After games, they do whatever they need to do to unwind, then sleep the sleep of the innocent, and that goes for those who aren’t so innocent. They get up, go to practice, go home for a nap, and, if there’s no game, there is family time. If there is a game, it’s off to the arena. On the road, the problem for players is boredom, not over work.

Football players go home every night. Travel is a flight the day before a game and the return flight immediately after the game. Hockey players have the same schedule as basketball players.

Baseball is the hardest sport on the players of families. Road trips usually last a minimum of a week, and during home stands players come home late, sleep in, then get to the ballpark a minimum of three hours before the game and more commonly four hours before. Add in commuting time and baseball players are seldom doing much more at home than sleeping. And if their kids are in school, ballplayers are gone to spring training for six weeks before the season starts — six weeks when Dad isn’t home at all.

There’s no such thing as a normal family life for anyone in sports, including sportswriters. One columnist used to tell of how his child, when asked in nursery school to draw a stick figure of his father, drew a picture of a bed with a lump in it. My wife tells me my children would still think I was home two weeks into a four-week road trip. She just kept the bedroom door closed and told them I was sleeping. Another columnist learned only during a high school graduation ceremony that his son was the class salutatorian. How he got time off to go to graduation remains a mystery.

Then there’s the story of the career bachelor sports writer whose friends decided he really needed to go out on a date and maybe experience domestic bliss. The poor fellow had no idea how to ask a girl out, but his friends finally arranged a date and convinced him it was worth taking a day off to go out with a woman.

He was a baseball writer, but he worked constantly during the off-season as well. On his date, he took her to either a basketball or hockey game in Madison Square Garden. Something happened during the game — whether it was an injury or a fight or what I can’t recall. But when it was over and the teams had gone back to the locker rooms, the writer told his date he wanted to just go down and find out what had happened, and would she mind waiting in the stands? He’d be back in ten minutes, he promised.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

Two hours later, after filing a sidebar, he remembered he hadn’t come to the game alone. He did, however, leave alone. To my knowledge, he never had another date.

Van Gundy didn’t want to be like that, didn’t want to be like what he’d become, a man who was a coach and nothing more. He wanted a real life, wanted to not just recognize his kids on sight but to actually spend time with them and be part of their lives. He didn’t want to be that lump under the covers or the guy on TV.

Good for him and good for his family.

Just the same, let’s hope everyone doesn’t get the same idea. There’d be nobody left to play the games.

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