He worked so hard. So very hard. Drove a beat-up 1969 Valiant to work every day. Big hole in the floorboard. Glove compartment that popped open every time we hit a bump. Drove a 1969 Valiant so that my brother and I could go to a private high school Dad couldn't really afford.

Then his company moved to Chicago. You know what he did? Flew out of Miami first thing Monday mornings. Flew back last thing Friday nights. We were a family on weekends. Dad hates the cold. Man, he hates the cold. It is why he moved to Miami in the first place. But off to Chicago he went, cold and lonely, every week for more than a year. Didn't want to uproot his two sons from school and friends and familiarity, so he would uproot himself instead.

Kids being kids, and because the eternal lament of the parent is to be underappreciated, my brother and I would complain about having to give up every high school Friday night to pick Dad up at the airport. Mom being mom, she kept everything together, ever the loving glue, even though her protesting kids couldn't quite see the value in that yet back then. So wise, that woman. So loving and gentle and kind. You know how my parents met? Mom lost drawing toothpicks with her roommates for a blind date. My dad laughed big the other day, 45 years later, shaking his fists over his head about how she lost that day but he won.

Early Le Batard family sports experiences included an Orange Bowl trip. Miami/Collegiate Images/Getty Images

And isn't that the life of the exile? Making so many sacrifices so your kids have to make so few? Giving up your dreams so that your children can chase theirs? Turning the short straw into victory with love and work and will? The island of Cuba rots 90 miles away from South Florida, choked by communism, but look at what the exiles built for us here in Miami. Freedom and land and childhoods stolen. Look at what they built.

My father taught me to love sports. My earliest memories are with him at the Orange Bowl, in terrible seats I thought were the best in the world, my little hand in his big one as we made our way through the most chaotic and magical place I'd ever been. One day, he came out to one of my baseball games late, still in a tie, and got frustrated by how often I struck out. Mom pulled him aside -- so wise, that woman, so loving and gentle and kind -- and told him that she could teach me just about everything while he was at work but she couldn't teach me how to be a man. From then on, in every single team photo I took throughout childhood, the coach you'd see smiling in the back was always dad.

All of that overwhelmed me this month, when I started a new television show, doing a dream job in the only city I've ever loved, sitting next to my dad. The gratitude. The blessing. The circle of life. I'm a head-over-heart guy, pretty even, and that shapes my view of sports, logical more than emotional. But what swept over me the day of our debut, amid the anxiety, caught me entirely off guard. It was a big day. And I was pretty scared. But then Dad walked in for his first day at the new office, guayabera slung over his shoulder. He was uncommonly happy, far less anxious and self-conscious than I was. And something melted away in me. He doesn't express himself very well. He would never say he was excited, but I could tell that he was. When I asked afterward if he had enjoyed himself, he said that what he enjoyed, what he always enjoys, is helping me.