When the Bradley bunch gathers - brothers Bob, Scott and Jeff - the wives are on their own.
``They can talk about movies and other things and they can let us go off into our own little room or whatever and talk sports all we want,'' Scott Bradley said. ``They can socialize and have some fun talking about other things.''
Now with the World Cup approaching, the Bradleys have become among the most prominent American sports families. And when the guys are together, it's a pretty safe bet soccer is the subject.
Bob, the oldest of the three brothers, is head coach of the U.S. soccer team and getting ready to lead his players to South Africa. They've been training at Princeton, where he coached the Tigers from 1984-95.
Scott, the one in the middle, just finished his 13th season as coach of Princeton's baseball team after a nine-year career in the major leagues. Jeff, the youngest, is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine who covers lots of baseball and soccer, and will be reporting on all things not U.S. in South Africa.
And don't overlook Bob's son, Michael, a fiery 22-year-old midfielder on the U.S. World Cup team and a regular starter for Borussia Moenchengladbach in the Bundesliga.
They are a cross-sport version of baseball's Molinas and hockey's Sutters, a family that seems destined to have a TV series created about it.
Listening to their stories, it all began with their parents, Gerald and Mary.
``My dad was a two-sport athlete in college at Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey,'' Jeff Bradley recalls. ``He's in their athletic hall of fame. He played football, was a two-way end, and he played baseball.''
The brothers say their dad played minor league baseball for a brief period and became a youth coach in their town. Mary also was athletic. But in that age, there wasn't much of an opportunity.
``My mom would have been an amazing athlete had she grown up in an era where women were encouraged to play sports,'' Jeff went on. ``She was the typical baton twirler in the band. But if you talk to my uncle, he said that she was quite a good baseball player in the backyard. And then about the age of 42 I think she took up tennis when tennis got to be big in the '70s, and I can tell you that she's got a room full of crystal from all the tennis and the platform tennis championships she's won in the last 36 years.''
Scott is the best known of the brothers. A top high school quarterback and basketball player, he was selected by the Yankees in the third round of the 1981 amateur draft and played for New York, the Chicago White Sox, Seattle and Cincinnati from 1984-92, primarily as a catcher.
Gerald played an important role in Scott's career.
``He not only watched him, he was probably his best hitting instructor all though his major league career,'' Jeff said.
``There wasn't really satellite dishes or anything. We flew out to Seattle one time when he was in a slump so that my dad could watch him hit and, sure enough, after watching him take like one round of batting practice, he called him over made a suggestion. That night Scott had his only two-home run game as a big leaguer.''
Location played a big role in the Bradley brothers' love of sport. The family made a short move when the boys were young, and the new house was right across the street from school - and its large playing field.
Football, baseball, basketball - if there was a sport, the Bradleys were playing it. They even got into ice hockey at one point.
After playing pee wee football, Bob started to gravitate toward soccer when he went to West Essex High School in North Caldwell, N.J., where he was a 1976 graduate. Scott followed two years later and then Jeff in 1982. Bob was the only one of the trio to play four years of varsity baseball and was a teammate of Scott's for two seasons. He credits the soccer coach, Ralph Dougan, and an assistant, Tony Benevento, with cultivating his interest in the sport that became his career.
Back then, soccer wasn't widely seen on U.S. television. Once he got the soccer bug, Bob went to New York City to see World Cup games on closed circuit at Madison Square Garden. Back home, he'd watch top players on a Super 8 projector.
``I had found a way to get highlight films from the German league and from the 1970 World Cup,'' he said. ``This was when you got your first glimpse at guys like Pele and Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Mueller. This is where it was in those days.''
Bob went to Princeton and led the Tigers in scoring as a senior in 1979. Back then, there wasn't much of an opportunity for American players to become pros.
``I can vividly remember his last game when they lost,'' Scott said. ``I'm like, 'Holy smokes, what do we do? What does he do now?'''
Bob found a way. After graduation, he entered a Procter & Gamble training program, then jumped at the chance to become Ohio University's soccer coach in 1981.
``We shared a room our whole lives and I can just remember him telling me how miserable it was,'' Scott said. ``A job that a lot of people would really, really like to have, with a great corporation, a great company, a great sort of plan with what you're doing - and miserable.
``And at that point, I can remember he started looking, and when he first went and had the opportunity to go to Ohio University, to take part in their sports administration program, I knew at that point that we would end up all in sports.''
Bob became Bruce Arena's assistant at Virginia in 1983, beginning the most important association of his professional life. Then he coached Princeton for a dozen seasons. His son Michael was around all the time.
``I have a lot of memories of being out on the fields here, watching practice, chasing after balls, sticking around at the end for a little 2 v. 2 or 3 v. 3 game,'' Michael recalled after training this week.
Bob moved on to became Arena's assistant at D.C. United (1996-97) and the 1996 U.S. Olympic team. Head coaching jobs followed with the Chicago Fire (1998-02), New York/New Jersey MetroStars (2003-05) and Chivas USA (2006) before he succeeded Arena as coach of the U.S. national team in December 2006 when Juergen Klinsmann withdrew from consideration.
Michael Bradley, who played for his father with the MetroStars, worked out with the national team as an extra player ahead of the 2006 World Cup, making his international debut that May 26 against Venezuela. He has an intense side to him, last summer earning a red card for a lunging tackle against Spain that caused him to miss the Confederations Cup final against Brazil.
``He's a much better player than I ever was,'' Bob Bradley said. ``Sometimes at very young ages you see things and you say - my wife still, we have a little thing, if something happens, she'll just go like: 'Your boy. Your girl.'''
Michael has no intention of changing.
``I am who I am as a player, and part of that is being aggressive and bringing an edge to the center of the field,'' he said. ``The second that goes away, then I'm giving something away on the field.''
A father-son dynamic at the World Cup is not unique. Cesare Maldini was coach of Italy at the 1998 tournament in France, where Paolo Maldini was the captain.
Bob and Michael are careful not to act like a father and a son around the team.
``It's the credibility within the group of how we do things,'' Bob Bradley said. ``He understands as well as anybody how you earn respect in the group and that part of it. So when we're at work, there's nothing more than that. That comes first.''
All the brothers watch their nieces and nephews play sports, in addition to their own children. Bob Bradley and wife Lindsay also have two daughters, while Scott has three children and Jeff two.
Gerald Bradley, according to Scott and Jeff, manages to find Michael's games from Germany on various websites. While following Scott's career was easy - the family used to attend his games in New York and Baltimore - soccer has been an acquired taste.
``The very famous story of my dad is this,'' Bob Bradley said. ``In New Jersey high school soccer at that time, you played four quarters. That has been changed. And because when we were little, we also had a chance to play hockey, and hockey has three periods.
``The very first game I played in as a freshman on the high school team, I came home and I said, 'That was a good win.' He said, 'What do you mean, win? You tied.' And I said, 'No, we scored a goal at the end.' So he left after the third quarter because he thought it was like hockey,'' Bob Bradley said. ``Now, he's watched a lot of soccer so he can actually tell me a lot about what's going on. He learned fast.''
