wheelhouse. Of my generation. Influenced and shaped and — let’s just say it — made by a stanza of popular culture and shared experiences that will forever be a safe room we visit when times get tough.

Recently, “Super Retro” became the best damn entertainment treasure that’s entered my life since — hold on to your Starter hats — NFL Sunday Ticket.

Two dudes comfortably oozing good vibes, bringing us the oldies but goodies.

Two dudes from a city where people speak with charming southern accents — and apparently where people who grew up there at the same time I was growing up here had THE EXACT SAME CHILDHOOD AS ME.

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I accidentally discovered Tuck and Will and “Super Retro” over the past year, but it was essentially bound to happen. Phone in hand, I must’ve watched or lingered on so many videos/memes harkening to 1980s and 90s nostalgia that these two memory merchants were destined to crash into my algorithm like Lou Ferrigno’s Incredible Hulk breaking through a prop wall.

Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk still scares the bleep out of me. And those mind-probing, time-sucking social media companies can go straight to hell. But I must say:

Wham, bam, thank you, Instagram.

“Super Retro” had been thankfully thrust into my consciousness.

I visited their Insta page and tore through their viral reels, one after another. Laughing my butt off, nodding my head, I fired off God knows how many of them to old friends.

• One about tackle football and two-hand touch back in the day. “I’d love to go back in time and watch us play,” Tuck says, echoing my exact thoughts. “Bro, we would play full-on games. Five-on-five. It was important.”

• One about discontinued gas-station snacks. Stuff that was “like a staple of your life,” Will says. Such as, Tuck adds, “Them Pizzarias, y’all. Them Pizza-muthaf—kin’-rias. These were so good — and they would cake your fingers in such a way that you’d have a pound of seasoning on each finger.”

• One about the greatness of “The Price is Right” and host Bob Barker — “The Hugh Hefner of TV game shows,” as Will calls him. Says Tuck, “When Bob started flowing, it felt like jazz.”

• One about the Top 5 Bucket/Hoopties from the 90s. Such as the 1995 Chevy Cavalier. “This,” Tuck says, “is a car equivalent to a Newport cigarette.”

• One about AOL recently ending its dial-up Internet service. “Bro, I’m here to tell you: Who the f— thought this shit was still around? … You should be arrested. If you’re hearing that dial-up thing right now, just turn yourself in to the cops.”

• One about the official field trip Yeti in the 80s & 90s. You guessed it: That soda can wrapped in aluminum foil. “This is why I love our show,” Tuck says. “I forgot all about this.”

Exactly.

Tuck and Will’s bits are bite-size — but that doesn’t diminish the strong flavor profile of their deliveries or their time-travel powers.

I asked myself, Who are these guys?

Dustin Tucker and Will Walk are Louisville, Kentucky, natives and friends whose wives are sisters. But more importantly for our purposes, these two are also wedded to an absolute adoration of “anything dope from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s,” as Tuck says to open every episode.

You name it, Tuck and Will rap about it: Retro video games. Music. Film. Clothing. Toys. Food. Bikes. Social norms. Tupperware containers.

The podcast was a child of their passion for collecting retro items. For example, they’d buy an old toy, consider its overall impact on them as kids and think: This is something we could talk about with people our age.

Branching out from their reels, I found their podcast on Spotify. And that was basically a wrap. I was hooked.

Their weekly banter includes several segments, all of which inspire viewer/listener interaction and encourage community-building with others of the same vintage. Tuck and Will have dubbed them — us — the Knuckleheads.

The duo’s performance style and rapport is upbeat and fun. It’s clear they would have easily fit in with your crew, circa 1991, as you pulled a Dorito-and-Mountain-Dew-fueled all-nighter trying to beat “Contra” on Nintendo.

Soon, I found myself doing the unthinkable — commenting on their posts and sending them direct messages. I found myself opening a Discord account (call-sign: Sibound) so I could meet and mingle virtually with fellow Knuckleheads. I found myself using some of their most common lingo in everyday life.

Come on, now …

I’m here to tell you …

My guys are out here killin’ the game.

And while you would never ascribe the term professorial to Tuck and Will, “Super Retro” can also be educational.

For instance, they taught me that James Avery — the actor who played Uncle Phil on “The Fresh prince of Bel Air” — was also the voice of Shredder in the original “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” cartoon.

They taught me about two geniuses: The man who invented the Super Soaker (nuclear engineer Dr. Lonnie Johnson) and another who originated the versatile, highly employed 90s term “biatch” (rapper Too Short).

