This is Part 3 of a three-part summer series visiting with three former major league All-Stars turned sports dads. They offer sports and life advice about how to make our kids better players, but also how to get the most out of athletic experiences with them.
This week: Fulfilling professional dreams with Tom, Dee and Nick Gordon while enjoying the ride as fathers and sons.
New York Yankees fans learned a familiar pitching formula in 2004 and 2005. If their team had the lead, they would see Flash Gordon’s biting fastballs and sharp curveballs in the eighth inning, then Mariano Rivera’s lethal cutters in the ninth. A victory was virtually sealed.
The routine often started much earlier in the day, in the New Jersey suburbs where Gordon lived with his teenaged son.
“Daddy, I want to go to the ball field,” Dee Gordon would say as he woke up his dad.
The veteran relief pitcher, now in his mid-to-late 30s, found a personal revival in what came next.
They would go to a nearby diamond at 10:30 or 11 a.m. and get in their work: Father hitting son ground balls, the two talking baseball and soaking up the energy of the interactions he would replicate with similar sessions with another son, Nick.
He would rest for a couple hours, feeling laser focused when he headed to Yankee Stadium.
“That way of doing things took pressure off me,” Tom “Flash” Gordon tells USA TODAY Sports. “I had such a regimen with working with them, where it was taking stress off my mind. And then when it was time for me to get ready to go, I can ease back into it, and then I can go as hard as I can go. They helped me just as much as I helped them.”
It’s the way youth sports can work for parents and kids. Dee and Nick both reached the major leagues, which Flash credits to their determination to climb above their competitors, but also to a path to success his mother and father set him and his siblings along in Avon Park, Florida.
Gordon calls himself an ambassador of sorts these days as he coaches and scouts for Perfect Game, a youth baseball and softball platform.
“I tried to do the very best I could as a father but also I feel like my job is to pass on information that was given to me,” he says.
Gordon, 57, spoke with us about Rivera, Bo Jackson and George Brett, but also the wisdom of Tom and Annie Gordon that drives him, and how we can use it to guide our kids’ travel sports journeys. He offers 10 tips:
1. Approach sports as a love that can last a lifetime
When Flash’s father, also named Tom, took his son to the ballyard, they gassed up, packed sandwiches and headed up into Alabama, Georgia or South Carolina in a parade of cars. It was a real-life barnstorm.
Others came to watch, and the young boy developed an image of what it looked like to be a professional.
“I got to see not the actual Negro Leagues — the Grays and the Monarchs and teams like that — but these small teams and these small little towns that wanted to be like them,” Flash Gordon says. “It was a Negro league for them, and it was something that they needed.”
His father never graduated from high school, never came close to the opportunities his son had, but he embraced the life a game had given him.
“He never thought he’d be a major league baseball player,” Gordon says of his father. “He probably never thought that his son would and then grandsons, but what he did believe in is that he loved baseball so much to where you keep playing it, or play a sport or do something you love, until it’s out of you in regards to you don’t have the same drive to do it.
“And I was really proud of him because he could have easily said, ‘Son, I play every Sunday, and I work as hard as I could go, and I was hoping that maybe somebody would see me and like me as a player.’ (He was a good pitcher.) And they never did. But he never let that deter him from being our best supporter, our best parent, our best love, and a guy that always wanted to hear how our day went.”
2. It’s not your sports career, it’s your kids’: Parents’ job is to provide the experience
Late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner once offered advice that Flash continues to use when he’s at the Florida car dealerships he and his brothers own: It’s important to be here, but it’s more important for you to leave something behind.
“The knowledge you have, just give that, leave it, because when you’re gone, it’s not yours to take with you,” Flash says.
He saw his parents’ dedication to not only their jobs, but their roles as parents. Annie was at all of her sons’ local games but also carefully sketched out activities for their sister, he says, ‘to create things in her life that kept her motivated and happy and excited about growing up as a kid in our household.”
“My mom was a stickler in staying on top of your grades,” he says. “Being the oldest, you wanted to make sure that the chores around the house were done. … I don’t think I would have made it to the major leagues, I don’t think I would have been the person that I’ve had an opportunity to become without the leadership of my parents. And I see it in my brothers, how they deal with people, respond to people. It’s almost like seeing my brothers be just like my mom in a lot of ways; they have that gentle smile before they make a decision.”
3. Scouts look at the full person, not just their ability
As he scowled from the mound, Flash thought he was tough. But he says he has plenty of his mom in him, too.
Annie has helped him understand, as he roves around to showcases and events, what constitutes the most elite players.
“You’re looking at social media and the stuff that they’re doing, it’s almost like they’re already gratified, they’re already at that point where, ‘Hey, I’ve shown a scout that I’m going to be great. I can hit home runs, shoot 3-pointers, I can hit a volleyball or whatever on videos and show ’em that I got a chance to be great,” Gordon says. “Well, guess what? The coach and the scout have not been around you long enough to see if you’re a quality enough of a person to make everybody around you better.
“It looks good when you do all these things on video, but now I need to come to your house and ask your parents whether or not you do your chores on time, do you look out for your brothers and sisters, or are you someone that they have to stay on and have to constantly be motivated to do something.”
4. Let your kids’ sports motivation come from within
Flash’s son, Dee Strange-Gordon, was drafted in the fourth round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2008 and became a two-time All-Star. But his first sports love was basketball.
