Ralph Amsden
Today I find myself writing this Monday Musings column from my hometown of Sheridan, Wyoming. I’m up here for the funeral of my uncle, Donald Barnes, who passed away a couple of months ago at the age of 60 after an aggressive onset of brain cancer.
Sitting down to write about sports after attending a remembrance of life usually wouldn’t be the first thing on my to-do list, but I’m not sure I would have ever ended up writing about sports without my uncle’s influence.
He also nearly helped end my career covering college football on the same day that it started… more on that later.
Don was the baby boy of his family, but towered over them at 6-5. He was obsessed with Julius Erving as a young man, and did his best to emulate Dr. J’s moves in his northern Wyoming driveway.
When hoop dreams gave way to the realities and responsibilities of adulthood, he took up golf, and his love of the game led him to play courses all over the United States and Europe, while his fandom shifted to Colorado sports, where he made his home.
As a kid, my interest in sports partially came out of a desire to connect with my uncle, but my nature as a contrarian led me to root against all the things he loved. I was dismissive of golf, and as an Arizonan, I was very hostile toward every Colorado sports team. I wasn’t Suns-in-four-guy level hostile, but I tried my best to get my uncle off his bearings.
As a kid, my interest in sports partially came out of a desire to connect with my uncle, but my nature as a contrarian led me to root against all the things he loved. I was dismissive of golf, and hostile toward every Colorado sports team, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t rile him out of his easy-going flower child persona. No matter how much I mocked the struggles of the Nuggets, Rockies and Broncos, he’d channel the patience of Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski to let me know that “that’s just your opinion, man.”
And then one summer, my favorite college and professional athlete made the decision to sign with the Denver Broncos in free agency. Suddenly, my hatred for the Denver Broncos was put on hiatus, and for the next four seasons, my uncle and I were able to align our interests behind the shared desire for Jake Plummer to succeed.
Four years of rooting alongside my uncle rather than against him transformed me from a person that was primarily concerned with my own rooting interest, to someone that fell in love with fandom in general.
Enthusiasm and a good story felt better than living and dying with the Phoenix Suns’ postseason performance every year, anyway.
When I finally got a foothold in Arizona prep sports media, my uncle not only watched and read from afar about topics that had absolutely no regional interest to him, he even came out to watch games in person when schools like Saguaro or Chandler made the trip up to Colorado to take on Valor Christian.
When players from Arizona would make news on the national stage, I could always expect a text message. Thanks to Brock Purdy’s magical run to the Super Bowl last year, toward the end of my uncle’s life, there were quite a few calls and texts.
Back in 2014, I was credentialed for my first ever college football game, and it happened to be near him in Boulder, Colorado. I never had any intention of expanding into covering college sports, but the Buffalos had a backup quarterback at the time that played his high school football at Notre Dame Prep, so I reached out to ask Colorado’s Sports Information Director for a credential so I could interview Jordan Gehrke.
Not only did Colorado’s SID grant my credential, he asked if I needed any extras.
My uncle had been my biggest supporter, and was the reason I made this a career pursuit in the first place, so I listed Don Barnes as my staff photographer and invited him to come along.
It wasn’t long before Colorado’s SID was able to deduce that the giant man seated next to me in the press box at Folsom Field, who was holding a tiny Sony DSLR camera and sporting a tailgate access bracelet, was not, in fact, a member of the college football media.
We were nearly kicked out and banned, and I’d have certainly deserved it. I abused a system that I never had any intention of ever using again… and while I’d never repeat that behavior, I don’t regret having that moment with my uncle.
If I do have one regret, it’s refusing my uncle’s many offerings to take me out to a municipal golf course as a kid and show me the ropes. I missed so much time with him that I could have had, if I’d just been open enough to try something new.
When I first got word in late 2023 that my uncle Don had cancer, I told myself that the celebration of his victory would take place on the golf course. In early 2024, the call I’d hoped for came.
Clean scans. A new lease on life.
Arizona Sports columnist, radio host, and author Dan Bickley had published a book about the Waste Management Open, and so I asked him to send Don one of his books, and inscribe a congratulatory message.
I told Don to call me when he received the book. My plan was to tell him that the book was evidence that finally, at age 40, my golf embargo was over. When the call to express thanks for the book came, I never got the chance to tell him my plan.<
“I received the book, but I’ve had a seizure, and I’m in the hospital under observation.”
Just days after a clean scan, a new form of cancer appeared, both as rare and aggressive as it can be. Nineteen days later, my uncle was gone.
I flew to Colorado to be with family as Don passed, and later that week I sat with Sports360AZ founder Brad Cesmat in Arizona to talk about a role with his media company.
I knew that role would eventually include writing this column, and it’s surreal to be typing it out just a few months later.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Brad Cesmat, it’s that the sport itself isn’t the story- the story instead belongs to the person playing the sport.
And because the sport isn’t the story, the story never ends with the end of the game.
So we play on and we play through, which I’m told is golf terminology.
In this next chapter, I think one of you is going to have to teach me to swing a club.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to exchange lessons for a press pass.
