R.I.P. Brad Van Pelt

My dad is the last man in the world you'd see hounding an athlete for an autograph. He grew up in an age, and a neighborhood, and a family that scoffed at such speciousness. He'd holler at the TV when the Giants, Yankees or Rangers were on, and better yet yell in person at Yankee Stadium, MSG or Giants Stadium, but never fussed about game results afterwards. I can only guess what he made of my sports-posters-plastered bedroom on Dayton Road and wonder if he ever noticed above-average Rangers like Dave Maloney and Ron Greschner looking down from the ceiling. (Wisely, my dad didn't climb the stairs to my room very often.) A safe, suburban childhood provided my friends and I with the freedom to scour malls for sports paraphernalia and therefore prove our devotion to our teams, our players, and our sporting apparel brands of choice.

At the pimply age of 13, however, I did not have the means to collect the autographs of my sports heroes. But I did have a dad who was willing to forgo his instinct and upbringing and come home from a charity function with a program signed by nearly every member of the 1979 NY Giants. I spent hours gazing at those signatures and uniform numbers of my Sunday afternoon heroes during a time when the swamps of Jersey weren't the only things stinking up the Meadowlands: #64 John Mendenhall. #13 Dave Jennings. #53 Harry Carson. #44 Doug Kotar. #18 Joe Danelo. #55 Brian Kelley. Even the Giants terrible QB twosome of #12 Jerry Goldstein and [gasp!] #9 Joe Pisarcik.

The largest signature was the one my eyes stopped at most, and not only because of its abundance of blue-ink swirls. #10 Brad Van Pelt was a 5-time Pro Bowl linebacker with the rugged good looks of a British Columbian lumberjack. Like Don Mattingly of the Yankees, Van Pelt was beloved by Giants fans for being a standout player on a sad parade of pathetic teams. If I close my eyes I can see his signature floating apart from the others, just as his skills and class separated him from the crappy teams he played on. It was the first thing I thought of when news of his death at the much-too-young age of 57 hit the papers this week.

Who knows what became of that autographed program. I don't regret losing it because of its potential dollar value -- I miss gazing at it like I did as a kid, letting my eyes linger over the signatures of so many long-retired Giants and feeling as I did over 30 years ago: Lucky to have #10 Brad Van Pelt's autograph and luckier still to have Pat Wall as my dad.