Once, he busted his big toe trying to break up a double play in the last inning of the final softball game of the season. Even with a cast on his leg, he managed to drive home from the hospital - and was still shaking his head over the force out at second base.
As a baseball manager, he was smarter than Casey Stengel and Tony La Russa combined.
His Little League teams sure won a lot of games over the years. And even when they didn't, there were always Cokes and hamburgers afterward - paid for out of his pocket, of course.
He taught the kids how to play the game and, more important, that it was always supposed to be fun. And that there was nothing wrong with losing if you tried your best.
Bear Bryant and George Halas were no match for him as a football coach, either. His fifth- and sixth-grade Widgets were small, but tough. When they got knocked down, they jumped right back up. Sometimes they ran the wrong way, or fumbled at the 1-yard-line. But their coach was just as good at drying tears as he was at patting them on the back.
Even after his two sons were too old to play, he continued coaching kids' teams in baseball, football and basketball for many years because he was needed - and because he loved it. His garage was always filled with bats and balls, helmets and shoulder pads, basketballs and uniforms.
HE was also my favorite boxer, tougher than Mike Tyson in his prime, even though he was only 5-foot-10 and 140 pounds.
Once, when a bigger and younger biker followed him home after a traffic argument, he asked the guy to stop swearing in front of his wife and children.
When the guy laughed and swore again, he hit him with a right hook square between the eyes. It knocked the shocked guy right off his Harley and onto the street. The biker slowly got up and was quickly peppered with enough combinations that bloodied his nose - so he got back on his motorcycle and drove away. John Wayne couldn't have done it any better.
As a golfer, he now gets to play twice a week - lousy Midwest weather permitting - in his senior league and loves the sport.
It's a well-deserved reward after working for more than 40 years as a pipe insulator before retiring a few years ago. Five or six or seven mornings a week, he got up at 4 or 5 a.m. Then he went to the steel mills or another construction site to usually work outside in the winter when it was bitter cold, or inside in the summer when the heat was almost unbearable.
Despite the dangerous conditions, I never heard him complain - even after the asbestos filled his lungs and still makes him cough a lot. It was a good and fair wage, he said, and it all went to raising his family, which made him proud. Unlike most of the other workers, he drank more Pepsi than beer, which left extra money for his elderly parents, his disabled sister, his wife and his two kids.
He always spent his valuable free time taking his two boys fishing or swimming, or building them a hockey net for the frozen backyard. There was the basketball hoop on the garage that needed repair or a game of wiffle ball to join, even after a long and exhausting overtime shift.
He is - pardon the redundancy - a stubborn Irishman, whose eyes can flash with anger. But I have also seen him hold a baby or a puppy or a kitten with the soft touch of an angel.
Indeed, he is a man for all seasons and I think about him with much love every single day of my life. I am so very lucky that he was there to guide me, when growing up in a big city can lead to so much trouble and pain and heartbreak.
He will always, always be my true hero.
Happy Father's Day, Dad.
You're still my MVP!