Hashtag Godbless.

Not only does “Super Retro” bring the knowledge and plumb the recesses of your brain for forgotten fragments, but Tuck and Will correctly brand their show as an escape from the ills of today’s world.

And this is where I’ll sidebar.

A few weeks ago, an accumulation of stress had me restless. For days, constant worry rattled my core. At this point, we all have such moments. I’m 47 — ripe for a mid-life crisis. Existential and deep, conflicting questions start looping in your head.

As I chased solutions, one of the only “off” switches for that internal dread came when I turned on “Super Retro.” A retreat to memories of times when adult anxieties were years from festering.

The beat of the theme music starts — like it’s straight outta your Grandma’s floor model analog Zenith or some pine-box speakers vibrating the trunk of a buddy’s 1989 Ford Escort — and I’m free again.

Sometimes, the guys will play a forgotten sound — like that AOL dial-up sign-on — and Tuck will simply ask: “Yo, what does that do to your chest?” Eventually, the anxious feeling that had consumed mine was lifted partially by the soothing sounds of their show.

Seems odd, I know. There are so many podcasts out there, they just seem like part of today’s limitless reservoir of entertainment options. You never think a podcast could turn into a personal panacea.

Until it does.

Who are these guys?

Man, I’ve never met Tuck and Will. But raise an aluminum foil-wrapped soda, y’all, because I’m here to tell you: As I drive home from work listening to two dudes cutting up in a basement, reminiscing on everything about the good ol’ days — our good ol’ days — I’ve come to realize I’m not alone on those dark roads.

Or anywhere else, really.

I’m riding with my friends.

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I’m not a silver linings guy. Never will be. I can’t spin stuff positive, lipstick a pig. It’s not my nature.

I’m pragmatic. As a man. As a professional. As a father. I am always gonna be real.

Because sometimes, there just isn’t a silver lining to be found.

I tried my best a few weeks ago to think of one for my 15-year-old son after the county cross-country championships.

But this season for LJ was a constant, unfulfilling slog of ailments, unmet goals, altered training plans, ice, red-light therapy, epsom-salt baths and ibuprofen.

And it ended ignominiously for my boy, who is 10 times the student I was yet I still hope he has no idea what that word means.

Through unexpected circumstances, LJ ended up back in the varsity race at counties for a second straight season. Only because a senior teammate had bowed out with an injury. Also because, two weekends prior, my son had run the seventh fastest overall time on his squad from the JV race.

There are seven runners on each team in varsity meets.

So, here we go.

He was a year older. A couple of minutes faster than he was in 2024, when he was thrust into this race as a green freshman and gamely fought his ass off to not finish last on a unseasonably broiling day that caused me to gush with emotions at what I watched him do.

But this year, even though he was faster and his team was better, he was nowhere near thriving, far from improving like the best, healthiest runners are primed to be at that point of the fall.

It’s hard as a dad to watch your son bringing up the rear of anything, much less a race in an unforgiving sport that has received his complete love and devotion.

“Somebody has to finish last,” his mother would later say in a cold snap of reality from the most reliable beacon of positivity in his life.

We weren’t expecting much. We honestly expected (I might’ve even hoped) he’d be entered in the JV meet, more evenly matching him with peers after weeks of painful struggles.

But you play the hand. You listen to the coach.

You run the race.

You refuse to fold. Despite the odds — despite the entire field stretching out in front of you at this cruel community-college course. Despite starting the season with an idea of becoming a rock of the varsity team in Year 2 — only to have it crumble fairly soon and never truly reconstitute.

We saw him run by a few times from different spots. We hoped he could stay within reasonable reach.

“Are we in the clear?” a spectating woman asked as she started crossing the course after LJ pattered by us sometime during the first mile.

“Yep,” I confirmed before admitting why I was certain. “I know because my son is in last.”

Repeat: That’s hard as a dad.

The thought that grew stronger in me as the race continued? Imagine how hard that is for him.

We’ve been conditioned to hear about and see only great things being accomplished by the youth athletes in our orbs. Pictures of smiley trophy-holders. Boastful parental posts. Bold headlines that trumpet triumph. Stories of successes and gains and big future plans for kids who have schedules busier and more unreasonable than mine.

I’m here to tell you: It’s not always real.

I’m always gonna be real.

Somebody has to come in last.

