Brothers in Arms

            I haven’t followed football nearly as much in my adulthood as I did in my adolescence. This year, however, I am fascinated by the Super Bowl matchup that the National Football League has provided. If I told you I grew up rooting for the San Francisco 49ers, you’d figure I’m into this game because the Niners are in the title game for the first time in 17 years.

            It is cool to see San Francisco winning games again, but that’s not why this game is so interesting to me. I’m going to be watching it for a more basic reason: because I have a brother. I have a brother against whom I competed during every day of my adolescence. So as the football world prepares for a Super Bowl in which opposing head coaches Jim and John Harbaugh are brothers, I feel as though a part of my life will be played out in that game.

            My brother, Eric, is three years younger than me. So by the time he was about 7 years old, we were ready to compete in just about any game we could find. As we grew older, that competition became fierce. We’re not just talking about games that helped us wile away a few hours. We’re talking about games in which our thirst to beat the other left us spending every ounce of energy we had in pursuit of victory.

            Some days it was Wiffle Ball games on our driveway, with one of us hitting a soaring ninth-inning home run off the telephone pole to crush the other. Other days it was one-on-one basketball in the backyard, with our breaths visible in the crisp winter air and Eric’s squared-up jumpers piling up the points against Warren’s wild hook shots. Still other days it was tennis matches at swim clubs and assorted local courts, with Warren’s Stefan Edberg-like finesse doing battle with Eric’s John McEnroe athleticism. On rainy days, it was Matchbox car duels, with my wheels up against his. On snowy days it was video games, tackle football and snowball fights.

            There’s no real end to the events that my brother and I headlined in the Hynes home. I can keep the list going for some time – we haven’t even gotten to Pinewood Derby cars, for crying out loud. Whatever it was, we were locking horns in a duel that was absolutely essential to us both. In order to learn who we were as individuals, we needed to size ourselves up against one another in the heat of battle. Everything we’ve become since is partly the result of those matchups. Of course, the fact that we loved each other dearly – both during and after every game – can’t be left unsaid. But in those games, words of love were the farthest things from our lips. It was a battle to the end.

            So on February 3^rd, it will be Jim Harbaugh’s 49ers against John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens. What makes this so amazing is that for each man, winning Super Bowl XLVII would be the ultimate career achievement. And yet, in order to claim this prize, one man will have to defeat his own brother. This, my friends, is grand drama.

            When I think about those games with Eric, I remember a similar rhythm to our matchups: I’d get out to the early lead, playing soft and loose, and Eric would quickly get frustrated. As my lead grew, he’d then throw something of a tantrum. When I saw him get upset, I’d keep playing hard, and there was no drop-off in my effort. But psychologically, his tantrums reminded me of something deep inside – the reality that I’d rather see my brother succeed than watch myself win. This didn’t always lead to me losing, and there were countless times when Eric – a superior athlete – would have come back and won anyway. But I can think of a few times when we were locked in a fierce duel, and I looked him in the eyes and realized my truest competitive desire – to see Eric triumph, even if that came at the expense of me.

            Today, my brother and I are both writers, and some of our aspirations are the same. We don’t compete with one another for stories, but if you created a scenario in which there was space for only one of us to get a book published, I’d step aside in a heartbeat.

            So when I watch the Super Bowl, that’s what I’ll be looking for – who yields first? Which brother has that inner desire to sacrifice himself for the other? I’ll be scanning my TV set in search of that split-second of mercy. That complex brotherly love, mixed in with the fierce competition. That’s what makes this game, in some sense, the ultimate in sporting matchups. The Super Bowl is always the biggest game in sports, but this time it’s also two brothers playing tackle football in the snow. I may not watch football much anymore, but I wouldn’t miss this game for the world.

            Unless, of course, my brother calls, and asks if I want to shoot some hoops.

The Snapshots (One Sixty-Two: Day 81)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Eighty-One: Scott Hairston & Jerry Hairston Jr., San Diego Padres

When the family gets together for a few days, as my family did this weekend, it’s often the case that a photo album makes its way into someone’s hands. In between trips to the beach, sittings for breakfast and dinner, and walks to the ice-cream shop, someone pulled out some albums from the late 1970s and early ‘80s.

My brother quickly found some photos of me that he couldn’t resist passing around. One, an early-80s shot, shows an 11-year-old boy wearing glasses that are roughly the circumference of a side-view mirror. As the awkward boy smiles behind the Coke-bottle glasses and beneath his wavy brown hair, he holds aloft a blue-and-white Pinewood Derby car and the trophy he (and his dad – actually, mostly his dad) earned for finishing second in the Cub Scout race.

When it was my turn, I made note of a late-‘70s photo of my brother. In it, Eric is tossing a Frisbee on the beach while wearing the smallest Speedo bathing suit mankind has ever created. He countered with a shot of me in some sort of red velour sweater, sitting on a chair with the aforementioned glasses dominating all aspects of the frame. I pointed out his KISS T-shirt in one photo. He made note of my – ahem – Shaun Cassidy silkscreen in another photo. I can’t offer any excuses or explanations to that.

But the photo that drew perhaps the most laughs was one in which I am standing outside a well-respected Jersey Shore restaurant wearing a Philadelphia Phillies T-shirt, tucked into a pair of red running shorts. The shirt is tucked in somewhere around my navel, calling to mind the old Martin Short “Ed Grimley” character from Saturday Night Live. As if that weren’t enough, this photo also shows me wearing a yellow and brown San Diego Padres helmet on my head. I can recall winning a plastic baseball helmet at a boardwalk roulette game of some sort, but I don’t remember wearing it out to restaurants. And yet, there is proof that I did so, and that my mother and father allowed me to dress in this manner. I don’t think there were other kids in the restaurant dressed like this. In fact, I don’t think there was anyone else in New Jersey sporting this look. There is good reason for that.

As 10 family members gathered under one roof, and as a summer rain brought us indoors for a while, we looked at this 10-year-old boy and laughed, together. More photos were taken of us all this weekend, and we talked and ate and played in the sand. The old photos were hilarious, sure, but they also served as a reminder of the path we’ve been walking together, and how far we’ve all come. The photos also helped inspire us to share old stories with my girls, to broaden their understanding of that path, and to help them figure out their place in it.

The San Diego Padres were never a team I rooted for much. But back in the early ‘80s I liked to wear hats and, yes, helmets of teams that were more exotic than my New York-area ken. My brother preferred his Houston Astros cap to go with the KISS and Empire Strikes Back T-shirts he wore. This weekend, as we dressed in much more boring adult clothing, two brothers in their 30s laughed for a while at the photos. Meanwhile, Sunday’s baseball action found this year’s Padres continuing their surprising first-place run. In a 9-7 win against the Colorado Rockies, the Padres smacked 16 hits. Seven of those hits came from a set of brothers, Scott Hairston and Jerry Hairston Jr. Scott is 30 years old, while Jerry is 34. The two Padre hermanos played well together on Sunday, giving their family more pieces for the scrapbooks and photo albums.

My brother is 36 now, and I’m 39. We don’t play ball anymore, aside from the occasional Wiffle Ball classics. There are other shared experiences now. They build upon themselves, and the photos serve as testament to the power of family. Hynes or Hairston, it doesn’t matter. We keep tucking in those shirts, donning the occasional helmet, and smiling for the photos. We walk through life, side by side, and the snapshots remind us of just how many miles we’ve traveled.