Somewhere up there, my mom is smiling.
Ryan McMahon hit a home run for the Rockies in their 4-3 win over the Giants on Thursday night. McMahon broke out of a horrendous slump.
“RyMac” was my mom’s second-favorite Rockie, right behind Todd Helton. Why? Partly because he’s Irish, mostly because I like RyMac.
She was thrilled when Helton invited me to his Knoxville, Tenn., home to witness his Hall of Fame phone call in January 2024. When my wife, Nancy, and I were invited to Helton’s party in Cooperstown last July, my mom felt like she was there.
During her last years, I watched Rockies road games with her when I could. She rarely asked why the team was winning or losing. Strategy was not her thing. She always asked, “Is so and so a good guy?”
That’s the kind of sports fan my mom was. She knew nothing about OPS, yards after catch, 3-point percentages, or point spreads. She just liked how players played and hoped they were good people. She loved Dr. J, Nolan Arenado and Floyd Little.
In the Broncos’ infancy, when Little was their only star and the game plan was “Little off left tackle, Little off right tackle,” my mom would shout, “Don’t hurt Floyd!”
In her later years, she’d tried to stay up late enough to watch manager Bud Black’s postgame news conference, not because she wanted to hear his explanations but to hear me ask a question.
“Good questions, son,” she’d say. “I think Buddy likes you. He responds well to you.”
I’d roll my eyes and say, ‘Yes, Buddy likes me, but he doesn’t respond to me differently than anybody else.”
She once told me Black didn’t talk enough about the Rockies’ hitters, saying he was too focused on pitchers. So, I asked Black to send her a video message last Mother’s Day.
“Anita, happy Mother’s Day! How are you?” he said from his office. “I love that you love the Rockies. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to start talking more about hitting and less about pitching, just for you.”
She loved that.
She also loved the Nuggets, mainly because my brother, Bryan, and his two sons, Cooper and Jacob, loved the Nuggets. Point guard Jamal Murray was her favorite player.
“Is Jamal a good guy?” she’d ask.
“I don’t know, Mom, I don’t cover the Nuggets very often, so I really don’t know him,” I said. “But he doesn’t seem to like the media very much, and I don’t think the Nuggets writers like him very much.”
She was disappointed when I told her that.
My mom hated cynicism and hated that my job as a sportswriter had soured me a bit over the years. I tried to explain that it was an unavoidable job hazard when you cover professional athletes. She didn’t buy it.
“You’re being too negative,” she’d tell me.
Funny enough, she wondered why I wasn’t a columnist, like the late, great Dick Connor, who was named Colorado Sports Writer of the Year 22 times and is in the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. Back in the day, the Connors, part of Arvada’s Irish-Catholic clan at St. Anne’s parish, lived just across an open field from the Saunders home. My mom and dad (Dusty) were good friends with Dick and Mary Kay.
“You write like Dick Connor,” Mom would say. “You see sports the same way.”
I tried to explain that I could never be a columnist today. I’m not confrontational enough and lack the killer instinct a contemporary columnist needs. Plus, I’m not as talented as Mr. Connor.
“I don’t think that’s true,” she’d say, though I know it’s all true.
As a kid, my mom nursed the battle wounds from my days as a Little League catcher and comforted me when I got cut from the Arvada High School basketball team.
She listened to St. Louis Cardinals games on the radio with me, my dad, and my brother Steve until she couldn’t handle the static anymore. So my dad, brother, and I would hop in the station wagon and go to the top of Hackberry Hill, where the reception was better.
Mom and my sister, Katie, used to pick their favorite teams because they liked their “costumes.” I’d roll my eyes and say, “They’re called uniforms!”
My mom was not a good athlete and was a terrible golfer. She used to play in her bare feet — much to my embarrassment — because she said it gave her a “better feel.”
But she loved sports because her family loved sports.
Anita Ruth Murnan died on April 21. She was 93. She had a wonderful life.
She was my biggest fan and I miss her.
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