Excerpt: 'Get Your Own Damn Beer, I'm Watching the Game'
Sept. 21, 2005 — -- Actress and NFL wife Holly Robinson Peete has written a new book called "Get Your Own Damn Beer, I'm Watching the Game." The book is a woman's guide to pro football, for women who never learned what the game is all about to women who want to learn more to share their husband's passion for the sport.
Holly's husband, Rodney Peete, was a quarterback in the NFL for 16 years, most recently for the Carolina Panthers. He's retired from football and is now co-host of Fox's "Best Damn Sports Show Period."
You can read an excerpt from "Get Your Own Damn Beer, I'm Watching the Game," below.
I suppose a bit of a personal introduction is in order before we get too deep into this thing. After all, it doesn't just happen that a little girl grows up in Philadelphia rooting for the Eagles, only to wind up marrying an Eagles quarterback. But that's the short version of how it happened for me.
Here's the (somewhat) longer version. My dad was a big-time football fan. It was his thing. It wasn't his only thing, mind you, but it was a big deal. Man, he loved his Eagles, and I grew to love them right alongside him. Again, it wasn't the only thing we shared, but it was something special.
My father's name was Matt Robinson, and he was an incredible writer. He wrote and produced a bunch of local television shows in Philadelphia, but he also commuted to New York for a lot of the time I was growing up. He wrote scripts for "Sanford and Son," and "The Waltons," and "Eight Is Enough," and he wrote several children's books, plays, and screenplays. Later on, he was a writer and producer on "The Cosby Show." But he was probably best known for creating the role of Gordon, which he played from 1969 to 1972 on the original Sesame Street. He still turns up from time to time in the repeat segments they sometimes air, with his big pork chop sideburns and bushy moustache. Could a 4-year-old have asked her daddy to have a cooler gig?
He's gone now, my dad, after a long, difficult bout with Parkinson's disease, but football is at the heart of my memories of him. It was our common ground. I watch his old Sesame Street tapes with my children and think about how it was when I was their age, when my dad first started hanging out with Oscar, Big Bird, and the rest of the gang -- and when I first discovered Harold Carmichael and Norm Snead, who were two of the more popular Philadelphia Eagles players throughout my growing up.
My dad had a pretty busy taping schedule up in New York as I recall, but he was around on weekends and we made the most of our time together. Sundays were our special time during football season. My brother and I would sit at his knee, watching the game on television. Plus, we loved to watch him roll over in laughter each draft day as he scouted the proceedings -- not for the best players, mind you, but for the hippest, most unusual names of the latest crop of college stars. Remember William "The Refrigerator" Perry? Well, we knew all about him in our household even before he burst onto the NFL scene, thanks to my dad's love for crazy-cool football names. That was always one of his favorite things, to collect the wildest and most unique football names that crossed his radar. And as a special tribute, I'll present a list of some of his all-time favorites (plus a few new ones he would have loved) a bit later on in these pages.
My earliest football memory (to which I alluded earlier) is from when I was 5 or 6 years old and more interested in spending time with my father than in the game he was watching or the players on the field. The game itself was probably nothing more than background noise to me when I was that little. If you'd have asked me, I'd have told you Jim Ringo was a Beatle before I pegged him for an Eagle.
Anyway, one late fall afternoon, I heard the jangle of the Good Humor ice cream truck coming up the block in my Mount Airy neighborhood, and I started tugging on my father's shirt to get his attention at some crucial point in the game. All I cared about was a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar. All he cared about was a field goal the Eagles were attempting, to take the lead as time ran out on the clock. In an effort to hush me up for another beat or two, he turned to me and said, "Honey, if that kicker makes this field goal, you can get your strawberry shortcake."
I started cheering for Dad's Eagles right then and there, and from that moment on, I think I associated everything I ever wanted in life with an Eagles' victory. (I guess that explains a lot.) In any case, there was usually a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar to help us celebrate at the end of each win. We started watching games together every week during the season; and in the beginning, it really did have more to do with my love of ice cream than my love of football.
Soon after that, it was more about hanging with my father than anything else; but after a while, the lines got blurred and I was hooked on the game. I loved the adrenaline rush of excitement that seemed to flow from that field, the artistry of the wide receivers, and the crunch of brute strength at the line. I loved the sheer thrill of an open field run. I wasn't the most sophisticated fan in the world right out of the gate, but my father was a patient teacher and I paid close attention. In time, I learned the basic rules, and eventually I was able to pick up a little strategy and subtlety. When I moved from Philly to L.A. at the age of 9, and years later when I left the house after high school, I still managed to follow the Eagles. They were my team by that point, and it didn't matter if I was away at school or studying for a year in Paris -- whenever the Eagles were playing, I was doing my best to catch the game and cheer them on.
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