ORLANDO, Fla. — The old car was broken down, and she didn't have much time. Kathy Gruden didn't know what to do. Her boys were playing in a Little League baseball game, and she had to be there. Because she was always there.
Without even thinking about it, she hopped on one of her sons' bikes and started pedaling and pedaling and pedaling. Seven miles later, she huffed and puffed her way into the bleachers with enough lungs still left to scream, "Let's go, boys!" for seven entire innings.
"She was relentless in her devotion to us," Tampa Bay Bucs coach Jon Gruden says of his mother. "She was our everything."
Imagine how much better the world would be if only moms were in charge of sports. It's always the dads who do and say the dumbest things. It's always the dads who get into fights at Little League games.
It was Derrick Crudup Sr. who screamed racism when his son was beaten out for the quarterbacking job at the University of Miami. It was Marv Marinovich who maniacally tried to raise his son Todd from birth to be the NFL's first test tube quarterback. It was Earl Woods who said his golfing son Tiger would have a bigger impact on humanity than Gandhi, Buddha and Nelson Mandela.
"Every dad thinks his son is a future major leaguer," says Jay Gruden, the quarterback of the Orlando Predators. "Moms just want you to go out and have fun. Dads always tell you what you're doing wrong; moms always tell you what you're doing right."
In a house full of football-obsessed men, Kathy Gruden always did put the team first. Nobody could manage a clubhouse like she could. Kathy Gruden took them one crisis at a time.
Like that one frigid winter night when the furnace broke down while her husband Jim was on some recruiting trip in Podunk, Iowa. Or that Little League baseball game when Jon was pitching with the bases loaded and Jay let a groundball go between his legs. Jon made Jay cry. Mom made Jay smile.
Or the time when Jay was scratching an itch, and Jon referred to his little brother as "Dog Boy." The two brawling brothers broke out in one of their many fights. And one mother broke out her wooden spoon. "The wooden spoon was my secret weapon," Kathy says. "I didn't even have to use it."
She refereed backyard football games, officiated living-room Nerf basketball and kept uniforms clean, but she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty.
She never missed a game, always gave 110 percent. And she played hurt.
One morning, she woke up with this excruciating pain in a hip. She went to the hospital. Kidney cancer.
Jay, then the quarterback at the University of Louisville, had a big game that weekend. Jon, then an assistant coach at Southeast Missouri State, also had an important game coming up. She kept the cancer to herself.
"She didn't want us to worry," Jay says. "Can you believe it?"
The cancer's gone now and mom marches on. Kathy Gruden raised three boys. Jim Jr., the oldest, is a doctor in Atlanta. Jon is the hottest coach in all of sports. Jay won six Arena League championships and is on Jon's Buc coaching staff.
She must be most proud of Jon, who just coached Tampa Bay to a Super Bowl victory.
"I love them all the same. I'm proud of them all the same," Kathy says.
Moms.
They always call the right audible.