David Diehl may earn a living in New York, but he won't soon forget his roots. He wears them Under his sleeve.
"This is the Croatian shield, a Gerb," Diehl said Thursday while pulling up the sleeves of his New York Giants football jersey, revealing a tattoo on his left bicep.
"And this is a tattoo of Chief Illiniwek. That was my first tattoo ever," Diehl said while rolling up his right sleeve. "I stay true to my roots."
They're roots that started in a small town in Croatia and moved to 55th & Francisco where his father Jerry Diehl worked first as a milkman then as a beer vendor.
"At the old Comiskey Park, so I remember Ribby & Rhubarb all that stuff as a kid and going to games," he recalled with a smile as big as the Dan Ryan.
"Throughout all the years I saw my dad weather the long hours, came home late, he never complained."
Maybe that's why nine years into the NFL, despite making his second trip to the Super Bowl, he still goes to work each day like his first.
"The lessons that he taught me were when someone pays you to do something and somebody hires you to do a job, you go to work," he said.
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He's south side Chicago through and through, except for one thing.
"I named my daughter Addison," he said, laughing about the north side street housing the Cubs. "But! I'm a south sider true to heart!"
