From our Mother’s Day desk:

Sweet piece by Jason Gay in the Weekend Wall Street Journal:

On Mother’s Day, the Real MVP

My mother never really helped me with sports. I’m not even certain if she loves sports. All she ever did was pack me up in the car for the first 17 years of my life, dragging me out of bed and telling me to eat something before driving me off to tryouts, to practice, to tournaments and playoff games that I can no longer remember. All she ever did was make sure that I always had a ride home after the game. All she ever did was abandon huge chunks of her day—her life—to make sure I could play sports with my friends because I enjoyed playing sports with my friends.

I am not sure what the big deal is about this. It’s not like my mother taught me how to throw a curve ball.

Gay’s salute to his Mom proceeds along similar lines, leading up to this conclusion:

Now my life is surrounded by sports, by games and superstar athletes privileged to be paid millions for games the rest of us would play for free. And though there is a whole warm nostalgia built up around the idea of sports, fathers and sons, of passing the game from one generation to the next, I can tell you that whenever one of these superstar athletes wins a championship, or breaks a record, or signs a big contract, the first person they thank, 99 times out of 100, is not their father, or a coach, or an agent, or a friend, but their mother.

I am older, and I think about all these things and I wonder if I had it wrong. Maybe my mother really did love sports.

Or maybe just me.

Ya think?

[And while we’re at it, a moment of silence here for my Mom (rest her soul), Jackie’s Agnes. My old man and both his brothers improbably married women named Agnes, who were forever Jackie’s Agnes, Sonny’s Agnes – still going strong, God love her – and Dan’s Agnes.

[For 20 years Jackie’s Agnes almost singlehandedly raised six kids in a three-room Manhattan walk-up, and did a damned good job of it. That was something special. As was Jackie’s Agnes.

[Here’s looking at you, Mom.]