My homework was pushed aside once my grandfather entered my room.

He’d go to the bookshelf, pick up “The Yankees: An Illustrated History” and revive his 70-plus years of baseball memories as he flipped through the pages. He had witnessed all the New York Yankees legends I could only dream of being in the same ballpark as.

An 80-year-old man reminiscing about old times, and his 9-year-old grandson longing like hell to be a part of them.

Storytelling in its purest form.

We’re all storytellers in some capacity. Some better than others, naturally, but we all do it. Some of us, like me and my colleagues at The Daily Orange, desire to make a living out of it. And whether I’m ready for it or not, this unforgettable chapter of my story is over in about 500 words.

The seeds of this dream of mine were planted in the mornings I’d soak in Newsday’s sports section, forcing my mom to cut me off because the bus was coming in five minutes and I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet. I’d also rack up extra credit in gym class by cutting sports photos out of the paper and thumbtacking them to a corkboard before homeroom.

My sports writing truly started, I suppose, in the form of the Post-it notes I used to leave for my dad to read in the morning. He missed plenty of thrilling Yankees comeback victories because he’d gone to bed.

Why let the newspaper or someone at work tell him about it first?

Fast forward to my tenure at The Daily Orange, where one of the first things I learned was the purpose that anecdotes served in a story. From there I grew an appreciation for telling those stories: the influence of the late Robert “Apache” Paschall on the Syracuse women’s basketball program; Nicky Galasso making his late mother proud on the lacrosse field; Why Marc Kuzio goes all-out in Orange apparel for his niece’s SU field hockey games.

Stories are valuable — probably to an underrated extent. They’re how memories of nights are pieced back together when drinks blur them up. They define friendships. They’re how I know Grandpa D’Abbraccio, even though he’s been gone for 20 years.

I cherish the chance journalism gives me to bring out what people have been through, what inspires them and what makes them who they are.

This year, I was fortunate enough to have that chance on the highest level for The D.O. And in the process of covering the football and men’s basketball teams and rising to this esteemed position of sports editor, I was surrounded by people who helped make this 420-byline journey memorable and the furthest thing from “work” I could’ve ever imagined.

We kicked back some Budweisers in a grass parking lot in Clemson before an incredible Smokin’ Pig dinner. My seat at Cameron Indoor Stadium was close enough to smell the players. Flanked by beat partners Jesse Dougherty and Jacob Klinger, we covered Jim Boeheim during one of his most eventful seasons ever — classic postgame rants and all.

I never want to see the endless asphalt of Interstate-81 again and I can do without the Carrier Dome’s subpar Italian food.

But sh*t, that was fun.

And now, the end is near. And so I face the final curtain.

We all know what the future of the journalism industry looks like. Who knows where I’ll end up or whose stories I’ll be striving to tell.

But if one day my grandson wants to hear some stories, I think I’ll have some pretty good ones to share.

And I’ll make sure he gets his homework done, too.

Phil D’Abbraccio is the sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear. He can be reached at phildabbraccio@gmail.com or on Twitter at @PhilDAbb.

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Published on April 27, 2015 at 10:14 pm