DAN PATRICK REPORTS IN

Dan Patrick is the face of sports biggest awards. No one hands out the Vince Lombardi trophy like Dan; no one wants to take it from anyone else.

Mr. Patrick gave us something else today.

Part apology, part confession, part reassurance, Dan ran down what’s been bothering him for years, and it’s not Reggie Miller.

By taking his show time to talk about illness, his illness, he put a spotlight on medicine.

His joint pain problems sound disabling, just like people have explained before only to be told, “it’s all in your heard.”

Dan knows what’s in his head and what isn’t, and if he could he’d rub dirt on it and stay in the game.

Which is what he did today.

He asked for help.

Let me repeat: A grown man asked for help.

Dan Patrick shows the way

In a most straight forward way he explained what he’s been told and what he’s been given to deal with what he’s been told.

No one told him to go on national radio and explain anything.

But he did. And it helps.

He’s a walking, talking, Hipaa violation, and I for one am happy to know how a sports celebrity handles their adversity. Now we know something’s up.

Who recalls what happened to Howard Cosell at the end of his life?

What happened to Dandy Don Meredith?

Frank Gifford?

Those are the three men in sports I grew up with on Monday Night Football. Toward the end they all disappeared from public life. Howard went out with a myriad of health problems including a broken heart after his wife died.

The Dandy One had a brain bleed.

Frank’s family listed ‘natural causes’ then switched to CTE, which made more sense considering the beating he took on the grid iron.

Danette Power

The funny thing about the Dan Patrick Show is how he has the back office up front. Instead of being Dan The Man all alone at the top of the heap, he’s got staff on air and on camera with him.

It’s impossible to know how those closest to Patrick took the news, or even if it was new to them, but make no mistake everyone of them is watching for cues.

My readers who’ve had parents pass know how it is. What are we supposed to do but embrace the fog of life and stay in our lanes? We’re not doctors or funeral home directors, the sort of people trained to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

The Danette staff of McLovin, Seton, Fritzy, and Paulie work to hold Dan together on the best days. Now it’s their challenge to make the coming days even better.

What Dan talked about was his New Normal. He’s getting what he called ‘light chemo’ and explained how it’s affecting his mind.

He didn’t say the words “Chemo Brain” but he described it pretty well.

In a way Dan Patrick gave a halftime pep talk for real life. Assess your conditioning and game skills, know where you are in the bigger picture, stay on schedule, and finally, what he couldn’t say on air. Or what he might say.

When it comes down to sports figures taking the last word, there’s only one standard. Who is it?

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies – that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that’s the finest I know.

“So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

So does Dan.