Why I Am the Way That I Am

During the Flyers Game 6 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, the following exchange took place in the Burnston household:

Me: "That’s delay of game! THAT'S DELAY OF GAME!!!"
(Long pause)
My Mom: "Hey, that should be delay of game."
Me (kidding): "Oh, sorry. Is there an echo in here?"
My Mom (yelling): "WHO TAUGHT YOU EVERYTHING YOU KNOW?!"
 
You know what? She brought up a very good point.

Many of you may have wondered how on earth a 24-year-old girl fell in love with sports, knows so much about them and spends so much of her free time writing a sports blog. The answer is my family, and most influentially my mom.

My mom’s been a sports fan her entire life. She grew up watching her dad coach her brothers’ Little League team. She fell (and remains) in love with the toothless Broad Street Bullies and learned everything there is to know about the game of hockey. She loved talking about and watching sports in a time where it wasn’t exactly commonplace for a woman to do so.

A few years later, it turns out that her daughter loves doing all of those same things. When I fell in love with baseball, I got made fun of in middle school, because people didn’t understand why a girl was so excited to go home and watch a ball game. But my family always got it. They brought me to every softball field in the tri-state area for 11 years (and even come to watch me play in my current “grown-up” slow-pitch league). They supported me when my childhood dream wasn’t to be an actress, but a beat writer for the Phillies. They were on board with my decision to go to college near Philly so I could possibly work in the Philadelphia sports market (even though I’m sure they knew it was also partly so I could be closer to the ballpark).

My interest in sports didn’t happen because my family made it happen, it happened because my family allowed it to.

This may seem like a sports story, but it’s really about more than that. Now that I’m older (and clearly wiser), I realize that if it hadn’t been for my mom being such a strong woman and telling me it was okay to be both a sports nut and paint my nails, I’m not sure if I would have been able to stand by what I loved and become the person that I am today.

So, on this Mother's Day, a public thank you to my mom for always being herself, and for teaching me to do the same. Thank you for your priceless insights, like how hockey was better when players didn’t wear helmets because you could see how good-looking they were, that you should always know what you’re going to do with the ball before you get it, and that loving sports is about so much more than winning or losing – it’s about enjoying the game itself and sharing it with the people you love.

Oh, and of course, thank you for picking my father so wisely.

Mother's Day 2007 at CBP