COMMENTARY
Borrelli made fantasy into a career
Updated: 11/21/08 6:27 AM
His nickname was “Ox,” for reasons that were obvious to anyone who knew him. Tom Borrelli was a big, strong guy who always wore a brush cut. He was our Dewey Oxburger, our John Candy, oversized and imposing on the outside but tender on the inside and downright hilarious.
Borrelli passed away Thursday morning, less than two weeks after he was paralyzed from the neck down following a terrible spill at All High Stadium. On that day, he was doing exactly what he adored since his childhood. He was chasing numbers, gathering statistics that would eternally record a game.
His passion for sports is what led him up the ladder before his downfall, a literal and figurative coincidence to be sure. Ox had the infatuation of a 15-year-old when it came to sports, a kid stuffed into a 51-year-old man’s body. He turned his boyhood fantasy into a career. Ultimately, he understood life’s treasures before dying on his own terms. In that sense, he was lucky.
Kids, listen up. Life isn’t about making the most money or driving fancy cars or marrying Victoria’s Secret’s top model. It’s doing what you enjoy for a third of your day and appreciating the people around you. Covering sports wasn’t work for Ox. He was sports 24/7. And that includes sleep, because that’s when he could dream.
It’s no wonder why he carved himself a weekly fantasy sports column. Often, we’re bogged down by the egomaniacs, overpaid athletes, careers wasted on drugs and cheating and everything else wrong with sports. Borrelli didn’t give a hoot about that stuff.
In his home were hundreds of score books from games he watched on television or covered himself. He had been crunching numbers since he was about 8 years old, clipping out box scores from his favorite teams and filing them away. It was a scrapbook of his life.
It took him years to find a friend who appreciated sports as much as he did. Once he did, he married her. Karen Borrelli works in the sports department. They drove together, worked together, had dinner together and teased one another every day. She’s hurting, but she’s also taking comfort in this: Her husband was living his dream.
He could rattle off the batting lineups from the Big Red Machine in nothing flat. He adored University of North Carolina basketball long before Michael Jordan arrived, never abandoned his loyalty to the Toronto Maple Leafs despite living in a Sabres’ town, never apologized for his obsession with professional wrestling even when people wondered if he had gone over the edge.
Western New York had largely ignored lacrosse until he took over coverage of the Buffalo Bandits. The National Lacrosse League was barely on the radar locally, but he became its greatest ambassador. The sport exploded in our region, and he was named to the NLL Hall of Fame. It was hardly a coincidence.
If only the Hall committee knew he was most uncomfortable when receiving accolades and wearing a tie. Or if they knew how many practical jokes he pulled, the pizzas ordered in somebody else’s name, the prank phone calls to nervous interns, the itching powder in places that, well, weren’t necessary.
His wit was sharp until the end. He knew assistance was required to keep breathing, that the dream had likely ended, that he could no longer love the games as he once did. That reality marked his exact time of death, no matter what the records show. It was a hefty price for one misstep in life.
Ox died at 51, but obviously heaven didn’t do what he did best: examine the numbers. His personality and his passion would reveal a typo, the digits transposed, that he was 51 going on 15.
Somewhere in heaven, he’s shaking his head. And he’s laughing.
