Father’s Day farewell to ol’ Coach Derby

Well, here it is, another Father’s Day — a day when I wish my dad had lived longer, so we could play catch again. Even if it is 111 degrees in the shade. There are lots of other days I wish my old man had lived longer, but this is one for prioritizing personal thoughts.

So at my age, which was the age my dad died, I think of other people’s fathers, and that should they still have them, they are fortunate. Sometimes I think of Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr. Or the football Mannings. Or Mario, Michael and Marco Andretti, or the Unsers, because if you grew up in Indiana, even if it was in the shadow of the Chicago skyscrapers, the Indy 500 was a seminal event shared by fathers and sons.

Sometimes I think of old coaches and surrogate fathers and how they often are one and the same.

This year I’m thinking of a man named Joseph Derybowski.

He was an old coach — my first coach, really, because I don’t count the teenage kid who made out the baseball lineup card when I was 9. I don’t even remember the teenage kid’s name, only that he wore a sleeveless T-shirt on the baseball diamond and smoked cigarettes in front of us.

Old coaches do not wear sleeveless T-shirts. They wear cardigan sweaters, like Mister Rogers, or they wear windbreakers at basketball practice, like John Wooden or the White Shadow. They don’t smoke in front of the players. They’re supposed to sneak one in the shadows beyond the bullpen.

Mr. Derby, which is what everybody called him (although some used the less formal Coach Derby), wore a light blue cardigan sweater and a navy blue windbreaker. And a whistle around his neck.

I don’t remember him using the whistle. He didn’t have to. He had our respect. He seemed wise — he taught us how to throw a chest pass with two hands, which was how you did it then.

Our uniform pants were made of satin. When you wear satin basketball pants, you heed your coach and you make chest passes with two hands. You do not question his authority; you do not do as LeBron did to his coach in the NBA Finals.

There were basketball leagues for fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at St. Adalbert School — St. Al’s in the standings and on the front of our jerseys. There were games every school day at the local community center, and on Sunday there were CYO games after 11:30 a.m. Mass let out.

CYO stood for Catholic Youth Organization. I liked these games the best. They were at the Catholic high school in the next town, in their ample field house that seemed to us as big as the Chicago Amphitheatre where the early Bulls played.

Mr. Derby was the treasurer of the CYO. He was always volunteering his time for us kids, even on the weekends.

We would pile into his big blue LTD for the ride over to the Catholic high school — that was the best part, because sometimes you got to ride in the back seat with one of his daughters, or if you were really lucky and timed when you piled into the car just right, you got to ride with both.

Mr. Derby had attractive daughters. They were ticket takers at the CYO games.

These are sweet memories.

Sometimes I would see Mr. Derby riding his old bicycle to his job at the oil refinery.

Beyond that, I would see him only twice more.

The next-to-last time was a long time ago, when I was home from college. I was sitting in his TV room with Sandy, his youngest daughter. We were watching the Cubs game, and Mr. Derby wouldn’t go to bed, even after the game was over.

The last time I saw him was 2009.

My brother had bumped into his oldest daughter at the Horseshoe’s riverboat casino in our hometown — she tends bar in the high-roller salon. Nancy D. — Nancy S. now — told my brother that should I ever be back in town I should call, that her dad would love to see me.

That was the year the 51s played the Iowa Cubs at Wrigley Field.

I was with a friend, and I had called from the city, and she said, “You guys of Polish descent aren’t at Ditka’s, are you?” Only she used a less politically correct term. And we were at Ditka’s.

I had a wonderful visit with Mr. Derby, who was 93 then. He showed me my name in his little address book where he kept the phone numbers of the St. Al’s players. Mrs. Derby made lemonade and insisted I stay for cookies.

This was a sweet memory, too.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a text message from Mr. Derby’s oldest daughter. It said her father had died.

He had turned 99 on April 29.

The obit in the newspaper said Joseph Derybowski was a Pearl Harbor survivor, was a member of the American Legion, retired after 38 years at Standard Oil, enjoyed dancing, all sports and the Chicago Cubs. That he had a ton of grandkids.

It said everybody called him the less formal Coach Derby.

The text message from his oldest daughter said she can’t imagine her life without him, and that when she and the other siblings get around to going through his things, she has dibs on Mr. Derby’s light blue coaching sweater.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.