There's nothing in the parenting books about explaining Deflategate to your toddler. So I was forced to call an audible last summer when my 2-year-old daughter Eliza, who for months had been exposed to conversations about underinflated footballs and disproportionate punishments, summoned a few words in her fledgling vocabulary to inquire about the discussions she'd been overhearing on TV and between her parents since the day after last year's AFC Championship game.
"Tommy was naughty?" she asked me one August evening as I toweled her off from her bath.
"Well, he got a time-out. Four games," I replied, declining to add that I, like most New England Patriots fans, questioned the extent of Tom Brady's involvement in the maybe-intentional-or-maybe-atmospheric softening of footballs that had become one of the top sports stories of 2015.
"What did Tommy do?" she pressed on, intrigued by the idea that the same grown-up whose life-size image decorates a wall in our home office (I consider it art) might be capable of misbehavior.
"They say he took the air out of the footballs," I said, without conviction, but wanting to avoid being forced to perform a Dr. Seussian rendition of the Wells report:
Did he lower the P.S.I? / Brady said, "Oh no, not I!"
But why then was his phone destroyed / If not illegally employed?
Does Ideal Gas Law mean deflation / As claims all Patriot Nation?
It seemed better to simplify.
"Does Tommy like time-out?"
"No, he's mad," I said, putting the conversation -- and soon afterwards, my little one -- to bed.
It's perhaps inevitable that Eliza has a precocious interest in sports, given that she is growing up in an athletics-obsessed household. I'm a former competitive runner and lifelong track geek who taught her to call the bannister on our staircase "Roger," as in, "I'm holding onto Roger Bannister while I go up, Mama." My husband is a former member of an NCAA-winning fencing team and a sports TV researcher who, for reasons passing understanding, writes out the singles draws for every Grand Slam tennis tournament by hand.
Within weeks of Eliza's arrival in 2013, punchy from the exhaustion and tedium of round-the-clock newborn care, we had developed a lexicon of sports-related nicknames for our infant according to her various moods and bodily functions. Among the monikers in heavy rotation: Annika Snorenstam, Yawny Tseng, Fussy Zoeller, Drooly Inkster, George Hiccuppy, Sabine Lis-sick-y and Lionel Messy. We christened a plush pink teddy bear she'd been gifted "Julie Pinkster." Julie was soon joined in the crib by a fuzzy stuffed dog, "Leroy Fur."
Eliza's early exposure to sports extended beyond bad puns and lessons about the sub-four-minute mile. At three months of age, during the Red Sox' most recent World Series-winning run, she made her Fenway Park debut. In the ensuing years she attended three Mets home games, a Columbia-Yale football game at the Yale Bowl, a Columbia-Fairfield men's basketball game, and a Diamond League track meet on New York's Randalls Island. (During the latter, she was captivated by the women's pole vault, cheering "again, again!" after each attempt, while I tried in vain to explain the three-misses-and-you're-out rule.)
She's also been a moderately obliging spectator at my road races. "You're sweaty," she said at the finish line of the last one, as my husband instructed her to call me Patrick Ewing.
The manifestations of Eliza's sports-immersive upbringing are amusing and, occasionally, disconcerting. Having mastered her PTI's as well as her ABC's, Eliza points out Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon whenever they appear on TV, clear evidence that she has exceeded the recommended amount of screen-time. She once sat herself on the floor with her father's official "NFL Record and Fact Book" and said, "Don't bother me! I'm doing football notes."
Last summer at the playground, a line of kids waiting for the slide was held up while Eliza performed a set of calf raises on the top step. "I'm doing my exercises," she announced, as she mimicked the strengthening routine I do for my perennially sore Achilles'.
So I probably should have anticipated Eliza's mid-summer questions about Deflategate. On September 3, the day Judge Richard Berman threw out Brady's suspension, I punted -- opting not to tell her what had transpired, lest she learn that some punishments are negotiable and begin mounting vigorous appeals of her own disciplinary time-outs.
A week later, the NFL season began auspiciously for the Patriots and for Eliza, who discovered she was allowed to eat otherwise verboten junk food on game day.
By the time New England was 10-0, she was adept at chip-and-dipping with both her left and right hands. During the Pats' divisional-round playoff win over Kansas City, she learned to say "Julian Edelman" with perfect diction. ("That's a beautiful name," she declared, unwittingly echoing the relief Pats fans felt about having their No. 1 receiver back on the field for the postseason.)
For the AFC Championship game, in a move unlikely to earn me mother-of-the-year nominations, I hired a babysitter so I could watch without being distracted by my child.
As it turned out, I was glad Eliza didn't suffer the agony of the New England's failed two-point conversion against Denver. With the Patriots' loss, Eliza can now enjoy a relaxed and festive atmosphere on Sunday, instead of seeing me agonizing over every down like I did last year.
Of course I wish the Pats were playing for a fifth Lombardi Trophy, but I derive great pleasure in having my little girl experience the spectacle of sports along with me. It's almost as fun as if the Pats were in the Super Bowl.