by Craig Sager
“I would feel a lot better if you would call my mom just to let her know I will be fine.”
I agreed, and a minute later I was on the phone with Mary Jo, my future motherin-law.
“I love your daughter,” I confessed. “She’s my dream girl, and I want to marry her.”
It was all such a blur, I was so excited.
“Promise me two things, Craig,” she said to me. “Never lie to her and always treat her right.”
We were engaged in June 2002 and married six months later—just eighteen months after we first met—in front of fifty family members and friends at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. Our wedding ceremony took place outside on the resort property, with Christina Aguilera, unexpectedly, performing a concert in the background. The reception took place on a loud and rocking rented boat floating off the island. I toasted my friend Larry Young for making it all happen. And for my good fortune to have Stacy as my bride and to have such good friends, I showed my gratitude and excitement by doing a backflip off the second deck into the water.
Some friends asked me why I wanted to start over at the age of fifty; others wondered why I would give up the single life or want to be a father again at such a ripe age. What they don’t understand is that when you meet the right person, you just have the answer right in front of you. I couldn’t wait to be a father again.
When Riley was born in 2004, I had no idea what fatherhood would be like the second time around. I was in my early fifties, but still in good shape, so I wasn’t concerned about my ability to keep up with her. I also had the benefit of wisdom.
Riley has become an all-around wonderful young girl. Smart, athletic, kind, and sincere, she continues to blow me away with her success in tennis, in the Science Olympiad, and in her schoolwork. There is nothing that she cannot do. It has been a true blessing to have the chance to watch another child grow up, and just looking into her eyes still melts my heart and pushes me to fight harder against my disease, to make sure I can watch her for years to come. She has maintained straight A’s, and at her elementary school graduation she received the Cindy Richards Woody Award for excellence in academics, sports, morals, and citizenship. Among her words in accepting the honor:
My father was diagnosed with leukemia two years ago and as a result, my mom had to be his full time caregiver. I was often left to motivate and figure things out on my own, but I never gave up. As an upcoming sixth-grader, I now understand the responsibility and independence as I grow older to make decisions on my own. This is what makes me the person I am today.
Ryan came next, in 2006, and has a motor that doesn’t stop, which both concerns and exhilarates me. It’s like looking in a mirror. He is constantly on the go, from one activity to another, never able to sit still and just relax on a couch. I love his curiosity and his love of sports. Like Craig, he is so much better an athlete than I ever was, and perhaps his passion for tennis will take him places to make history, not just witness it. He has shown himself to have the “it” factor for competitive superiority at an early age, with multiple titles playing in an older division.
In 2015, Ryan had a school assignment to write about his hero. I keep this with me everywhere I go:
My hero is my Dad. He taught me that it is always important to be generous, to be dedicated, to be brave, and to never give up. My Dad inspired me to never give up. He always told me that if you want to be good at something you must be dedicated. You must go at it and try your hardest. Without my Dad, I would not be a good tennis or basketball player. My Dad got really sick right before my birthday. He was in the hospital while I was having my birthday. But my Dad did not give up. He kept trying to get healthy; he tried to be there for me. He never gave up. He was really brave in the hospital getting all those shots. His one goal was to get back to work and to his family. That is why my Dad is my hero.
I want Riley and Ryan to live as normal a life as possible, which means I have never wanted them to come to the hospital every day or give up their friends or activities for me. During my long stays in the hospital, Stacy will show me videos of the kids playing sports, and our phone conversations have kept us close. Although my treatment schedule keeps me from coaching Riley and Ryan full-time, I love to watch them compete in both individual and team sports. Riley will contribute any way she can to help her team win, while Ryan, like his idol, Kobe Bryant, prefers to do it all himself.
But even off the fields of competition, Riley has excelled. Last year, she was selected to the WLES (Liberty Elementary School) news team, where she rotated between anchoring the morning announcements, running camera, and operating the teleprompter as the school news was broadcast throughout the school’s classrooms. I emphasized to her that she should rehearse her script—and never blame a faulty teleprompter operator for a glitch—and practice the pronunciation of the birthday kids’ names for the daily birthday announcements, as it may not seem like a big deal to her but it is to the kids throughout the school. Oh, and smile whenever an appropriate opportunity arises. An anchor with a smiling personality is certainly more appealing to the viewer. It was definitely a valuable experience, and, with a vested interest, I became the proud father of TV Riley and her multitasking television education.
Like Riley, Ryan was also chosen for all of the accelerated academic programs. For the past two years, he has been the recipient of the school’s math award. By taking a practical-usage approach to mathematics, we have turned problems into skills: addition and subtraction mastered by differences on the scoreboard; multiplication and division by converting pitchers’ ERA and batters’ batting averages; and fractions by comparing a player’s shot selection with his team’s field goal attempts. He may be only ten, but if your local bar needs a square pool for the Super Bowl or your workplace is lacking an office pool for the NCAA Tournament, Ryan is as adept as anyone to run it.
