Dad Moments, Miracle Throws and Knuckleballs

It was a big weekend in so many ways

This was a big weekend at our home. Our older daughter, Elizabeth — Katie the Prefect Elizabeth, Hamilton Elizabeth, Springsteen Elizabeth — got engaged to her longtime boyfriend, Elijah. There was cake and tears everywhere.

Twenty-four years ago — though it feels like last week — I was in a hotel room at the Best Western SunDome in Hutchinson, Kansas. I was there to cover the U.S. Women’s Open. I brought my young family. Margo. Elizabeth. Katie, our youngest, wasn’t born yet.

I brought them because I wanted them to experience the full luxury of the Best Western SunDome in Hutchinson, Kansas which overlooked a parking lot and an Amoco car wash and, as I wrote at the time, “has one of those wall air-conditioning units that makes more noise than those guys on SportsCenter and yet still manages to keep the room a comfortable 96 degrees.”

I was unduly harsh on the Best Western SunDome to get a few cheap laughs because I was still young and giddy and did not yet understand how much I would miss the place when it was torn down. And I do miss it. Because in the hotel room overlooking a parking lot, and with that air conditioner blaring, and with Happy Days on the television — the one where Fonzie met the Lone Ranger and Chachi rode a mechanical bull — Elizabeth, 10 months old, stood by the television, holding on to the stand for dear life and then, suddenly, miraculously, took her first step and then her second and finally her third as she reached the bed.

That feeling. I honestly didn’t think anything could ever top that feeling.

The truth is SO many moments with Elizabeth have topped that feeling. She has never been especially happy to be at the center of so many of my stories. Once, at an event, she overheard two guys behind her saying, “I like Joe, but I wish he’d write more about sports and less about his family.” Elizabeth turned back and said, “I agree!”

But now that Elizabeth is doing some of her own writing, I think she understands better than ever that writers write what is at the center of our lives, what is at the center of our hearts, and that’s where Elizabeth and Katie breathe.

I’m happy to say she found herself a good, sweet, and devoted young man.

He found someone even better.

Should the Bears have gone for two?

I’m not going to lie: From a football perspective, this was a bummer of a weekend. I came in with two very strong rooting interests: The Bills and the Bears. They both lost in heartbreaking fashion. Watching Josh Allen break down in tears after that Broncos-Bills game, ugh, that’s the most crushing sports image of 2026 so far.

The Bears-Rams game, well, there was something that happened near the end that haunts me. With 27 seconds left in regulation, Bears quarterback Caleb Williams pulled off what just might be the most absurd and impossible NFL play I’ve ever seen, and I’ve written a bit about NFL plays.

It was fourth-and-4, the Rams led by 7, and Williams dropped back to throw. This had been a quintessential Caleb day, filled with miracles and mistakes, blunders and beauties, but now it was midnight and the whole season was at stake. The Rams smashed through the Bears’ offensive line as they had all day. Williams began scrambling, then realized there was nowhere to go but back. So he ran back and kept running back until he was 10 yards behind the line, 20 yards behind the line, 25 yards behind the line.

And then he threw the ball while falling backward. It was sort of a Hail Mary and sort of an aimed dart. The ball soared toward the end zone, where tight end Cole Kmet was being covered by the Rams’ Cobie Durant … only Durant seemed to lose his place with the ball in the air. He came FORWARD. The ball went BACK. And it landed softly in Kmet’s hand for a touchdown that, no matter how many times you see it, boggles the mind.

Soldier Field was a mess of cheers and tears and gasps and hope. It was, people who were there say, as loud as they ever heard the place. And I felt sure, quite sure, that the Bears coach Ben Johnson would go for the win right there and then by going for two. I thought that because Johnson pretty much ALWAYS goes for the risk option. That’s at the very core of his coaching philosophy and, undoubtedly, a part of the reason the Bears had such a magical season. Johnson plays fast, he plays loose, he goes for it on fourth down.

In fact, he’d gone for it on fourth down multiple times in this very game, which (you could argue) was why the Bears trailed in the first place. The Bears turned it over on downs three times in relative field goal range. You can’t say that’s nine guaranteed points they left on the table because the weather was gnarly, but it’s certainly some points left on the table.

