As a kid, I looked forward to playing catch with my father when he came home from work. It didn’t matter if we were throwing a baseball back and forth, or whether he was leading me on some imaginary football pass pattern. The bonding was important.

For many players, coaches become their father figures. But for many who have never played at the college or pro level, fathers are their coaching figures.

Gary Myers takes an absorbing look at some NFL quarterbacks who looked up to their fathers and gave them their start in football in his latest book, My First Coach: Inspiring Stories of NFL Quarterbacks and Their Dads (Grand Central Publishing; hardback; $28; 279 pages). In nine chapters, Myers, the NFL’s columnist for the New York Daily News, takes a look at the Mannings, Jim Harbaugh, Jameis Winston, Phil Simms, John Elway, Derek Carr, Ryan Fitzapatrick, Joe Flacco and Joe Montana.

Every story is wonderfully written, and Myers has a gift of getting the quarterbacks to open up about their stories. The reader learns, for example, of the advice Simms received from his father, a man who handed out compliments sparingly. “Did they want to be ballplayers or one of those guys who hang out with their friends,” Myers writes. Simms, who grew up in a small house in Louisville with nine other family members, chose to be a ballplayer.

“He wasn’t a compliment guy,” Simms said of his father, William.

Including Fitzpatrick in this collection may seem out of synch, given the success stories of the other quarterbacks in this book. But he’s the only Harvard quarterback ever to start a game in the NFL, and probably one of the few — if not the only — one to finish 20 points short of a perfect SAT score in high school.

Mike Fitzpatrick emphasized academics to his son, but realized that playing for an Ivy League school would carry long odds for being drafted in the NFL.

“Nobody knows anything about Harvard football,” Mike told his son.

“If I’m good enough, they will find me,” Ryan said.

“That was the most incredible thing to ever come out of a seventeen year old’s mouth,” Mike Fitzpatrick told Myers.

The stories are unique and inspiring should. Winston said his father taught three rules in life: God, school and anything he set his mind to. Montana agonized as a parent as his sons did not become starters in college. Archie Manning would play “Amazing Catches” with his sons in the yard, and he had a message for helicopter parents: It’s got to be fun.

“If they work at it and become good, it has to be on their own,” Manning said. “They’ve got to want to work at it. Otherwise, just have fun.”
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Jim Harbaugh and his brother John were growing up while their father, Jack, was an assistant at Michigan football. Jack would come home for his dinner break, toss the football with his sons and say “Who’s got it better than us? Noo-body.”

Nobody had it better than Jack Harbaugh, who was able to play a game of catch with his father before an NFL game at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. It’s a father’s dream to do it. Same for the son.

And it was a compelling story. In My First Coach, Myers puts together a compelling volume of stories.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a limited offer on a card set depicting the upcoming Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/topps-releasing-mayweather-mcgregor-limited-online-set/

Here's a story i wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1977 Topps football set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1977-topps-football-is-an-affordable-set-to-complete/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about MLB's Players Weekend, which will be held Aug. 25-27:
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/players-weekend-jerseys-sale/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about next week's Upper Deck Premier Hockey release:
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www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/upper-deck-premier-hockey-offering-plenty-of-hits-per-box/

Mike Reuther has a knack of hooking his readers with novels containing offbeat characters and quirky story lines. His latest work is more of the same, as a former hotshot American Legion pitcher is now a middle-aged man fraught with anxiety and seemingly going nowhere in life.

“Pitching for Sanity: A Nervous Man’s Journey” (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; paperback; $9.95; 108 pages) is a short story, but Reuther is able to develop his main characters and storyline quickly. As is customary in Reuther’s work, the main character carries plenty of excess baggage and is generally too serious for his own good. However, the sidekick is the interesting character and carries the story.

It’s a familiar formula for Reuther, a longtime reporter for the Williamsport (Pa.) Sun Gazette who has tackled diverse reporting subjects such as sport, politics, health and local government. He’s also “a long-suffering” New York Mets fan, which probably explains his quirky characters. His last book, the 2014 “Baseball Dreams, Fishing Magic: One Man’s Trip Through This Crazy Thing Called Life,” combined baseball with another of Reuther’s passions — fly fishing.

“Nothing Down,” was about a pitcher who loved baseball so much, he was willing to play for free. “Return to Dead City,” Reuther’s 2011 debut, also features a world-weary main character that battles alcoholism and has a baseball history.

“Pitching for Sanity” is the story of Bill Barrister, an Air Force lifer who escapes a failed marriage in Texas and returns to his native Pennsylvania. Living off his military pension, Barrister’s days are filled with brooding, drinking and throwing fastballs into a haystack. He’s reliving 1975, but it’s never coming back. Two of the neighborhood kids, instead of admiring his fastball, believe Barrister is just “the strange dude who throws baseballs.” They go home to tell the mother of one of the boys about him, but she has her own demons to worry about and simply shrugs.

Barrister’s friend, Tom Godfrey, is a total opposite. He loves to argue and has a proposition for Barrister — a road trip to Texas to see a former high school teammate. Barrister reluctantly accompanies his friend, but Godfrey’s idea of a road trip is to bring along a dancer named Mandy to spice up part of the trip.

There was definitely some spice — for Godfrey — which left Barrister envying guys like him “who got through life seemingly oblivious to worry and anxiety.”

After dropping Mandy off, the two friends head south and wind up at the home of Barrister’s ex-wife, where they have a pleasant but awkward reunion. They continue into central Texas and unwittingly witness a convenience store robbery. The crooks leave, and Godfrey strikes up a friendship with the clerk. They go to the clerk’s house, where his wife gives massages and is a witch (seriously). Barrister gets a massage and Godfrey gets high with the clerk.

That surreal scene leads to the book’s finish, as the friends reunite with their former teammate. The ending is surprising, and while abrupt, it does leave open the possibility of a sequel. There’s no telling what Godfrey might do if the trip continues farther away from Pennsylvania.

Reuther writes easily and well, and his characters are sympathetic and without pretension. “Pitching for Sanity” is a pleasant read and a quick one. There is something endearing about a former pitching star that throws baseballs into a haystack to relax.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about an interesting auction item: a pair of ledger books of the old Philadelphia Athletics, spanning the years from 1915 to 1950.
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www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/76544-2/