Sielski: St. Joe's announcer Matt Martucci and father share basketball journey

His body curled like a question mark, his left arm bent and pressed against his rib cage to still the tremors in his hand, Bill Martucci trotted across the expansive driveway that years ago he and his three sons had converted into a basketball court.

His youngest son, Matt, the radio play-by-play voice of the St. Joseph's University men's basketball team, had parked his blue 2014 Nissan Pathfinder there, and when Bill reached the front passenger-side door, he opened it and, haltingly but without assistance, slid himself into the seat. Matt is happy to help him. Matt wants to help him. But Matt winces whenever Bill, who is 71 and was diagnosed more than four years ago with Parkinson's disease, carries out a once-simple task that now challenges him. When Bill isn't looking, Matt cocks his head and scrunches his face, as if he is hearing awful news for the first time, as he remembers his father as a younger, healthier man.

Those memories and the illness tarnishing them were the inspiration for what has become a tradition for them: Once every St. Joe's season, Bill accompanies Matt on a road trip, bunking in his hotel room, joining him at the team's pregame film sessions, sitting next to him during the game and donning headphones to listen to the broadcast. It provides them an opportunity, amid Matt's hectic broadcasting schedule, to spend time together.

"I love it," Bill said.

For 800 miles, they drove along highways and two-lane roads through a region of the country that, under a drab gray sky at this time of year, resembles a puddle of still-melting parking-lot snow. Their meals and accommodations were modest: pizza near Scranton, a free continental breakfast at a Fairfield Inn, the excruciating serendipity of catching a late dinner at the only Applebee's in Olean . . . and walking in on Karaoke Night. But the point of the trip wasn't really what they did, what they ate, or where they went. It never is.

"I remember something a friend of mine once said when graduating college," said Matt, who turns 33 in March, "about wanting to take everyone in his inner circle and surround himself with them wherever he went because of the way they motivated him and because of the person he was when he was around them. I often think of that. We only get a few really meaningful friendships in life and our closest family members. . . .

"I tell a lot of people about him mostly because I'm appreciative he's still here. When you have too much time to think, you focus on what you don't have, not what you do."

Ten pills a day are enough, usually, to quell Bill's left hand and right leg. Their shaking is the most obvious symptom of his Parkinson's, which is in a relatively early stage, but the disease already has exacted other costs.

Two years ago, doctors inserted a transcranial magnetic stimulator near his brain to keep his nerve cells alive and firing, to ward off depression; he can pull down his shirt collar to reveal the device's cord under his skin. He can be forgetful. He walks slowly and tires quickly. Polyps have formed on his vocal cords, forcing him to speak in a froggy rasp. He has undergone three operations to remove the growths, but the procedures haven't restored his voice's strength and clarity. In the front of the Pathfinder, Matt struggled to hear him over the low hum of the car's rolling wheels. From the backseat, it was all but impossible. Whenever he calls Bill, and he does almost daily, Matt keeps his eyes closed as he listens to him speak.

"To make sure I'm fully paying attention," he said.

Bill might live with Parkinson's for years yet, but it's the memory of who Bill used to be that wounds Matt's soul most - "an iron man," Matt said, who was a general practitioner for more than 40 years in Brodheadsville, the rare town doctor who drove a pickup truck to the office. Who has been married to his wife, Ginny, for 44 years. Who dotes on his five grandchildren. Who taught his sons about hard work by turning the family's 29 acres of property into a Christmas tree farm, by teaching them to cut and clear the trees and to run like hell when they came across a hornet's nest hidden in the branches. Who drove Matt - a three-sport athlete at since-closed Pius X High School - down to Chapel Hill, N.C., every summer for basketball camp at the University of North Carolina, the two continuing to volunteer as counselors for years thereafter. Who toted his toolbox up to Syracuse University to stabilize the staircase in the off-campus house that Matt rented as an undergrad there, because Bill is a worrier when it comes to his children and their safety. Who needed Matt, on each of the trip's three nights, to bend down, pick up Bill's legs and feet, and set them in the bed.

"It [ticks] me off," Bill said. "But like I used to tell them, play the cards you're dealt."

