Rob Gronkowski was everything you wanted him to be.
This is true for you, the fans, who gobbled up every quirky moment of Gronk’s nine-season career, which ended Sunday upon his retirement announcement. He was the fun-loving, happy-go-lucky, party-boy, football-behemoth spectacle you adored on the field and envied off it during his Hall of Fame run with the Patriots.
Advertisement
That personality was genuine and never for the cameras; as you know, some personalities in the sports and entertainment industries are for the cameras.
He was also about community to the core. That’s what I always respected more than anything about Rob Gronkowski as I covered the duration of his career. I’ve covered the Patriots since 2009, and Gronk will be the first Gold Jacket I covered from start to finish. And rather than recycling the same stats that everyone on the planet can use to justify his future presence in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, I’d prefer to give you a firsthand look of what it was like to cover the man whose personality was borderline mythical and whose on-field performance was legendary.
For example, as the Patriots were forging through their 2018 season and ultimately trekking toward their Super Bowl LIII victory against the Rams, I pushed hard to write a feature about the impact Gronk has had in New England and even across the country. I wanted to tell the story through the voices of the families whose lives were brightened by a personal experience with Gronkowski, as he frequently dropped in to local hospitals to meet with kids, or showed up at a house or a school or seemingly anywhere they shined the Gronk signal into the sky. It actually took a couple of months to organize the whole story, but the effort was sparked by the notion that each of Gronk’s appearances was genuine.
I’ll never forget: During the 2014 offseason, after Gronk recovered from a torn ACL to the point where he could at least walk around comfortably, he strolled into the Patriots’ community affairs office and asked if he could help at any upcoming events. Even earlier, before the 2013 season was over and Gronk had even graduated from a wheelchair, he showed up unannounced to Boston Children’s Hospital in an elf costume to sing Christmas carols, visit rooms and brighten spirits.
He handed out turkeys, dressed up like a Christmas tree, played football on the Gillette Stadium game field with Make-A-Wish recipients, called high schools in mourning over tragedy, and on and on. He once attended an event at a local family’s house, and they wondered if he’d ever leave because he was having as much fun as all the kids.
Advertisement
I once asked Gronkowski how a certain child with an illness was doing. “In (State A)?” he asked. “No, (State B),” I replied. He’s impacted so many lives off the field that it can be difficult for him to keep them all organized on the fly. Another time, I relayed a message of gratitude from a family whom he’d helped, and he got choked up, noting that’s the greatest reward for him, hearing long after the fact how he could use his platform to help others in need.
Gronk was everything you wanted him to be in the locker room, too. The “69” jokes weren’t an act, nor were any of the other shenanigans. That’s why, to me as a reporter, his schtick was always funny. There have been athletes over the years who sound funny or bust out the occasional one-liner, but you knew their personality well enough to understand that it wasn’t authentic. When Gronk cracked a joke, he usually laughed harder than anyone in the room.
He finished the 2017 regular-season finale against the Jets without a single target, causing him to fall short of his final $2 million in stat-based incentives. Afterward, I asked if he knew how many catches he had that season: “Sixty-nine!” he beamed. Two million is enough to sting anyone, but it wasn’t enough for Gronk to miss that type of opportunity.
His teammates got a kick out of it all. He’ll probably always be remembered for kicking Colts safety Sergio Brown “out the club” during a 2014 regular-season victory, but that moment actually outshined another point the rest of the Patriots thought was just as funny. After a 26-yard touchdown, Gronk retreated to the sideline looking like the Tasmanian devil, eyes bulging, breath at a premium and shouting in a high-pitched voice to anyone who’d listen.
“How did I do that?”
“Did you guys just see what I did?”
“Did it look cool?”
Advertisement
Before Super Bowl XLIX against the Seahawks, Gronk was asked why he parties so hard, and he replied without hesitation, “Because I’m a baller.” His teammates wore out that line the rest of the week. There were plenty of instances like that, including a rare earthquake that hit New England one day and spawned the joke throughout Gillette Stadium that Gronk must have been throwing weights around again.
A few years ago, Tom Brady summoned Gronk for an important mission. Brady had become a regular at the Kentucky Derby, and the size of his entourage wasn’t going unnoticed. Shortly before this particular Derby, Brady heard Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was assembling an even bigger crew, so Brady scrambled because he refused to be outdone and amassed a bigger, louder, more popular party. Problem was, in the hours before Brady’s private plane was ready to leave, the quarterback heard Gronk was going to bail. He called Gronk a half dozen times at the crack of dawn until the tight end answered. Gronk had a “come to Jesus” moment and made the trip at Brady’s beckoning.
Gronkowski didn’t always have a love affair with the media, though. While he became a cult hero while partying onstage during the 2010 draft and a superstar during his 18-touchdown season in 2011, he briefly struggled to grasp the other side of the star factor during the 2012 offseason. Gronk was recovering from ankle surgery after Super Bowl XLVI, and reporters followed him to every offseason event, from a puck drop at an AHL game in Western Massachusetts to a fundraiser at a financial building in Boston. The questions about his ankle persisted, and his agitation over the topic grew with each inquiry. As we walked out of one event, I told him he had the most popular ankle in America, so the questions were going to follow accordingly. The questions weren’t personal or critical by nature — just a means to an update for a region and a league that was starved for information about a guy who was recently tabbed as the most talented to ever play his position. He got it.
The injuries were always part of Gronk’s story. It looked like he could have broken his neck after a tumbling touchdown against the Chiefs on Monday Night Football in 2011, but he said he’d never change that patented playing style in an effort to avoid the violence that was more his asset than his enemy.
That was Gronk — the realest guy by every measure. He’d spike footballs and beer cans. He’d throw a one-man dance party to a stadium soundtrack or the beat in his own head. He’d break down opponents’ defensive schemes in one breath and crack a 69 joke the next. The more you can do, as Bill Belichick would say.
There will never be another Gronk — forever inimitable, immortalized by his uniqueness.
(Top Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