But of all of the special and proud moments that I share with my youngest children, perhaps the best are the times when Riley walks to my closet with me, picking out ties to match my combinations of jackets, shirts, pants, and shoes for me to wear on-air. Even when her selections don’t truly match, I wear them anyway, because she is my daughter.
Over the years, I have tried to be a good father, but because of my work, there have been birthdays, soccer games, and breakups that I was not home for. And, yes, I was much more interested in making sure my children had fun than dispensing advice. Being a father is the greatest gift in the world, and the memories of my children are seared into my life’s book. Am I a good father? I will leave that to my kids to decide. I know that I do the best that I can. But you know what? Instead of just hearing it from me, why doesn’t Craig Junior share his thoughts on growing up a Sager?
6
Growing Up Craig Junior
Sports have been a part of every day of my life. My first word was “ball.” The first day of school was an annual event that gave me a chance to model my favorite jersey or team. I learned cities and states by their college and pro teams. I remembered people by their favorite sport or team. My math skills were sharpened all year long by the sports stats my family and I were constantly calculating in our heads. Sports preserved a window into the past, challenged my memory, and sparked a curiosity to find the origin of every story and journey. They also trained me to watch and listen with the purpose of learning and improving. The unpredictability of sports taught me how to question, react to, and forecast the world around me. Sports introduced me to the full spectrum of emotions and allowed me to see beyond uniforms and roster numbers.
We lived on a golf course with enough space in the backyard that Dad installed a concrete track wreathed with green Astroturf and painted lanes. The island of pine straw and two tall Georgia pines in the heart of the track framed a row of baby-blue seats from Fulton County Stadium, giving spectators the perfect view of the backyard Olympiads.
Our garages looked like storage closets at a high school gym and were used as soccer goals more than parking spots for the fam
ily cars. The roof was a multi-angular backstop for tennis balls and pop-fly drills. The gutters were a mass grave for balls. Only the sunset could intermit the recurring field day.
I spent my childhood going from game to game and practice to practice. Dad taught me that every game was the most important game, and there was always a Sager there to cheer you on. Christmas lists and birthday wishes centered around sports. Trophies, press books, memorabilia, and relics of sports history decorated our house. Our kitchen table was a booth from the sports bar my dad owned. The wallpaper in our basement consisted of panels of baseball cards.
Our family was always in pursuit of fun; sports just happened to be the thing we loved most. Dad was the ringleader of this circus, and he could and would find the fun in anything. Every activity was an adventure, and there was always a reason for celebration. He was a parade everywhere he went, and I was the kid smiling on the float, along for the ride.
Witnessing his need to stay on the go taught me the importance of committing yourself to each moment, even if I was unaware of the lesson as I was learning it. It never occurred to me that other families didn’t share this “go big or go home” mentality, and it wasn’t until this extreme dedication to the task at hand began to set me apart from my peers that I realized it wasn’t the norm.
The first time my Sager work ethic was recognized was when I was handed the Hustle Award after my first season of Little League soccer. I was just trying to win each game and make my playing time count, and I didn’t think considerably about the award or the effort I had displayed as I heard my name called in the trophy presentation after the last game. Then my dad marched over, his face beaming, forming the unmistakable sign of victory with fists held high in the air. I asked him what he was so excited about and he told me that the Hustle Award was the most important award that I could receive. His pride at that moment was beyond any reaction to a goal I scored or a game I won. That newly discovered bond between us grew and became the trait I admired most in us and in others, as well as the driving force in my belief that through hard work, I could do literally anything.
*
There was a specific conversation the two of us had back in 2008 that reminded me of that moment and the impact it had on my life. After a lackluster high school football career, I was determined to prove just how far my work ethic could take me by attempting to walk on as a wide receiver at one of the top football programs in the country. The University of Georgia was fresh off its 41–10 Sugar Bowl victory over Hawaii, and I arrived for day one of winter conditioning to fight for a roster spot on one of the nation’s top-ranked teams. After surviving the first days of conditioning, the players were informed that workouts had been moved up to 4:30 a.m. I picked up my phone and called Dad to share my excitement over this added degree of difficulty.
“Everyone is going to have to get up earlier,” I said, celebrating. “This is perfect. The harder these workouts are on us, the better chance I’m going to have at making this team. No one is going to outwork me.”
As a former walk-on himself, he instantly understood my mind-set and shared my confidence that it would be my attitude that was going to earn me a spot on the team.
Eight months later, he met me on the field of the season opener against Georgia Southern for a quick picture and to tell me how proud he was. My attitude had paid off, and I could feel my family’s pride as I hustled out of the tunnel with the number-one team in the nation.
My jubilation was short-lived as the first of my three season-ending surgeries sidelined me. I also began to settle into my major courses in college, and with the family all on our own separate paths, sports were no longer a shared family activity. I had to discover my own perspective and relationship with sports. My journalism classes, not surprisingly, began to challenge my outlook on sports. I studied the politics and laws behind the industry, a much less personal way of looking at it. Classes were so different from what my dad had taught me about sports. I was taught to always consider the player underneath the jersey—that every athlete is a person with a family and aspirations. Suddenly, I was learning to view sports as a business and how to profit from it.