We may not hear about them or think about them or even see them finish, but they’re out there putting one step in front of the other just like all the others. Perhaps with each footprint on the earth leaving an increasingly dejected imprint.

“Come on, LJ,” I heard his mother say quietly, plaintively as other families and fans on the outskirts of the course were screaming for the parade of kids running by.

We kept waiting for our runner.

I have no idea where, but LJ had made up ground and found a way to surge on one of those repetitive hills. And as he came into our view for the homestretch, as he climbed one last incline, he was barely hanging onto second-to-last — his finish place a year ago.

I screamed for him.

But we could tell.

It wasn’t going to last. He’d burned the reserves while dueling the dejection, catching that one kid.

He knew it.

Warning him with my hands cupped around my mouth mattered little. But I did it anyway as I felt the eyes of the few people who still bothered watching the final two competitors of the 5K.

Gassed, my son got re-passed, 100 meters from the line.

Moments later, to our relief, he seemed as upbeat as possible. He was relatively pleased with his time on a difficult course, with a pair of legs that hadn’t felt normal to him in months.

His tenor changed a bit in about 30 minutes, though, when he saw two of his JV teammates handily beat his time in their race — effectively (mercifully, if you ask me) ending his season short of a regional qualification.

They’re his friends. So he was happy for them. But he was mad at himself, too.

“Oh well,” I said — because I didn’t know what else to say.

I let him sulk.

Before I picked him up from school later, I put on my best Dad Thinking Cap. I thought long and hard — but came up empty.

Silver lining?

It wasn’t that he didn’t quit, because that’s never an issue for him. It wasn’t that he’d gotten another chance to run with the big dogs, because he was mostly running alone again.

On the drive home, after he told me more about his experience and expressed how he wished he could have been capable of racing, I nodded.

He was coming around to accepting the disappointment, hopefully placing it atop a pile of kindling to later feed his internal fire.

I know the grind he had been on since ailments started recurring on like Day 5 of practice in August and his distance-running buddies “gapped” him, to use their term.

And then I told him something that I hope will be useful as he continues journeying through this challenging, too-short “gap” between childhood and adulthood.

I told him something kids today probably aren’t gonna hear much even though it’s an important part of growing up, even though it’s not going to be shouted by anyone, digitally or otherwise.

“You know, I’ve been trying to find a silver lining for today,” I said.

“But sometimes, buddy, shit just doesn’t work out.”

I got off the phone Sunday morning and was struck by a vague feeling that took a moment to place.

It was a shoe-on-the-other foot sense that harkened back decades but didn’t quite register in the preceding half-hour gab session.

I had rolled out of bed that morning still swimming in thoughts of the gobsmacking World Series Game 7 that I’d consumed completely the night before with no real rooting interest and not a single wager on the line but just the heart of baseball fan whose love of the game was born in the late 1980s.

Sure, throughout the tense classic I’d sprayed texts and reactions to friends and family. But a lot was still on my mind from the palm-sweating plot that played. I craved an outlet, and to hell with social media.

I needed to SPEAK to someone.

Problem: Today, our digital rolodexes are ocean-deep — yet the number of people who will answer is droplet-size. For me, there’s always one.

So I called my father.

Dad was my youth baseball coach for about 10 years, up through our local recreation council’s Babe Ruth league. He’d guided my development into a strong player and encouraged my passion for the diamond. The connection we developed over those years is deep in my bones.

Understand: Dad was an educator who enjoyed teaching the game. But he was never a hardcore baseball fan, not in the sense that he’d be parked in front of the tube every night to watch the Orioles. He knew of Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray and Mike Mussina, sure. But he likely didn’t even know what place they were in most seasons.

He’s still that way. The sport remains on the fringe of his 77-year-old consciousness — dwelling there through whatever clickbait-y MLB headlines he scrolls past during his (too) many weekly hours on Facebook.

Dad and Mom were at a gathering Saturday night, so I’d figured the Dodgers-Blue Jays finale hadn’t been on his agenda.

I was right.

“I think it was in the seventh inning when we left,” he said of a game that stretched to 11 innings and was stuffed with stupendously high drama in those four frames he missed on the car ride home and trip up to their Sleep Number.

The World Series likely didn’t cross his mind again — until my call.

I was still fired up. So I started in.

“It was craaaaazy.”

Details might’ve been glazed by that evening’s whiskeys, but I uncorked recollections of a contest that came down to several gigantic plays and a few centimeters and, no doubt, has already been cemented by the modern media landscape as the “Greatest Game 7 of All Times.”

