You made it pretty clear, my whole life, that you didn’t have many happy memories from when you grew up out in California the way you did as a foster child, going from one family to another. And I respected that, even though I told you one time that your history was a part of mine. I remember what you said when I did: “I want you to know me for who I am. Not who I was.”

I am stubborn, though. And I’ve had some time on my hands lately. I know when I’ve asked about college basketball, you just told me you’d played for a college that wasn’t even a college anymore, and even there you hadn’t played for long. So I decided to do a little investigating, and see if I could answer some of the questions before… well, while I could still ask them.

(Sorry, that didn’t sound like my good attitude. Maybe this is just one of those days.)

And then one day I was in Mom’s old study. There was this photograph of the two of you, when you were young, and I wanted to have it framed and give it to you for Father’s Day. I couldn’t find it. But what I did find, in a shoebox in her closet, was a picture of you and another guy in a Bisons jersey, and a date on the back from 1961 that was about the right time for you to be in college. The guys were called “Joe” and “Tommy.”

And me, with too much time on his hands now, decided to do a little investigating, thinking I might surprise you with what I found out.

I didn’t know that I’d surprise myself instead.

So I know, Dad.

So I know about the Ocean State Bisons. I know about the scandal. I know about Joe Samuels and Tommy Angelo and what you guys did, and why you never wanted to talk about your own basketball career, or about college, or about the life you had in California before you and Mom moved East.

Even as I’m writing this, writing the letter I might never send, full of questions I still don’t know if I’ll ever ask you to your face about how you came to be Sam Winston, I do realize you were right about something:

Whatever you did and why you did it, I still love you for who you are.

It doesn’t mean I understand why you and your teammates did what you did. It really is like you were another person. But it could never change the dad you’ve been to me, the husband you were to Mom, any of that. Maybe I would have felt this way if I’d found out this stuff when I was a boy. But I didn’t. I’m a man now, still trying to be the man you always wanted me to be.

I’m not sure why I even kept that picture. Maybe I should have left it in the box. I’m not positive why I’m writing this all down. But you know me: You’ve always told me I was as full of questions as I was full of beans.