The Sad Fate of the Sports Parent

A true sports parent dies twice. There’s the death that awaits us all at the end of a long or short life, the result of illness, misadventure, fire, falling object, hydroplaning car, or derailing train. But there is also the death that comes in the midst of life, the purgatorial purposelessness that follows the final season on the sidelines or in the bleachers, when your sports kid hangs up their skates, cleats, or spikes after that last game.

The passage of time is woeful, and, for a parent, living your dreams through the progress of your progeny is as inevitable as the turning of the Earth. But the sports parent lives the experience in concentrate—a more intense version of the common predicament. You must give up your vicarious hope of big-league glory and let it die. You must part from what, if your kid pursued his passion seriously, had become a routine of away games and early-morning practices, hours in the car, a hot cup of coffee