The Death of a Legend... The Honoring of a Legacy

Throughout my life, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in terms of keeping loved ones around for a good, long while. In my 27-plus years of hanging around, the only losses I’ve had to endure are a couple of grandparents, a couple of sports idols and maybe a pet or two.

Inanimate objects probably shouldn’t be on the list of lost loved ones, but I just added one to mine. A couple of weeks ago – after 21 years of loyal service to the Anthony family – the Subaru Legacy that has served as my only car finally called it a career.

It really shouldn’t have come as any sort of surprise. That car didn’t have the easiest life. It endured winters in Pennsylvania, summers in South Georgia, a few run-ins with other vehicles, and plenty of band-aids applied to its problems when full-on surgery was probably the right call. The Legacy creaked and moaned. It shimmied and shuddered. It never would have won a beauty contest, but it would make the trip there and back without complaint.

Writing about a hunk of metal (which is probably the best current definition of the car, since I sold it to a salvage yard) seems a little dumb. It seems a bit overly sentimental. But it also seems fitting.

That car was a part of so many of the stories and experiences that I’ve had, the only right thing to do is to recount them now that there won’t be any more.

Starting from the beginning and staying as close as possible to the correct chronological order, that beat-up 1993 Subaru Legacy:

-         Drove me to elementary school

-         Shuttled me to countless Little League games

-         Was the first car I ever operated, getting to back down the driveway before car washes

-         Took me on my first “date” (even if it was me catching a ride to and from those meet-ups at the movie theater)

-         Helped me out on my paper route when things got too rainy or cold

-         Gave me a ride to my first day of high school

-         Was right there for me to lean on when I got my first kiss

-         Helped me pass my driver’s test and was the first car I ever drove solo

-         Got me to and from my first real job

-         **REDACTED DUE TO BLOGGER’S PARENTS/GIRLFRIEND SOMETIMES READING THESE ENTRIES**

-         Drove me to my high school graduation

-         Became a car that was actually all mine once I got to college

-         Served as a great tent for a few tailgates that started the Friday before a big game

-         Somehow found a radio signal coming all the way from Philadelphia, allowing me to listen to my Phillies clinch a division title for the first time in 14 years
-         Got me home safely after being pulled over and put through a sobriety test at 3 a.m. on the way home from a Halloween party (I was sober). Somewhere out there is a police dashboard camera video of the Subaru and me in a Quailman costume walking a line.

-         Always made enough rattling noises and blew enough smoke to keep potential muggers at bay while I delivered pizzas to get through grad school

-         Shuttled me all over GA to cover high school games for my first job after college

-         Saved me untold amounts of gas money by always looking like a death trap and causing friends to always offer to drive

As things turned out, the Legacy met its end in exactly the way that I didn’t want it to. One of its myriad issues finally ballooned to the point where fixing the problem just wasn’t practical thinking.

In its final hour, the Legacy didn’t get that parade through downtown with a champagne toast to send it off right. It never became the converted grill that my buddy John had promised to turn it into when I finally moved on to another car. Instead, it sputtered its way to the Dollar General as I was trying to buy a two-liter of Coke. It was dead in the water. I wouldn’t find that out for sure until the shop told me a week later, but I just knew. You don’t spend two decades with a friend and not realize when something big is happening.

The Legacy was never a looker, but I think that over the years it absorbed a little bit of my pride. Not wanting its last drivable moments to occur in the parking lot of a dollar store, I tried – to no avail – for almost an hour to get her started. Later that night, I gave it one more shot and even though it was just a half-mile of driving… Juuuusst enough to build up some speed and coast into my driveway… the Legacy started moving and got me home one last time.

She rode off into the sunset after that (albeit on the backs of tow trucks), but after all of the ground we covered together, I guess the Legacy deserved to have someone else do the hard work in her final hours.

It was 205,327 miles. And it was a hell of a ride.