They awoke Tuesday morning in Olean to a foreboding development for Matt: He had a cold and was losing his voice. He popped lozenges into his mouth and sipped hot tea and spritzed his throat with Chloraseptic. Nothing helped.

This might seem minor. For Matt, it wasn't. For more than 10 years, he has been chasing his dream of breaking into the elite echelon of broadcasting. Such a career would seem pure fun for someone who loves sports, and it often is, but it isn't easy or glamorous, either. St. Joe's pays him a 10-month stipend, and the rest is contract work where he can get it: WIP, Sirius, Campus Insiders, beIN, One World Sports, the Patriot League Network, the Big East Digital Network, Pennsylvania Cable Network, Lax Sports Network.

He has called Russian hockey and Japanese baseball from a studio monitor in Stamford, Conn., scouring the internet for whatever he could learn about the teams to keep himself from sounding ignorant, just in case someone was watching and listening. Throughout the late fall and winter, he might call three or four basketball games in a week, saying goodbye to his wife, Stephanie, then ricocheting around the East Coast before returning home days later.

He has his MBA, and he wonders sometimes whether it's better for him just to fall back on that, to find another career, to give up the dream. But at least he would make that decision on his terms, and he's not ready to give up yet, and besides, a sore throat is different. It's circumstance jeopardizing the dream, compromising the perfection that Matt demands from himself, threatening to ruin the trip with his father.

At St. Bonaventure, during the 200-yard walk from Matt's car to the Reilly Center, Bill stopped to rest, then stopped again, then stopped again.

"We'll go as slow as you need, Dad," Matt told him.

Finally inside the arena, Matt carried a large case, loaded with the equipment he needed for his broadcast, upstairs into the gym. Bill found a restroom, emerging after a few minutes still short of breath.

"This is a haul," he whispered.

Matt's voice survived the game, a 67-63 St. Joe's loss. "I thought you sounded fine," Bill said, though Matt was displeased. Too scratchy. Too much like a 12-year-old boy.

"How ironic is it," he said as he repacked the equipment after the game, "that I have trouble understanding him because of his polyps, and now this happens?"

The next day, they drove 220 miles to Colgate. Near Port Byron, N.Y., Matt left a voice-mail message for Ginny.

"Hey, Mom . . . Saw that you had called . . . We're making good time . . . The road is dry . . . Dad would want me to tell you that."

Later, as they headed south on State Route 46, a tight two-lane stretch, wet drops began pelting the windshield. With his right hand, Bill white-knuckled the grab handle above his head.

"What's the temp outside?" he asked.

"Thirty six," Matt said. "It's just rain. You'd have picked it up on your freezing-rain radar, right? You and Mom?"

Bill gripped the handle. You know how fathers are. They never stop worrying about their sons, even while their sons are worrying about them.

Matt's voice also withstood Wednesday night's game, a 76-62 Lehigh victory, and when he and Bill arrived home early Thursday afternoon and unloaded the Pathfinder, he stopped in the driveway to watch Bill shuffle into the house.

"The hardest part is seeing him not be able to do the things that he could do a couple of years ago," he said. "That's when I get sad."

Ginny had lunch waiting for them: corned beef, Italian hoagie fixings, a nice spread. The trip is a benefit to her, a respite from providing the constant attention that Bill once didn't require.

"He had so much purpose when he was a doctor," she said. It's why Matt brings him along: Get him out of the house. Get him moving. Get him talking about sports or family. Get him laughing over the Applebee's waitress who teased them that they weren't allowed to leave the restaurant until they sang, too. Keep him engaged. Keep him happy. Keep him and them thinking about anything other than . . .

Outside, Matt gave Bill a hug, tears flooding his face. You'd have thought less of him if they hadn't.

"It's always hard to leave," he said.

They may take another trip this summer - another long ride down to Chapel Hill, perhaps, or to Cooperstown to tour the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. But there will be smaller moments between now and then, and they will be meaningful, because Bill Martucci is still here, and because Matt Martucci has made a vow to himself to appreciate every second that he has him.

And so someday soon, probably today, a noble and devoted son will call a number he has known by heart all his life, and he will say, Hey, Dad, into the phone. And then he will close his eyes.

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski