WHY MY WIFE THINKS I’M AN IDIOT

A pleasing slice of radio sportscaster Greenberg’s life, giving an inkling of how he squares his family priorities with the absurd demands of his job.

When his psychiatrist reassured him that he was not too self-centered to be a father and would surely put his children before his job as host of a popular morning sports-radio show, Greenberg demurred: “Sometimes you don’t put the really important things first. I should know; I talk about sports for a living.” Yet Greenberg, who inherited his obsession with sports from his parents (“I love that [my mother] would have left my father for Joe Namath in a heartbeat, and that he would have applauded her for it,” he reveals) writes with sweet musicality about the wonderful, trying presences of his son and daughter, joking about their urgencies as if he were a high-school prankster. His worldview combines the tenderness of a dad with a sporting man’s vision of harmony; he finds it hard to understand why the world’s war-makers haven’t figured out that at the end of the day combatants should be able to get up, dust off, grab a shower and share a beer. Simplistic? Of course, but it’s still refreshing. “You forgive,” he writes. “It’s what separates us from the animals.” The everyday nonsense of his extended family brings clarity to the exquisite play on the field. Thrill to it while you can, for life is short—except on those nights when a child cries on and on.

Greenberg’s morning show will never sound the same when fans consider that he has already fielded his wife’s sleepy plaints, his aunt’s queries about gambling and his children’s appeal for a warm caress, all before they tuned in to the station.