FIRST AND LAST SEASONS: A Father, A Son, and Sunday Afternoon Football
Dan McGraw
Doubleday
Memoir
ISBN: 0385498330

As the life expectancy of most Americans increases, many people are faced with confronting the slow dying process that our elderly loved ones endure. In recent years several writers have recognized the significance of dealing with the loss of someone dear to us. TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, the story of a former student and his dying professor, has maintained a position on the best seller list for several years. FINAL ROUNDS by James Dodson tells the story of a golf trip to Ireland for the author and his terminally ill father. FIRST AND LAST SEASONS by Dan McGraw brings an additional perspective to facing the problem of death and dying; it offers an unsentimental perspective of a father and son whose rocky relationship matures as the father unsuccessfully battles cancer.

This memoir is not the idyllic recounting of a model father-son relationship. McGraw centers his saga of the relationship with his father on their mutual love for football and their beloved Cleveland Browns. The story begins with one Sunday afternoon of football watching that ends when McGraw's exasperated father, tired of watching his son waste his life on beer and drugs, orders him out of his house. At this point, the younger McGraw begins to turn his life around. He commences a successful career as a journalist and ultimately becomes a senior editor for US News and World Report, covering major stories including the tragedies at Waco, Oklahoma City, and Columbine. An assignment to cover the resurrection of the Brown's football franchise has the additional benefit of bringing him back to his hometown and his family. Sadly, his return coincides with his father's diagnosis of cancer.

Richard McGraw was an active Cleveland trial attorney who enjoyed the intellectual combat of the legal profession. "I realized very early on that the courtroom was the only place in our society where fighting was officially sanctioned by our culture," he told his son. The elder McGraw prided himself on his ability to relate with blue-collar jurors. He often quoted Hemingway and Shakespeare during closing arguments. He rarely lost a case.

While FIRST AND LAST SEASONS is about the death of Richard McGraw, it is equally about the rebirth of the Cleveland Browns football team. The new Cleveland Browns are a unique sports franchise because they retained the identity of their namesake, a team that abruptly moved to Baltimore several years earlier --- most expansion sports franchises have no identity. But while the original Cleveland Browns had a history of great championship teams and Hall of Fame players such as Otto Graham, Marion Motley, and Jim Brown, the new Cleveland Browns franchise represents everything that is wrong with professional sports in America today in many respects. Whereas the old Cleveland Browns had a large cadre of loyal fans who lived and died with their team through success and failure --- Browns fans did not have to be taught how or why to cheer for their beloved team --- the new management of the Browns seems more concerned with their profit and loss statement than their wining and losing record; ownership seems more interested in the new Cleveland Browns credit card than the tradition and history of the old Cleveland Browns. The senior McGraw recognized this problem even before his son. Indeed, he experienced the same problem in the legal profession. Richard McGraw retired early from his litigation practice bemoaning the fact that lawyers no longer seemed to be interested in justice.

Richard McGraw's last days are chronicled by his son with a genuine warmth and affection that comes from the realization that his father was the kind of man a son would want to emulate. The younger McGraw ultimately realizes that his generation, born in the 1950s, has on some levels become similar to their parents; but on other levels he speculates that his contemporaries may well be the first generation in many that is not substantially better off than their parents. Whether that is a good or bad state of affairs will only be determined by the passage of time.

FIRST AND LAST SEASONS has extraordinary qualities for almost any reader. It is funny and moving and honest but neither soapy nor maudlin. While the book discusses death and dying, it evidences a love that may not have been present when the author began his project, teaching us about life and living and about our relationships with both the generations that preceded us and the generations that will follow.

   --- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

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