My dad saved me, and I killed him

It was a set of boxing gloves. We put them on. My dad proceeded to beat me unmercifully. Each time I tried to get up, leather kissed my nose, eyes and jaw. Blood ran into my mouth from the spot where my front teeth punctured my bottom lip. I begged him to stop. Instead he carefully, systematically picked a target, never once missing his bull's-eye.

Hysterical, I collapsed in his arms. He cradled me, rocking back and forth. Dad said, "I'd cut off my right arm if that would make you whole." I couldn't talk. He said he beat me to get me ready for the world. Told me I was a man now and things would be extra tough for me.

That same year, he caught me hitchhiking, duct-taped me to a kitchen chair and turned on Mom's electric carving knife. He never touched me with it, just held it close to my ears. It was for my own good, he said. I needed to know what would happen if a "bad man" picked me up.

Ironically, it was also easy for my dad to engage in an uncommon act of discernible love. That same year, I was the only kid in my neighborhood that wasn't picked for Little League. Everybody laughed at me at tryouts. My right leg awkwardly slanted inward as I ran.

My father heard their snickers. On the ride home, neither of us spoke. I sat close to him. He held my hand, and we cried together. Two weeks later, Dad started the Shedd Park Minor League. He raised money, bought uniforms, enlisted coaches, acquired permits, and every kid played. Dad coached the Yankees and made me a pitcher.

In high school, I became a football star. People said if I had two good legs, I might have played on Sundays. One Saturday afternoon, I read the quarterback's eyes, jumped the tight end and pulled the pass out of his hands. Immediately, I headed for the end zone. At the five-yard line, I looked around to see if anybody was close enough to catch me. Nobody was chasing me, except Dad running full speed along the sidelines.

The power of my dad's love, insidious and reckless, guaranteed I walked and more. And this Father's Day, like every Father's Day, I'll relive the last time I saw him. My mother was in the hospital recovering from surgery. And Dad was on the kitchen floor having sex with another woman. I found them. He went for his heart. I thought he was faking. By the time I realized he was dying and tried to help him, it was too late.

At the end, I remember a tear rolling slowly across his cheek. His eyes opened wide. I bent forward and whispered, "I love you." He slowly reached for my hand just as he had done years ago on that ride home from Little League tryouts. And at that instant, we both experienced the pain and madness of love. Then he was gone.

That night, I shot my first bag of heroin. Three years after he died, I kicked a 10-bag-a-day habit. I became a journalist, covered the war in Bosnia, made an award-winning documentary. In 1997, a brain surgeon in San Jose told me I didn't have cerebral palsy after all. He explained precisely how and where the doctor's forceps at birth had damaged the frontal lobe of my brain.

My dad never knew the whole truth. But all that counts is the bottom line. After all his madness, on this Father's Day, like every Father's Day, I'm not a cripple.