Vikings' Childress has emotional holiday; remembering my brother

Brees and son Baylen, together, threw out the first pitch on Fathers Day at Yankees Stadium. And he went on his seventh USO trip, training with the troops -- real training, not training for a publicity shot -- in Djibouti, Africa. And he found out he and wife Brittany are expecting their second child this fall. Nice off-season.

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Brees on Favre.

I asked Brees if he thinks he'll be facing Brett Favre when the Saints and Vikings open the season Sept. 9 in New Orleans in their NFC Championship Game rematch.

"There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Brett Favre will be quarterbacking the Vikings that night,'' Brees said. "No doubt.''

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You would have liked my brother.

For many reasons, and not just because we had some infamous battles in our 16 years as roommates as kids growing up in Enfield, Conn., and Bob put me in my place and made me cry "uncle'' at the end of fights I always lost. (Yes, he made me say it, and I said it, most often bitterly.) He was 1500-on-the-SAT smart but never pretended to know anything more than anyone else. He was the ultimate family guy, a Scoutmaster to his son and all the boys in South Windsor, Conn, and an affable homework monitor and reader and cross-country fan to his daughter. He was a great, involved husband. He was a church deacon, and gave his first sermon about real happiness on the morning he died -- Fathers Day, fittingly.

What I admired most about him was his selflessness, which came through in the days after his death and will continue, I expect, for years to come. Of the 750 people who snaked around the building to pay respects at his wake in South Windsor (I've been to a lot of wakes, and the only one more crowded was Wellington Mara's), I must have heard this a hundred times, in various forms: "Bob was such a good person. He gave me so much, and never asked for anything in return.''

Bob was as likely to give me advice on a book ("You've got to read 'The Prisoner of Guantanamo!' '') as temperance ("You don't need that fifth beer, Peter!''), as prone to bird-watching (on our March spring-training tour in Sarasota, he looked for ospreys as much as home runs) as he was to old TV shows (we were "Leave it to Beaver'' addicts). I wasn't the only one who he tutored. One high-schooler who hadn't found a girlfriend in South Windsor asked him meekly on a recent scouting trip, "Can you give me some advice on how to pick up girls?''