My voice filled with verve even though all I was doing was recounting.

There was so much of it to do, I’d get sidetracked and reminded of different key moments or weighty details. I failed to keep it straight.

“Oh yeah, and another thing …”

Vin Scully, I’m not.

Dad barely spoke. I didn’t give him much chance.

He digested my scattershot summation. He seemed amused if not as awed as I remained, 11 hours after the game had ended. We talked about some strategy, some hunches that had paid off for the Dodgers manager — stuff we might’ve discussed on the truck ride home about our little teams full of little kids in the ’80s and ’90s.

I felt like I’d done my job capturing the outcome and stir of emotions around a game that didn’t hold any real significance in either of our lives but nevertheless gripped me by the esophagus for hours.

I sent him some Twitter clips of the most mind-blowing moments. It was satisfying to let it all out, to share it with him.

The call ended. And almost immediately, that vaguely familiar vibe arrived.

Where was this feeling coming from? Why was it lingering?

Then, I remembered: I had felt this before. On the receiving end. With Dad, not me, doing the animated morning-after rehash, still full of baseball amazement.

It’s a moment I’ll never forget. One of my all-time favorite sports memories wasn’t even an event I witnessed or watched.

It was one that was reenacted for me.

By Dad.

My very own Vin Scully

Cut to my childhood bedroom, on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 16, 1988. Baseball wallpaper. A life-sized Cal Ripken poster tacked up, next to an autographed one of Brooks Robinson. Boxes and binders of baseball cards somewhere nearby.

Still wiping sleep from my eyes, Dad appears in my doorway.

Weird, I think. He’s usually reading the paper at the kitchen table, draining his second cup of coffee by now. But on this a.m., he has something more important to do as the father of a boy who has fallen hard and fast for a sport.

“You’re not going to believe what happened last night,” he says.

Course, this was back when my bedtime was 9 p.m. Maybe 10 on a Saturday. I can’t remember.

First pitch the night before for Game 1 had been at 8:35 p.m.

But I know they’d sent me off to my room at some point in the middle innings, probably despite my protestations, even if they might’ve only been voiced internally.

Come on. It’s the Bash Brothers A’s against … who are these guys on the Dodgers anyway? Kirk Gibson isn’t even playing. How did they even get here? Can’t I stay up til the end?

Too bad. Bedtime.

Dad had continued watching. Or, possibly, he’d dozed off for an hour in front of the TV and woke up, improbably, just in time see the impossible happen. After all, I know now what it’s like to be 40 years old on a Saturday night.

Back on that Sunday morning, I lifted my blond bedhead off the pillow and sat up.

And Dad delved into it all. Like my own personal Vin Scully.

Bottom of the ninth. Oakland leads 4-3. The inevitable Dennis Eckersley closing for the Athletics, his sidearm whipping pitches to record two helpless outs — a popup and a strikeout.

It’s bleak for these no-name Dodgers.

All the while, though, something has been stirring at Chavez Ravine.

Dad — as Scully — informs the captive nationwide audience (me) that, just maybe, Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda will call on his hobbled star, Kirk Gibson, to pinch hit before it’s over.

Time’s running out.

Never mind Gibby can barely walk, a pair of base-running injuries from the NLCS keeping the Dodgers MVP on the bench that night. Or, actually, in the clubhouse. Icing both legs. In agony with every movement. Numbing himself for one desperate chance at-bat.

If Lasorda agrees to it.

Until then, my father probably had no idea who Tommy Lasorda was. Unless he’d recognized him from those Rolaids commercials that air Mondays during breaks in “MacGuyver,” between pulls from his Schaefer Light beer in his maroon La-Z-Boy recliner.

And I can sure as hell tell you Dad had probably never heard of Kirk Gibson until, after the Dodgers’ Mike Davis worked a two-out walk, Scully explained it for him (I know now, thanks to YouTube) as the handle-bar mustachioed man prepared his lumber and creakily made his way to the batter’s box:

“And look who’s coming up,” Scully says, letting the moment breathe before his next, perfect words.

“All year long they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long he answered the demands — until he was physically unable to start tonight with two bad legs.”

But back to my bedroom. Dad is in performance mode, acting an expert, recreating the tension as best he can for the boy whose dreams revolved around that white sphere with red stitches.

