Claire Bloss couldn’t believe what SportsCenter just told her. For some unfathomable reason, Seton Hall had decided to part ways with its head men’s basketball coach, Louis Orr, after a 2005-06 season in which his Pirates finished 18-12 and made the NCAA Tournament. Claire spewed comments of disgust, some colorful enough that they will not be revealed in this column.

Across the room, my friend Steve muttered an observation.

“My grandma doesn’t even know what a basketball is,” he said.

Mine did. Claire, or Nana as we called her, was not a Seton Hall hoops junkie. She knew her sports, though. Stacks of Sports Illustrated piled up at home. There was rarely a golfer on the PGA Tour she hadn’t heard of. But it was her knowledge of and passion for Syracuse sports that trumped all. That was why she fumed when Orr, a forward on Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse teams in the late 1970s, got the boot at Seton Hall.

Nana lived in East Syracuse with Jim Bloss, her husband of nearly 60 years, until she died suddenly in the spring of 2013. Jim, whom we called Pop, died a year later. They had been in this city for nearly their entire lives. Jim worked at Carrier after his Navy days and would later usher in the Dome for years. The last time I saw Pop, I told him I would be the first Bloss to attend SU.

My venture into The Daily Orange’s sports section came three years later. It has been a brief but memorable tenure. Throughout this past year, I have often thought about what it would have been like to share my up-close view of SU Athletics with my grandparents. To tell them about the conversations I had with SU football players or my courtside seat at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament (even if their Big East heritage might have been opposed).

To have these conversations would have been the latest SU sports memories shared with my grandparents. As kids, my brothers and I bought them a small Otto doll that sang the SU fight song when you pressed his hand. We abused that feature during visits to the point that my grandparents probably wished the damn thing never left the store. Now, with a dead battery, that Otto sits on the corner of my desk, Pop’s “No Smoking” pin from the Carrier Dome attached.

Pop and I watched the 2013 NBA Draft from his Eastwood living room. All day I had hyped up the idea of my hometown 76ers selecting SU’s Michael Carter-Williams. Five picks went by. The Sixers took Kentucky forward Nerlens Noel at No. 6. Four more selections passed. Still, Carter-Williams remained. David Stern waddled to the podium.

“With the 11th pick in the two-thousand-and-thirteen NBA draft, the Philadelphier Seventy-Sixes (yes, he said it like that) select…”

C’mon, commish.

“…Michael Carter-Williams from Syracuse University.”

Ohhhh, man. Pop was nearly 81. Medical circumstances kept him fairly quiet at that point, but you could see the excitement on his face. He laughed. His eyes lit up. That said enough.

Carter-Williams went on to win Rookie of the Year and get traded less than a year after that. Whatever. That night provided a special memory that had nothing to do with the birth of The Process.

Many months after draft night, Carter-Williams’ replacement put a basketball through a hoop in Pittsburgh. It had no business going in. We’ve all seen it a bunch of times. As soon as Tyler Ennis hit that buzzer-beater, my father, Peter Bloss, said we had to call Pop. Pop, again, didn’t offer much of a response. I’m not sure he could handle that kind of excitement.

Peter — called Jim and Claire’s nothing because he is not the oldest, youngest or a twin — has gifted me countless sports memories, from dropped foul balls to Final Fours. He and my mother are my most dedicated readers (check out their Facebook feeds for evidence). For these things I am grateful.

As much as Peter enjoyed my run with D.O. Sports, his parents would have even more. They could have been right across town to chat about that wild win over Clemson or my road trips to southern cities that take football a little more seriously.

It would be foolish and unhealthy to wish that I could change that. Instead, it’s enough to appreciate new memories that build upon the old. And be thankful for the people who gave me that foundation here in Syracuse, even if they were gone before I arrived.

Joe Bloss is a senior staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear. He can be reached at jtbloss@syr.edu or on Twitter @jtbloss.

Published on April 29, 2018 at 8:44 pm