Another Mother’s Day has come and gone, and I have not followed through on my promise of a Cadillac. Since I was young, I have read about how athletes, the ink barely dry on their multi-million-dollar contracts, buy their mothers shiny Cadillacs so they can “cruise to the games” in style. So, long ago, I promised mama that one day, when I made it to the big leagues, she too would get her own Caddy. She would always laugh and talk about how ridiculous she would look rolling by in a candy-paint Coupe De Ville. She never mentioned how ludicrous it was to imagine her scrawny, slow-footed son playing pro ball.

y mother has taught me many things over my 22 years, but there are two for which I will be forever grateful. One was to read. The other was that I wasn’t going to be the next Michael Jordan.

One slow dog of a day in mid-August of my sixth summer, after she had grown tired of listening to me whine about how I wanted a Super Nintendo like the rest of my friends, she retrieved a copy of “To Kill A Mockingbird” and placed it on the table in front of me.

“We don’t play video games here,” she told me. “We read. That book will keep you company. You can never be bored when you have a book.”

“I don’t want to read that,” I replied boldly, cocksure following my recent graduation from kindergarten. “I’ll do anything but read.”

“Then you can go play outside,” she replied somewhat calmly. “Those are your two options.”

Enraged as only a six-year-old hellion can be, I turned defiantly and ran out the back door into the triple-digit heat and humidity stewing in our back yard.

I returned a few hours later, after two dozen laps around the block, 300 jump shots and a half-hour of tossing the football to myself. Too exhausted to gripe about how I wanted to play Tetris, I grabbed the tattered hardcover book that my mother had placed in front of the sofa. Books. Books were for school. I hated school. I opened it anyway.

As soon as I read about Jem’s affinity for passing and punting, my fears were assuaged. I read on. I did not stop until one long summer had ended, another had taken its place and a fall, and Boo Radley had come out.

I had learned to love to read.

The subscription to Sports Illustrated followed later that year on my birthday. My mother knew her firstborn was sports-crazed before I could even tell her in words. She suspected as much when, at 18 months, I lined up my stuffed animals in the wishbone offense. But I doubt she envisioned the obsession that would grow over the coming years. I read every page – the stories of spoiled, overpaid underachievers and the sagas of gritty, hard fought success, the accounts of thrilling overtime upsets and heartbreaking collapses on the back nine. When I wasn’t reading SI, I was honing my skills, certain that one day I would grace its cover.

It must have been hard for my mother that day – after making sure Santa brought me the football uniforms I had asked for each Christmas, after watching me re-create Super Bowls in the front yard every day after school, after addressing and stamping all those illegible letters I wrote to the University of Texas football coaches telling them how to do their job – to tell me that I wasn’t going to be a pro football player. It must have been hard for her to tell the awkward, freckle-faced first grader the truth.

“You weren’t made to be a great athlete,” she told me. “You weren’t born big enough or fast enough to play football. If you want to play, you’re going to have to work really hard at it.”

I took her words and ran with them. And lifted weights. And rehabbed injuries. And lifted. And ran some more. I wasn’t Rudy, but I was damn close.

y mother is the kind of person who can’t tell you how the Redskins did last night. She can’t even tell you what they were trying to accomplish. But from early Pop Warner Saturday mornings to lazy Little League afternoons to Friday night’s bright lights, she never missed a game. Were it not for her telling me the truth that day, I would have never seen the field.

I should have thanked her after every touchdown I ever scored in high school. I should have run up into the stands and hugged her with each jump shot that fell through the net. I should have thanked her after every track meet and rugby match and baseball game.

I should thank her every time I reach the end of a great book. I should thank her every Thursday when I race home to pluck my Sports Illustrated from the mail slot. Every time I remember that you can’t fully know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them, or that maybe I’ll feel better after I go run around the block a few times, I should remember my mother. She gave me all of this.

The strand of DNA that pre-disposed me to a life of box scores and ball games, I inherited from my father. It is because of him that I open the newspaper to the sports section first each morning. But it is because of my mother that I open to any section at all.

y father gave me a love for sports.

y mother gave me a perspective that allowed me to see why and the ability to articulate that passion. For that, I owe her more than a gleaming Escalade, more than a dream house, more anything else I can possibly give back.

Over the last two years, I have tried my best to come up with the appropriate words to describe the many different slivers of the sports world on this page. I would like to think I have been somewhat successful. But in trying to think up something to tell mama, I have to admit that words fail me. I can think of only two.

Thank you.

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