Feb. 5 -- A special day in history

February 5th is a special day in history. Two people who are very near and dear to my heart were born on this day, and I think this is as good a time as any to not only with them a happy birthday, but thank them for the influence they have had on my life.

The first, of course, is Hank Aaron.

Now I know you've just read that paragraph and are thinking to yourself: Mike, are we tipping the bottle a little too hard again? Are we well on our way to turning into a replica of Jeff Bridges on "Celebrity Rehab" very soon?

Well, not really . . . you see, Hank Aaron was the man who first piqued my interest in sports. It was in 1974 when I bought my first pack of Topps baseball cards (10 cents for 15 cards, plus a stick of bubble gum . . . best deal in sports ever). The first card in the very first pack I opened was the first card in the series, and the card honored Aaron as baseball's new all-time home run king.

That baseball card really got me interested in the game of baseball and, to a greater extent, sports in general. I remember watching Aaron hit No. 715 on April 8, 1974, as the Atlanta Braves played the Los Angeles Dodgers. He took a 2-0 pitch from Al Downing over the wall into the bullpen in left-center field. Atlanta relief pitcher Tom House caught the ball in the bullpen as Aaron circled the bases, and as two fans rushed from the stands to pat him on the back and congratulate him, he circled the bases and came home to history. Not long after that, I started scouring the sports pages and driving my parents nuts with statistical data of every baseball, football, basketball and hockey player whose name I could pronounce (try saying the name Otis Sistrunk without any front teeth sometime).

Over the years, I was able to read more about Aaron's career and the sheer hell he went through as he, a black man, creeped closer and closer to a record held by a beloved, iconic white man. The death threats and the garbage he went through while pursuing this record and playing for a team located in the Deep South (where enlightened, intelligent, unbiased thinking, even in 2008, is still somewhat elusive) was beyond belief. Reading and learning about his life and career made me really appreciate that first baseball card -- and the man who was the subject of that card -- all the more.

But it was something that happened on Hank Aaron's 56th birthday -- Feb. 5, 1990 -- that I will never, ever forget. Someone came into my world on that day whose impact has been so awesome that words can not describe.

It was around 12:20 p.m. that afternoon that we received word that a baby girl was born. And what's even more awesome is the fact that -- believe it or not -- it was my daughter.

We had long settled on the name Kylie Kay if our new arrival was a girl (it was either Jordan Michael or Derrick Michael for a boy, depending on who won the argument over the first name -- I had considered Michael James II, but I would be doing time in prison the first time somebody called him Mike Jr.). I was really hoping for a boy, and for a very brief second I was disappointed when the doctor said I was the proud father of a baby girl (The disappointment, for what it's worth, was VERY brief. It might have been half a millisecond -- significantly shorter than the amount of time her mother disappointed me, but that's another story entirely).

I can't begin to tell you -- even 18 years later -- how it felt at that time to be known as somebody's daddy. Everybody was calling me daddy, and all I could think about was not dropping this wonderfully fragile little bundle in my arms (I was going to strike a Heisman pose with her in my arm and run down the hallway screaming "TOUCHDOWN NEBRASKA," but decided not to after determining that my mother, sister and still-recovering wife may all jump me right there in the room and bludgeon me to death with a catheter).

From day one, she rocked my world like no other human being has even come close to achieving. I remember watching this three-month old infant lying on the floor and rolling toward the TV when the opening credits to M*A*S*H blared from the TV -- and all I could think was, "Ohmigawd, she's a M*A*S*H fan just like her daddy. Isn't that GREAT???"

And it wasn't long before we found out whose attitude she had. One day after coming home from work, we wrestled around in the living room before I told her to go play while I made dinner. And from the mouth of a five-year-old child, I heard this response: "Daddy, I'm going to KICK YOUR ASS!"

Yep, that's my kid.

Then there was the time I took her to her first Nebraska football game. She was excited because she was going to see Eric Crouch play, and Crouch attended her elementary school. By the time Nebraska had built a 52-0 halftime lead against Baylor, my daughter turned to me and said, "Geez, dad -- these guys SUCK!" She slept in my lap the entire second half, but I never had more fun at a Husker football game since the day my dad took me to my first game in 1977.

I remember the first photo she ever took with a camera. She wanted to help her dad out while I was trying to get Nebraska Wrestling Illustrated off the ground, so I let her take pictures at a Nebraska wrestling dual. The VERY FIRST photo she snapped was a photo of a wrestler on his back, with everything from the shoulders down going straight up in the air, and the photo was as crisp as a brand new dollar bill. My fellow newspaper friends saw the photo and said I should fire the photographer I've got (me) and hire her instead. I'm not sure which of us was more proud of her work that day.