“All of a sudden, it was like, ‘Daddy, could you buy me a bat? Could you buy me a glove?’ Yes, yes!’ ” Flash says. “It’s only because they’re around it so much. … This game wasn’t pushed on them to where they had to play.
“Let it be about them and their career and just be more motivated to help them the best way you possibly can, reminding them, for the most part, and Nicholas had a tough time sometimes with this one: Nothing comes easy, son.”
5. Whether you are in the dugout or bleachers, allow your son or daughter to be coached
Before Nick Gordon was drafted in the first round in 2014 and would play 338 big-league games, Flash coached him in travel ball.
“I moved my son from shortstop to second base. Sometimes I played him at third,” Flash says. “He felt like, well, that’s the wrong decision to make. However, I have to make the decision best for the entire team, not just for the fact that you’re my son.
“Be willing to allow your coach to coach your child, and then sit back in the stands and observe and watch the process. … The toughest thing for a parent is when a coach changes your son’s position, and maybe you don’t think that’s the right way. However, you’re looking at it from a parent’s perspective outside, and he’s looking at it [from] the coach’s perspective on the ground, boots down.”
6. The most elite players have pregame routines
After Flash Gordon was drafted by Kansas City in the sixth round in 1986, he reported to the rookie-level Gulf Coast League in Sarasota, Florida. He was a hotshot high schooler who found himself up against another Kansas City Royals prospect named Linton Dyer. Dyer’s nickname was “Lightning.”
“Flash vs. Lightning,” another Royals prospect, Bo Jackson, observed, coining Gordon’s moniker.
Gordon was 20 when he reached the majors. He found out how much he didn’t know, when Brett called him over to his locker.
“I don’t see a routine, son,” the future Hall of Famer said.
Brett did the same thing every day. He arrived, put on his shorts, and headed off to hit and watch video.
“The routine as a parent at home, getting up, those things change sometimes,” Flash says, “but when you have a game that’s being played at 7 o’clock, it’s time for you to get a routine at 3 p.m. and have that routine ready to go and make sure that you capture those goals through that routine until game time.
“I really appreciated Mark Gubicza and Bret Saberhagen. Those guys had great routines and prepared, they paid attention in the meetings, and it just inspired me to want to try and see if I could do more of that and become that much of a better baseball player.”
7. We don’t ever want to tear kids down, but we can use constructive criticism to motivate them
Gordon learned in the majors that teammates wanted to know when they weren’t pulling their weight.
“Every now and then it’s OK to let them know you were not that good today,” he says. “Sometimes, as a leader, you have to be reminded that it ain’t just about the way you see things. It’s about team. We’re trying to promote winning. Sometimes players think about things a week down the road when we right now are in this struggle with this other team to beat them three out of four. In the major leagues, guys come there, they all think they’re ready to play, and everyone’s coming to watch them. I was there. I know what it feels like. But sometimes that criticism puts things back into perspective.”
8. Taking nothing for granted when you reach the upper levels of sports
Sometimes Flash will look at his phone, and see that it’s Bo Jackson calling, and say to himself: “What have I done now?”
Bo always gave it to Flash straight if he felt he was just going through the motions.
“Hey, you’re in the major leagues,” Jackson would tell the younger player. “Every day you take nothing for granted here. You go as hard as you can because you never know when that day that you can’t play again happens. You get hurt, you may not ever be able to play again. Things don’t go well, you may not find that way of being able to progress.”
Even when our kids reach high school sports, there is no guarantee they will play. Each game, each sliver of playing time within that game, presents an opportunity.
Gordon tells kids there are always three things they can control: Your preparation, your attitude and your emotions.
“If you do those things,” he says, “you make my job easier, and I can help you become a much better baseball player, a much better person.”
9. Find calm before you go into the storm
Gordon was in his 15th full major-league season when he got to the Yankees. When he walked into the clubhouse, he’d see Rivera two lockers away. Rivera’s routine was to sit there. Nothing, it seemed, could disrupt the guy who would become baseball’s all-time saves leader.
“We could have a bonfire in the middle of the clubhouse,” Gordon says.
He was putting himself in that space of mindfulness and focus where pitchers thrive. The practice kept him fresh and motivated, and it was one Gordon realized he liked himself.
10. Your No. 1 asset is being a good teammate
When Flash came up with the Royals, he had lived with Jackson and his wife, Linda. He was a part of the family to the point where Bo’s kids called him their brother.
Gordon had just been told by then-Arizona Diamondbacks manager A.J. Hinch he had been released after what would be his final major-league game in 2009, when he was reminded of that feeling. He walked out of Hinch’s office, and each of his teammates was there to hug him.
“There’s not a coach I’ve ever come across that’s not willing to give you great information to help make you better when you’re a good teammate,” he says.
He couldn’t stop crying and yet he was at peace, like he had felt in those days when he and Dee were on the field in New Jersey.
“With everything that we have today, technology and the Internet, and everything that’s out there, kids’ lives start to get overshadowed with them being athletes and other things that they’re doing,” he says. “Just stay at a place where you’re more of a listener than you are someone that’s giving advice. You don’t have o. Sometimes just watching gives you the best perspective. Just be there for their journey.”
Read Part II: World Series champ shares how to maximize high school, college potential
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.