Father’s Day is this Sunday. I will celebrate with my sons by going to a Twins game on Saturday and playing golf on Sunday. No, we won’t be attending the opera, trying to save the environment or researching a cure for cancer. Just three guys mostly hanging out with sports as our platform.
Maybe I am not the world’s most sophisticated or intelligent dad. If I emphasized sports too much with my sons while they were growing up I am ready to plead guilty. But it’s no surprise that happened because athletics was the stuff that brought my dad and me together.
Sports was for sure the language my father and I shared. Dabe (not Dave) Shama was 44 years old when I was born, and his age and diabetes frequently made him tired, cranky and at times withdrawn. If it wasn’t for discussing and often arguing about teams, games and athletes, I know we would have communicated much less.
I don’t ever remember my dad saying he loved me but I know he did. For one thing there was usually a five or ten dollar bill available to me in his pants pockets. He made life comfortable for my mother and me—their only child. “I earn it and my wife spends it,” Dad often said.
At home Dad and I spent a lot of time listening to baseball games on the radio—sometimes tuning in distant broadcasts of the Braves, Cardinals or Pirates. When I was really young, Dad took me to baseball games involving American Legion teams at a park near our Minneapolis home. Then at eight years old I saw my first professional baseball game and it was one for the ages. The Millers manager put himself in the game as a pinch hitter and knocked a ball over the fence for the winning run.
After that I wanted to get my father in the backyard to play catch with me as often as I could. Dad did that once in awhile but mostly our bond with sports was focused on watching the Gophers, Twins and Vikings—and arguing! Dad was a lawyer and he loved to debate. Sometimes it didn’t matter which side of the issue he really believed in—he would take the opposite view just to argue.
Dad had his limits, though, on what or who he would stand up for. As a young attorney in private practice he once defended Communists but by the 1960s his politics had changed. He had no time for the Kennedy family, mostly because he thought Joe Kennedy was a crook.
My father spoke his mind, regardless of whether he was at home or in public. At Met Stadium he might harp on slugger Harmon Killebrew for his frequent strikeouts, tagging him “Harmless Harmon.” Chubby catcher Earl Battey was a plodding runner and at least once in his career was thrown out at first base on a single to the outfield. “He can’t run as well as I can,” my 50-ish, chubby father said again and again.
Baseball and Gophers football were Dad’s great sports loves. I wish I had ten bucks for every time he argued Ted Williams was the best hitter ever. And what a fortune I would have accumulated if I had five bucks for all the times dad talked about the years Williams couldn’t play baseball because he was a pilot in both World War II and the Korean conflict. “He missed five prime years of his career,” Dad said of Williams who still hit 521 home runs along with a .344 lifetime average and remains baseball’s last .400 hitter.
Coach Bernie Bierman and his five national championships established the gold standard for Gophers football. Up until Dad’s death in the 1970s he never accepted the lesser accomplishments of Gophers teams after World War II. He criticized the coaches and even their teaching methods, sometimes flapping his elbows in disgust at what he saw as passive blocking by Gophers linemen.
I sat for hours at the dining room table defending the coaches, players and state of Gophers football. Dad never accepted my arguments that college football had changed from the power style of pre-World War II years to a more open speed and finesse game. “They’re not good enough to beat a good high school team,” Dad would sometimes say of a Gophers team having a lousy season.
Yeah, Dad’s arguing and negativity was a load at times but it was balanced by his honesty and integrity. He was a respected attorney in Minneapolis who eventually gave up his private practice to become part of the city’s legal team. His title became first assistant city attorney for Minneapolis, and he once earned the handsome salary of $12,000 per year.
Among my lasting impressions of Dad is from a story in the Minneapolis Star. After my father returned from lunch one day he found a bribe on his desk at City Hall. There was a stack of money on the desk and Dad reported it right away including to the Star’s City Hall beat writer. The next day’s edition of the Star had a picture of my father and the story about “honest” Dabe Shama.
The anecdotes I have shared in today’s column might leave you with the image of a rather humorless man, but that wasn’t true. My father had a dry wit and his sense of humor often included exaggeration which he used in recalling his days in the Army.
Dad was in his early 40s when he was drafted for service in World War II. Short and overweight, he hardly looked like a Hollywood war hero. But during World War II America needed every able and willing body it could enlist for the war effort against both Germany and Japan. My father was assigned to desk work in Central America during the war—and years later he proudly proclaimed, “We successfully defended the Panama Canal.”
He joked about the Panama Canal, but Dad hated the humid and hot climate of Panama. He counted the days when he could return to Minneapolis. “I always said if I got back home I would get down on the ground and kiss the pavement at 6th and Hennepin,” Dad said.
And I believe he did just that.
My father was admired for his intellect and memory. Those were attributes that served him well not only in the practice of law but also as a distinguished member of the Masons. He was rightfully proud of his Masonic lodge and brethren. He rose to the position of Grand Master and I recall the day he stepped down from his one year appointment. The lodge honored him with an inscribed gold watch. My father was called to the front of the room to receive his gift. While accepting it, he brought me—his five year old son—to the front of the room, and then he took off a wristwatch he had worn for years and gave it to me. We both had watches on this special night.
Through the years Dad paid for my college education, bought me a car, and took me to a lot of sports events, but being gifted his old watch at an event in his honor ranks with my fonder memories. Happy Father’s Day, Dad, and thanks for all you did to make my life better.
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