Not that long ago, a boy that she was dating broke up with her, and it seemed like the end of the world was approaching. She was beside herself and crying like a baby, and it was up to me to inform her that boys are idiots and they're going to break your heart (I left out the part that girls were a big pain in the ass, figuring that would probably do more harm than good at that particular point in the situation). My initial thought was to hunt down the offending young man, slice him into jerky-sized strips and ship him via FedEx to a remote location west of Butte, Mont., to rot in hell, but I figured getting her heart broke -- as hard as it was on both of us -- was the only way she was going to learn about life.

(For the record, it should be noted that she has made a rather significant upgrade with her new boyfriend -- but as far as he knows, he's just one slippery step away from me hog-tying him, strapping him to the hood of my car and rolling it off a steep embankment. As long as he doesn't know any different, I think he's going to continue treating my daughter as well as he has so far.)

For all the interesting and fun times we've had, though, there has been a lot of regret that I've carried around when it comes to my daughter.

I spent a good chunk of her formative years being more committed to my career than I was to her. Rare was the night during those first few years where a game, a meeting or some other news story did not take precedence over an evening with my family. There were many reasons why this was why it was -- some personal, some professional -- but I missed out on a lot of things in my daughter's life that, sadly, I will never get back.

Her first words and first steps are something her mother saw alone -- daddy was working. A lot of bedtime stories were told in mommy's voice, hardly ever in her daddy's (although we do have "The Monster At The End Of This Book," a Sesame Street story that, to this day, still makes her laugh uncontrollably, but only if I read it in Grover's voice).

I had moved closer to her in 2001, leaving a daily newspaper position to take over a weekly paper in Gretna. Five years later, I moved again, this time two hours away from my daughter for another newspaper job. It was around this time that God was telling me that I had a choice -- either the career or my daughter. I was going to lose one, and I needed to decide which I was willing to give up. Considering the choices being presented, and the fact that I finally had something of a clear head to assess the situation, the choice was easy.

During this past year, my daughter and I have connected in a way that has been missing for some time. She drops by more often than she used to (of course, she has her own car now) and we hang out more -- and have fun doing it -- than we have for some time. I have enjoyed watching her as a leader on the Millard West flag corps and seeing her beam with pride and joy as she performed and played to the crowd, knowing daddy was up there watching (and her mom and step-dad, too).

And we have spent more time talking about the future than I'd ever thought we'd do. And unlike her father back when he was that age, she actually APPEARS to be taking in this valuable information and looking to apply it in her life (something her father is, only recently, learning to do with the advice he's received from those who came before HIM).

She's also discovered that dad's music -- old, outdated and worthless, in her mind, not that long ago -- is actually some pretty awesome stuff. Most of her friends have Britney Spears or some other hip-hop or techno garbage filling up their iPods. Her playlist includes Rush, Loverboy, Van Halen and Night Ranger. A specially-constructed five-CD set made up entirely of music from her dad's voluminous rockin' library of songs is all that is playing in her car's CD player (did I raise her right or what???).

Up until recently, I worried a lot about how my daughter's adult life was going to turn out. She's so bright and beautiful, yet so fragile and naive about the real world that I worry that there is some loser out there who is going to screw her life up in some way, shape or form and her dad will have to spend the rest of his days on death row after hunting down and exterminating the scumbag in retaliation.

I worried until the other day, when I got a phone call from my daughter. Seems there was a bully in her school who was picking on a physically-disadvantage young man. Not only did my daughter tell the jerk to buzz off, but when he didn't seem interested in hearing what she had to say, she arm-barred his worthless ass and pushed him face-first into a table, suggesting that either he knock it off or she was going to get the school resource officer (police officer on patrol at the school) involved.

I'm not worried anymore -- at least, for her (God help whoever screws with her, physically or otherwise).

What I am, though, is indescribably proud of somebody who has hit more home runs in my life than Hank Aaron and every other home-run hitter in the world combined. To quote a verse from the Stevie Wonder classic, "Isn't She Lovely":

"Isn't she pretty -- truly the angels' best -- I am so happy -- we have been Heaven blessed . . ."

I have been blessed, more than I can even begin to count, by somebody who turns 18 years old today.

Happy birthday, punkin'. Daddy loves you more than you'll ever know.