Floridian: Proving ground

Proving ground

By RAN HENRY

Marjorie Spurrier speaks with sweet matter-of-factness about her husband's time as a tennis player. It's an old story she works at retelling, waving her arms and feet in volleys, in her floral print dress and blue slacks and blue socks.

She wants you to picture the Rev. Spurrier sweating and running, playing his heart out on every serve. She loves a player with heart. Like any fan.

While she talked, the Reverend was silent, sunk in his massive chair. Fidgeting. Adding nothing to his own story. Seemingly lost in thought, as all the old clocks in the house ticked. The Spurriers own a lot of old clocks. His wife looked over at him, in his reverie.

"Steve," she said. Using their boy's name as a password to get through to where her husband was. "You sort of lived your life through him."

I watched his lined, moony preacher's face, framed by steely, enduring hair, soulful, liquid eyes and a gold Gator watch. His solemn look didn't change. The ticking silence echoed off the furniture he and his wife bought 50 years ago.

You know that dusty, deathly clock sound from childhood, the grandfatherly ticking that unnerved you in an old person's house. The second hand moving, stopping, moving, stopping, sounding scary even if you knew you'd live forever.

It was just that the ticking was real for the wrinkled owners of the clocks. The Rev. Spurrier, father of my hero, football legend Steve Spurrier, died last April, in his sleep, beside his wife. It was just before the University of Florida spring game, forcing his son the famous coach to confront that one seat in the stadium that would always be empty.

Not only did the Reverend father the man I admire most. I believed spending a day with him would throw some light on my own dad. Maybe even illuminate where I stood on the world's playing field.

I grew up so chubby, slow and sorry that Dad wouldn't ever play catch with me. I can't blame him; I couldn't catch. Still, that gets you feeling unaccepted, if you're a guy. "Why couldn't you be an athlete?" Dad said, the way dads from Virginia say ath-a-lete. "Like that Spurrier kid, over in Tennessee?"

Now I'm just another potato chip cruncher, rooting for Spurrier's Gators to give me some self-esteem. I didn't even go to school at UF. I'm just a fan. But I'll get in your face and tell you Spurrier won that National Chompionship for me, just like he won it for you. Or against you. When Spurrier calls one of his humiliating double fake fleaflicker halfback option passes, then scores with 50-yard run up the gut, the world feels all right.

What's wrong with me? I even rooted hard and loud for the Tampa Bay Bucs, all during the '80s and '90s when we won about two games, just to be able to say now I told you so. Why do I need some football team to do my winning for me? Why do I need to prove my self-worth at someone else's expense?

Why can't I just accept that I'll never, ever please Dad?

I took these questions from a clumsy childhood in West Virginia to an unassuming house in Green Cove Springs in northeast Florida, where the Rev. and Marjorie Spurrier transplanted themselves from a home in the Tennessee hills. Their youngest son, Steve, was a legend back in Johnson City, long before he electrified the Gator nation.

Football, baseball, basketball -- young Steve played every position, nearly perfect, miraculously won lost games and brought championships to the town. He drew up plays in the dirt and made them work. Then he went off to college and did it all again, for the University of Florida Fightin' Gators. Won the state its first Heisman Trophy. Came back to campus wearing his coaching visor and gave the Gators all those championships we never got to brag about.

What dad wouldn't be proud?

The Spurriers had their orange and blue national championship flag flying high, and a museum's worth of pictures, awards, trophies and the ancient wooden clocks. Time and talent. A portrait of the Lord at the Last Supper oversaw Mrs. Spurrier's video stockpile of old Gator games that's even bigger than mine. "Jesus never fails" hung alongside "Go Gators." And there were the three children's bronzed baby shoes. Steve's little shoes seemed to cast a shadow over the others.

Oh you bet, his dad bragged about his son. Unlike mine. Steve's dad made sure everyone in Johnson City knew whose son their hero was.

But, sadly, in their father-and-son talks, some critical mistakes in his throwing, pitching, shooting or catching always needed correcting.

I figure that wound made the irascible, unavoidable Steve Spurrier think he has to always be the best. You know, to prove himself to Dad. It's a feeling he'll feel long after his team plays in front of that seemingly empty stadium seat.

I know something of how that feels. I went to his father's house to learn how you get past all that fatherly criticism. Maybe, I was realizing about my hero, the real question was, had he?

We talked for hours, his mom and dad and me, in that living room full of mementos and clocks, about life, faith, Gator football and Steve. Then Marjorie started talking about tennis. Frustration. And love. And all those clocks ticked, ticked, ticked.

They sounded to me like Dad, Dad, Dad. They were like little ticking pleas. I knew, hearing those ticks marking time, it was my only chance to ask the question of a lifetime.

Why, why, why, I asked the Reverend, were you so hard on your son?

"I declare, I don't think I was," the Reverend said. Not in a reverie anymore. Sitting up straight as anyone could in that huge chair.

"And Steve doesn't think I was either."

He sat up to his full fatherly height and looked around at all the pictures of Steve and Jesus hanging by the clocks.

"I must have done something right."

Ran Henry is a writer who lives in Miami.

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