Missin’ Cousins

By Dave Hannigan

On the first day of the Detroit Lions’ training camp last month, the club’s proprietor, William Clay Ford, paid a timely visit. The CEO of the automobile company founded by his grandfather Henry, gave a rousing, motivational speech to a squad that won just two of 16 last season. After the rest of the players returned to work, Ford then had a private chat with Joey Harrington, the rookie quarterback whom the Lions recently signed to a six-year contract worth $36.5 million. When reporters later inquired about the subject of the conversation, Harrington replied deadpan, “We were just talking about Padraig.”

As the descendant of a Corkman himself, Ford was well aware that the quarterback selected No. 3 overall in last April’s NFL draft and the golfer currently ranked No. 8 in the world are second cousins. They grew up thousands of miles apart — Padraig in Dublin, Joey in Portland, Ore. — but prowess at their chosen sports has brought them into the limelight simultaneously. Both are the children of outstanding athletes. Paddy Harrington played in two All-Ireland football finals for his native Cork, while John Harrington preceded his 24-year-old son as a highly rated quarterback with the University of Oregon Ducks in the late 1960s.

Although the two have yet to formally meet, it hasn’t been for the want of trying. After a year of written contact between John Harrington and Padraig’s grandmother in Castletownbere, Joey turned up to support his cousin on the Saturday afternoon of the Masters in Augusta last April. With the Dubliner figuring among the leaders for much of the third round, things were going well until he double-bogeyed the 18th. Fresh out of five years spent in the high-intensity, overwrought world of college football, Joey decided no professional sportsman would want to meet up with a relative for the first time immediately after damaging his hopes of landing that first elusive major.

“My wife, Caroline, was laughing when she told me that he was waiting for me, but when I made double-bogey, everybody split,” Padraig Harrington said later. “I would have loved to meet him. But I did see him from a distance. He’s a big lad, isn’t he? And he looks like a Harrington alright. We will meet, I might even try to get to one of their games this year.”

There is a physical resemblance between the two, although Joey is four inches taller at an imposing 6-foot-5. New Yorkers may even remember his face from this time last year when some Oregon alumni spent $250,000 putting his image on an 80-by-100 foot billboard near Madison Square Garden. They wanted to get him national exposure in the hope of amplifying his chances of winning the coveted Heisman Trophy. Instead, they earned him dollops of criticism from people who saw this excessive boosterism as indicative of everything wrong with the NCAA scene. Despite subsequently leading his alma mater to victory over Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl, and to second place in the overall college rankings, he eventually trailed in fourth in the Heisman voting.

An exceptional jazz pianist who enjoyed the vastly different nicknames of “General” and “Princess” in college, Joey has listed walking down the 18th fairway at Augusta, nursing a one-stroke lead over Tiger Woods, as one of his sporting dreams. He counts Casey Martin, the physically disabled pro golfer who took the PGA Tour to the Supreme Court for the right to ride a cart while competing in events, among his close friends, so all evidence suggests this was his fantasy long before he tried to link up with Padraig. On the other hand, three top 10 finishes in four of this year’s major tournaments indicate that his 30-year-old cousin has a very real chance of being in just that position alongside Woods sooner rather than later. After snagging the unofficial title of world’s most improved player over the last 18 months, Harrington will be expected to bulwark Europe’s Ryder Cup team at The Belfry on the last weekend in September.

By then, the immediate future for the other Harrington should be a lot clearer. Even with the lucrative signing-on deal, Joey is currently battling for the starter’s job against last year’s incumbent, Mike McMahon. While it is normal for rookie quarterbacks to be given time to learn their trade in the pros, Harrington arrived in Detroit with such a vaunted reputation that he is expected to be the No. 1 guy before the NFL season gets very old. His genes certainly point to him succeeding in the task because his younger brother Michael is another highly touted quarterback prospect with the University of Idaho.

“I guess looking back, Joey was terribly competitive at a young age,” said John Harrington in a recent interview. “He’s always seemed to have that intangible. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but he seems to play better when the game is on the line.”

Which is exactly the kind of thing people say about Padraig.