Gibby falls behind 0-2 on two quick foul balls, his legs nearly capitulating with each unbalanced swing. He pulls a dribbler that rolls foul up the first base line, forcing him to try to run, revealing to all a gait reserved for geriatrics.

Then, a ball outside. Another foul. Another ball outside. And another ball, as Davis steals second.

The count full, the crowd full-throated, Dad pantomimes Gibson flicking his bat with an all-arms swing at Eck’s slider, sending it high, deep and into the right-field stands full of unbelieving fans.

Game over.

I hung on every word.

I can’t recall if Dad took a trip around my bedroom, imitating Gibby’s now-famous trot of the bases. But soon, with a local network sportscaster narrating nowhere near as vividly as my father, I caught the highlights on TV.

And I felt like I’d kind of already seen them before.

To this day, of all of the athletic feats and amazing sporting contests I’ve taken in, the image of a jubilant Kirk Gibson cranking his arm as he rounds second base after his home run remains second to none.

The unscripted suspense. The shock value of the moment. The athletic will.

The theatre.

That stuff just means more when you’re 10, when the hooks are setting in, when these guys you watch become your idols.

It’s why I became such a sports fan.

It’s why, even after I’d slept on it and woken up and couldn’t stop thinking about Saturday night’s Game 7, I had to phone my father and unload.

Something told me to. Something that had been ignited in simpler times when replays weren’t constantly at our fingertips, when imagination was more of a necessity — when my father did something thoughtful for me that I doubt he’s ever thought of again.

After the call ended, as I pinpointed the reminiscent feeling I was having, it was like Dad and I had just come full circle on something after 37 years. He’d started it as I sat in bed in 1988, and I finished it Sunday morning.

A World Series round-tripper. Complete.

I re-watch that Gibson at-bat at least once a year, near its anniversary. Chills still arrive. Perhaps some tears. I still marvel at what happened.

It never gets old.

But that legendary moment will also never be better than the first time I ever saw it.

When Dad showed it to me.

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It’s an acronym.

JAG.

Just. A. Guy.

It might be used in other cultural realms, too. But we’ll stick with sports because that’s the area of life that has largely consumed mine, from the time I put on a tiny faux-leather baseball glove around age 6 and played catch out behind our house for the first time, circa 1984.

A JAG, in sports, is an athlete with plenty of skill who has risen to a certain level of accomplishment, for sure, or else us nerds wouldn’t be talking about him at all. He does the job. He can stand out occasionally, depending on the assignment.

But he mostly blends into the team.

Generally speaking, in the game of life, I’m a JAG.

Middle-class, middle-aged family man in suburban Maryland. Average build. Bald and bespectacled.

My surname is Smith, for goodness sake.

I might be a walking amalgamation of Modern Common Man, though when prompted, ChatGPT spit out a much more handsome male illustration that included the sort of perfectly kept stubble I cannot stand to maintain because it irritates my skin after three days, forcing me to shave — even though that stubble is the only reason my wife ever compliments my appearance.

Point is, I don’t stand out. However, the times when I have — as any JAG occasionally does — it’s nearly always been with written words.

Hence, the berth of this Substack: Life of a Smith.

For a quarter century, I’ve worked as a sportswriter, sports editor and columnist at the same small newspaper in Maryland. The tenure has included some highlights, such as the monthly lifestyle column I authored for nearly a decade — Real Dads Wear Yoga Pants — focusing on the eye-opening, ironic, touching and funny facets of raising a child today.

But it ran its course. You could say I grew out of the yoga pants. I typed “—30—” on that once my son reached the sensitive teen years and it started to feel wrong to write anymore.

Since that ended, though, I’ve felt an internal void. Writing has always been my passion, but I simply don’t get to do enough of it these days without strict deadlines or other parameters imposed by an employer.

I hope to fill that void here.

What will this newsletter be? We’ll see. While setting it up, the menu for topics didn’t provide an option that fit what I loosely envision. I selected “culture” and “humor.” But, in a nutshell, my essays and stories will touch on modern living, family, parenting, marriage, hobbies, sports and nostalgia. Those are the topics I’ve covered most frequently in my career, as you can see if you click those above links.

My writing will be lighthearted, but it might get heavy.

Maybe the dropdown I sought was “The human experience.” Because I aim to make you sometimes laugh, maybe ponder — but always FEEL.

I’m hoping to share my experiences and produce works — hopefully once a month — that are relatable to anyone with a heartbeat.

After all, I’m just a guy.

But now I’m one with a Substack.

Join me.