TAMPA, Fla. _ A disagreement was brewing between the boys, and as usual, Gordy Gronkowski was right in the middle of it.
Back in the day, to settle such a dispute would require clearing the living room of furniture.
Gordy would put his combatant sons in separate corners, hand them each a couch pillow, and let them charge at each other until the matter was settled.
This time, the conflict arose during a television interview. Four of the brothers and their father were asked whether Rob, who had walked away from the NFL after nine seasons and countless surgeries with the Patriots, should end his retirement.
"We all raised our hands and said, 'No, we would rather he not go back,' " Gordy said. "He shocked us all, because we thought it would never happen.
"The bottom line, Rob is back in my opinion because of Tom Brady. I mean, Tom called him, and Tom got in his ear, and I'm sure Rob probably didn't go out the way he wanted to."
Brady pushed hard for a return to football for Rob, who sat out the 2018 season. He pushed even harder for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to trade for the rights to the future Hall of Fame tight end and a deal was completed in April.
The Gronkowski clan should have seen this coming. Rob was the brother who always kept returning for more.
No matter how much punishment he would endure in the game of Zoom Zoom their dad invented to resolve conflicts _ "My rule was no hitting in the face and no hitting in the midsection" _ Rob never knew when to quit.
"It's funny, because Rob, they just beat the hell out of that kid because he was such a wise guy all the time," Gordy said of his second-youngest son. "They would nail him, doing those Charlie horses and things but when they were through, he would go right back after them. It was non-stop. He had no fears. The kid had no fears growing up. I still think he's like that."
To understand what it means to grow up Gronk, you must be introduced to the patriarch of football's larger-than-life family.
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