But this is how the Bears play. This is how the Bears think. This is how the Bears win.

I thought for sure that Johnson would go for two and the win after the miracle play.

He didn’t. And when you listen to his explanation, you can see where he was coming from: The Bears, as demonstrated, had been shut down pretty much all day on the most important goal-to-go situations. Johnson was undoubtedly tempted to put it all on the line right then and there, try to take advantage of the stunned Rams defense, put everything on one play. I have no doubt he had the football courage to do exactly that.

He calculated that the Bears’ best chance to win was to go into overtime.

And here’s where it gets tricky because I think he was right. I really WANTED him to go for two there because that fits the mind so perfectly. As our pal and co-author Mike Schur texted:

If you’re a Rams fan and you give up that touchdown, and you see them come out for the extra points … you heave a sigh of relief.

Right. Going for it fits the mind.

But … stuff that fits the mind isn’t necessarily right. This might not seem like a valid comparison, but I was really struck (as was Patriots fan Mike Schur) by how many people picked the Texans to beat the Patriots on Sunday. The reason I was struck by it was that one after another, people seemed to connect the Texans’ dominant defense to the Seahawks’ dominant defense, and the Seahawks had just manhandled the 49ers 41-6.

But this is utter nonsense — or what Bill James so lovingly calls “bullshit.” The Texans’ defense has nothing at all to do with the Seahawks’ defense.

And yet it makes perfect sense to our narrative-seeking minds.

And our narrative-seeking minds felt like, YES, this was the moment for the Bears to strike, for them to go for two, for them to ride the incredible momentum wave of the big play and put the game away right then and there.

But what were the Bears’ chances of actually winning the game if they went for 2?

Well, the league made 46% of two-point conversions this year.

With the new overtime rules and the game being at Soldier Field, they almost certainly had at least a 50-50 shot in overtime.

And here’s the thing: The Bears COULD have won in overtime. They were in a position to win in overtime. They stopped the Rams on their first drive. And then they drove the ball to midfield, just 15 or so yards away from a viable game-winning kick, when Caleb Williams dropped back to throw, faced no pressure, and made one of those decisions that just come with Caleb being Caleb: He fired the ball downfield in the hope that D.J. Moore would be on the same page and break free from his defender.

Instead, it was the defender, safety Kamren Curl, who broke free from the receiver and picked off the pass. It was the wrong throw at the wrong time, and the Rams drove down the field for the game-winning kick.

And now that we know how it turned out, yes, we’d love to know what was behind Curtain No. 2, love to know how it would have gone if the Bears had tried for two. But that’s not how time works. In the moment, I think Ben Johnson did the right thing.

RIP Wilbur Wood

I’m dying to tell you about the book I’m working on for next year ... but feel like I should probably wait to save the surprise. I will tell you that one of the chapters in the book (maybe this will give part of it away) is about Wilbur Wood, who died on Sunday at age 84.

Wilbur Wood was so awesome. Everything about him. He began his career as a hard-throwing strikeout pitcher — fastball and curveball, like Koufax. That didn’t work out — his hometown Red Sox sold him to the Pirates — and he began leaning on the knuckleball he had been throwing all his life. None other than Hoyt Wilhelm helped him hone the pitch. The Pirates traded him to the White Sox, where in 1968 he became a super-reliever, appearing in 88 games and throwing 159 innings with a 1.87 ERA.

In time, the White Sox moved him into the rotation. From 1971-75, he averaged — AVERAGED — 45 starts and 336 innings a year. If you want to win a bar bet (assuming that “bar bets” even exist anymore) ask a baseball fan to name the highest WAR season for any American League pitcher in the 1970s.

Answer: Wilbur Wood, 1971, when he went 22-13 with a 1.91 ERA and posted 11.7 wins above replacement.

But it was more than his performance. The guy was just wonderful in every way. “On the mound,” Roger Angell wrote of him, “he displays a comfortable expanse of tum and the stiffish-looking knees of a confirmed indoorsman, and thus resembles a left-handed accountant or pastry chef on a Sunday outing.”