Phil the Thrill

***DISCLAIMER ---- I have a few more readers than I used to… So many more that – delightfully – I don’t even know some of the people who are reading this blog. As such, I feel obligated to note that a few words in this particular entry are somewhat less PG-13 than most of my posts. It’s cool, though. I’m not going crazy. Just take it all in context, and everyone will be fine***

I’ll make no excuses about my bias. As a lefty, Phil Mickelson has always been my favorite golfer. Swinging away from the side of the ball that I was more accustomed to was good enough to get me hooked on Phil, but as I grew to appreciate golf – and my own reckless and haphazard game – Phil’s style of play only served to make me a more ardent fan.

The last twenty years or so have blessed the golf fans of the world with two of the greatest to ever tee it up.  Tiger Woods, of course, needs no introduction into this pairing. While many fans would probably correctly guess Mickelson as the second entry on this list, I get the feeling that his greatness still isn’t properly appreciated.

 Phil is the wild card of golf. He’s the unknown quantity of a sport that doesn’t tolerate anything less than exactitudes. When the game hands Phil a 50-foot tree in his line, he asks where all of the branches are, because he’s pretty sure that he can probably get through there and onto the green. That line of thinking has cost him plenty of major championships – it’s also won him a few and proved that risky golf is fine if you have the skill to back it up.

That sort of approach to the game usually doesn’t fly in golf. More often than not, it gets you burned and kills any shot of making a living out of playing the game. When someone can pull off the incredible – and probably ill-advised - under even the most intense pressure, they’re going to have some huge setbacks while also attaining some unbelievable highs.

And maybe that’s the origin of Phil’s not-so-enviable nickname amongst those who are close to the game.

For those who are unfamiliar with the PGA lingo, Phil carries the moniker of ‘FIGJAM’… short for “Fuck, I’m Good. Just Ask Me.’

That nickname is mocking and condescending. For all I know, it’s totally deserved. Phil has always shown the confidence in his own game to try what any other pro would consider stupid. If he fails, he’ll certainly be ridiculed. But when he succeeds – and does so with thousands of dollars in prize money on the line - why shouldn’t he be entitled to assume that ‘FIGJAM’ aura?

Phil has become many things in his career. He’s a Hall-Of-Fame golfer while still being the personification of the weekend hacker. He’s a five-time major winner while still being the guy most likely to blow a tournament in horrific fashion. He’s the one pro that you wouldn’t trust with a three-foot putt, but the only one you’d want to attempt an impossible flop shot from an unplayable lie.

Even when he’s great, Phil can’t help but to buck the trend. During his 20s, he was the ‘next big thing’ in golf, only to get derailed when that Tiger fella’ came along. Mickelson never wavered, spending the next decade taking flak as the best player to be winless in majors while absolutely dominating the game anytime Tiger wasn’t stealing the show.

When Phil finally broke through for his first major win at The Masters in 2004, it was somehow viewed as more of a vindication of his approach to the game rather than a coronation of his inherent skill and talent. Undeterred, Mickelson quickly stockpiled another three major titles in the next six years.

But Phil’s reputation as a loose cannon has never gone away. And that’s probably fair. Look at his six 2^nd place finishes in the U.S. Open and – using logic that is inherent to most golfers, but seemingly foreign to Phil – Mickelson could easily have a career grand slam and be in the top five of all-time major winners. For fans like me who have been devastated by plenty of Sunday collapses, it’s all we can do to keep from arguing that Phil is one of the greatest ever and would be widely accepted as such by the masses if not for a few wayward drives or ill-conceived flop shots.

Then again, history is defined as what happened and not what could have happened. Phil will never be at the top of any list and he will never be regarded as the best golfer of his era. That’s a shame for a golfer of his talent level, but it’s also a perfect representation of his career.

Phil has always been at his best when he was being overlooked. He’s always been most humble during his biggest downfalls and he’s always been the guy willing to do the insane – and pull it off – while the rest of the golf world has settled in for five hours of predictability.

Is Phil really THAT talented?

Fuck, he’s good. Just ask anyone.