Big-Time Sports Has Dropped the Ball

A friend in his 40s stopped by the desk and began by saying how much the major sports meant to him as a kid. He was the kind who checked the daily standings, knew all the players and memorized their stats. He was an across-the-board fan of football, baseball, basketball and hockey.

He recalled this with a bite in his voice and a frown, because those days are gone. He’s a grown-up kid increasingly disenchanted with professional sports. He pays attention, but from afar. Too much change, too much scandal, too much money-driven news. The sports passion that carried into his adult life died on the vine.

What bothers him the most about that, he said, is that it’s kept him from handing down that passion to all four of his sons, the oldest of whom is 16. As his boys grew, so did my friend’s detachment from the national sporting scene.

Not that he asked, but this isn’t good.

“I can’t be the only one who feels this way,” he says.

Common sense tells me he’s right. With all the disgusted sports fans out there, lots of dads who grew up as sports nuts must be having trouble handing that down to their children. They may take their sons and daughters to ballgames, but will they discuss the game with any real verve?

Millions still do and always will. But I wonder how many millions don’t.

Does it matter to a 10-year-old kid who lives and breathes his beloved Angels that they’re suddenly the Los Angeles Angels? I’d guess it does. Sure, Dad can explain the whys and wherefores about ad revenue, but he’s still going to get a funny look from Junior.

Does it matter to a young hockey fan whose dad taught him the lingo and the players’ names -- and maybe could afford a Mighty Ducks game or two -- that an entire season has been wiped out because of a labor dispute? I’d guess it does. A canceled hockey season means a lot of father-son conversations that weren’t held.

Who could blame a father for tuning out? What’s there to talk about? Steroids? Basketball players KOing fans in the stands? Football teams that change quarterbacks every other year?

Every tuned-out father is a potentially tuned-out kid.

A couple of nights ago, a San Diego sports talk radio host lamented how much airtime was spent discussing money and contracts. Whatever happened, he cried, to the days when fans talked about ball scores instead of bank accounts?

What’s the big deal? you ask. So what if fathers don’t talk baseball or hoops with their children?

I can’t write a master’s thesis on it, but others have. With a century of American sports life behind us, the games are tailor-made for linking the generations.

I suppose fathers could engage their 10-year-olds in conversations about art and politics -- and maybe we’d be a better society for it -- but is it possible to interest a boy more in Michelangelo than Michael Vick?

At best, a difficult chore. Besides, while the 10-year-old touts Vick, he can listen to his father talk about Joe Namath.

The first language I spoke with my father was sports. Shortly after “goo-goo” came “RBI.”

By the time I was 8 or 9, and with Dad’s encouragement, I was clipping sports stories from newspapers and pasting them in scrapbooks. I remember a day in downtown Omaha when Dad took me, all of 12 or 13, into his favorite watering hole and had me recite batting averages of the Top 10 hitters to his buddies.

Silly, but memorable. Dad and I talked sports until the week he died, a bond that lasted even when other conversational lines were largely muted over the years by differences of opinion.

So, count me as one who fears we’ll lose something if more and more middle-aged men get fed up with sports. I’m sorry for them, but sorrier if -- like my friend -- their disgust means their sons won’t get to know the truly beautiful notion of talking a little ball with their dads.

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.