The Jerome Bettis "Return to Motown" theme is prominent this week at Super Bowl XL. And good for him. It should be. It's a nice story.
What's sad, is that his boyhood home is now a burnt-out and shuttered shell. Not unlike thousands of such homes in a city that has absorbed countless body blows at the hands of plant closings and union decline.
I would have loved to see more about that house. About his yard. About his neighborhood, his friends, the games they must have played.
In fact, I would love to see and hear about many pro athletes and their boyhood homes. You could do an entire TV special on it. Sort of a "Cribs: The Prequel." If you've seen one episode of Cribs, you've pretty much seen them all. Huge house. Tacky decorations. Pool. Home theater. Big driveway. Lots of fast cars. "And here's where the magic happens ..."
Yawn.
Show me where some of these cats came from. Show me the basket Larry Bird used to chuck a weathered rock at in French Lick. Walk the streets of Michigan where Magic went looking for a game. How good was Walter Payton in the sandlot? Find some of his old friends, and start asking questions.
Personally, I know my parents' house is full of stupid sports related modifications from my idiot youth. Here, let me give you a tour.
Down in the basement, if you pull back some shelves, you'll see a 12 inch gaping hole in the drywall. That was from my buddies firing plastic street hockey pucks at me in goalie gear for literally hours at a time.
Upstairs in the hallway, if you look closely at the bottom of the front door, you'll see paint chips and scratches from about 1,793 frames of bowling with plastic pins. I simply idolized Marshall Holman, Mark Roth and Earl Anthony.
Out in the front yard, there's a stump where a cherry willow once stood. It used to have a knot of thick roots that extended out from the base, making our regular game of "Smear the Queer" especially dangerous if you got tackled too close to it.
(NOTE: Yes, we called the game "Smear the Queer" without any politically correct fears of it being somehow anti-homosexual. Had we wanted it that way, we would have called it "Smear the Gay Kid." Queer just rhymed best with Smear. Great game, and real simple. Get four or five kids, throw up a football. Whoever grabs it, runs until he's tackled. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Until mom calls you home for dinner.)
In the backyard, you'll find a 10x20 foot depression covered now with grass. In early high school, I started digging one day. Didn't stop for about dig days. When I had dug a hole big enough, I went to work on my dad to buy a truckload of sand so I could have a personal sand trap to practice in. He finally gave in. Damn, I got really good.
On the side of the house, you can find some of the chipped mortar in between the brick fireplace where I would throw baseballs and tennis balls to take grounders.
Inside my old bedroom, the top edge of my closet door is worn out from having a nerf hoop slam dunked on incessantly.
And the list goes on and on ...
Of course, none of that is remotely interesting to anybody but me because I never achieved more than high school level mediocrity in any of those sports. But imagine what you could find out about the true greats in sports from where they played as kids?
As I looked at that yard where Bettis grew up, I wonder which end of the curb was the end zone? I guess we won't be finding out this week. And that's too bad.
Steve is a native Washingtonian and has worked in sports talk radio for the last 11 years. He worked at WTEM in 1993 anchoring Team Tickers before he took a full time job with national radio network One-on-One Sports.
A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, Steve has worked for WFNZ in Charlotte where his afternoon show was named "Best Radio Show." Steve continues to serve as a sports personality for WLZR in Milwaukee and does fill-in hosting for Fox Sports Radio.
