John Thompson opened the palm of one of his catcher’s mitt-sized hands and pointed to it with the index finger of the other. The lesson of hard work was never far from his mind.
“I remember: He’d come home after work, wash ’em over and over, sit down at the dinner table and they always looked dark as this,” Thompson said, pointing now to the back of his hand. “After a while I figured out the stain of all that hard labor wasn’t ever going to wash away.”
This happened during a conversation about fathers and sons at an NCAA tournament East Regional final in March, 2007.