It wasn’t until I graduated, recovered physically from the toll of college football, and got my first full-time job in sports, as a writer for Score Atlanta, a sports marketing company in my hometown, that I felt at home again. I went to fifty-five football games during my first season on the job, and I worked around the clock and lived and breathed sports every day. I loved knowing that while I was in a press box and going into locker rooms, my dad was doing the same thing somewhere else, just on a different and more flamboyant scale. He had covered high school games early in his career as well. I felt connected to him through sports, even though we saw each other less often and less often with our overlapping schedules.
Distance never mattered, and through my actions I was connected to him. My work ethic, determination, and positivity all came from my dad and are part of who I am. I always admired him for his passion for his work, as I knew just how much it meant to him. And it’s something I want to replicate myself. His work is who he is. And that’s why the news in April 2014 was devastating for everyone.
PART II
THE FIGHT BEGINS
7
GREEN ALE
Running has been part of my daily routine since I was twenty-four years old. The now pastime started on my birthday that year, when I ran one lap around a track in Florida for each year of my life, raising money for charity, through the generosity of my friends and family. Decades later, I was still running: every day, every city. I felt alive working up a deep sweat, getting the blood flowing, and taking in the sights and sounds of whatever environment I found myself in: along the Embarcadero of San Francisco and the historic waterfronts of Boston, feeling the winds off of Lake Michigan and the sand beneath my feet on the beaches of Los Angeles. I rarely kept track of time or distance; I just ran, the occasional thought crossing my mind, but mostly enjoying the rare opportunity to explore one of the many incredible cities and towns to which my job took me. Running is a way to sneak a tiny vacation into a business trip.
That’s exactly what I was doing on a beautiful April morning in Miami in 2014, when I was in town to cover a Miami Heat basketball game for Turner Broadcasting. With lightweight shoes on my feet, I left the Four Seasons Hotel and headed south toward the Key Biscayne bridge. I felt the sun beating on my face, heard the sounds of Cuban music emanating from the small stores as I jogged by, and was invigorated by the freedom I was feeling relative to those poor folks stuck behind the wheels of cars jammed on the roads. I crossed the bridge and ran through Biscayne to the old pier, then turned around and ran back to the hotel to get ready for the game.
That night after the game on TNT, I followed my typical postgame routine, which included downing Bud Lights with Victor Victoria and other members of the Turner crew at the Hooters Bayside, one of the more than 250 Hooters locations I have visited during my years on the road. I like the buffalo shrimp.
At closing time, I made my way back to the hotel and tried to get a few hours of sleep before a very early morning flight to Indiana. When I woke up, I was a bit more tired than usual and my feet ached—I assumed from my run. I flew from Miami to Indianapolis and drove to Terre Haute, to speak at a fundraiser to save the Anderson High School Wigwam gymnasium. As an Illinois native who played basketball throughout his youth, I understood the significance of a small-town high school gym to a Midwestern community, so I was happy to oblige when a group led by longtime friend Terry Thimlar approached me about being part of their effort. I had a game in Dallas the following day, April 10, so after I delivered my speech and chatted with students, parents, teachers, and school administrators, I caught the last flight to Dallas out of Indy.
After the plane landed at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign was turned off, I popped up out of my seat, stretched big, opened up the overhead compartment, and grabbed my
bag.
Man, that’s heavy, I thought.
As I followed my fellow passengers off the plane into the jetway, I slowed down. I changed shoulders carrying my garment bag, feeling a little off-balance. Air travel can of course throw you for a loop, but there was what I can only describe as an unusual disconnect between my brain and my body, and it wasn’t just fatigue. As I started to walk again up the jetway, I had to stop some ten steps later and rest my right hand on the metal handrail to catch my breath.
What the hell is going on?
I slowed my breathing, calmed my mind, and, step by step, willed my way through the airport to the waiting car, deciding my lethargy was the result of a particularly busy schedule.
All I need is a good night’s sleep, I thought.
Typically, when I arrive in a city, even late at night, I go to the nearest bar or restaurant and grab a drink and a late dinner, often interacting with the other patrons, teasing out stories and sharing a few of my own. But my goal that evening was to check in to the Hotel Crescent Court, brush my teeth, and go straight to bed. As I set my alarm and lay down, I gave some final thought to my strange condition. A thought crossed my mind: the leftover St. Patrick’s Day beer that had made me sick in San Antonio a few weeks earlier was clearly not out of my system.
That must be it, I thought to myself. Green beer. And I promptly fell fast asleep.
In Dallas, my go-to running path was the Katy Trail, a three-and-a-half-mile-long running-and-biking trail set along an old Union Pacific Railroad line through the heart of Dallas. I typically started at the entrance to the trail, near American Airlines Arena, and just ran, taking in the views of the city and the parkland and observing my fellow trail-goers. It was always one of my favorite runs. But when I woke up on the morning of the 10th, I just had no interest and no urge to run. Apathy was an unfamiliar feeling to me. I called Stacy and shared with her my sudden fatigue from the previous night, and she suggested that I take an aspirin and lie down.
