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Richie Zisk and Johnny Guck in der Luft

When I was six, I received my very first baseball glove. It was a gift-wrapped under the tree in our three-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., and when I opened it, I did not know what the hell it was. It had nothing to do with Batman, the “Emergency” TV show, nor Star Wars, so I was looking at a mass of leather.

I remember thinking, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

But the details of that first glove – the nuance – explain a lot with the passage of more than four decades.

Before that brown, Wilson glove went everywhere with me, I tried to learn all I could about the words branded into the leather. What was “Grip-Tite Pocket?” Was it more than marketing schtick? Maybe it was the official, insider’s way of saying, “If you squeeze it when the ball arrives, you will catch it.”

Nevertheless, the most interesting part about the glove was not the gimmicks, the color, the size, or the brand. It was the signature of someone named, “Richie Zisk.”

Why would the Wilson company sell baseball gloves to kids with Richie Zisk’s autograph on the pocket? It sounds like a very good question these days because Richie Zisk’s name is forgotten to time, reduced to nothing more than an entry on Baseball-Reference.com. Even to kids that grew up in the 1970s and were avid baseball fans, the name Richie Zisk probably elicits the response, “Richie Who?” But a little bit of research shows exactly who Richie Zisk was. He was an above-average baseball player, who went to a few All-Star games, was the replacement for one of the most famous players ever, and was born just a generation too early to earn the generational wealth that today’s ballplayers earn.

So just who was Richie Zisk?

A kid from Northern New Jersey who went to college at Seton Hall and became an MVP candidate for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1974 when he batted .313 and had 100 RBIs. Three years later, when kids like me were getting baseball gloves for Christmas, Zisk belted 30 homers with 101 RBIs and a .290 average for a Chicago White Sox team known as the Southside Hitmen.

However, Zisk was better known as the Pirates’ replacement in right field for Roberto Clemente after his death on New Year’s Eve of 1972.

Apparently, Richie Zisk was nearby when Roberto’s plane infamously went down. For years I tried to search for proof that he may have received a call at a New Year’s Eve party with his teammates but could not find the proof. Later, I conjured up a story that Richie Zisk actually witnessed the plane crash while sitting poolside at a resort in Puerto Rico. This was feasible since he played winter ball during the 1972-73 season for San Juan where he was joined by Pirates’ teammates Bruce Kison, Bob Johnson, Milt May, and Rennie Stennett. The story I came up with had Zisk and his teammates sitting by a pool that overlooked the ocean near the airport in Isla Verde, Carolina. According to the maps of the time, there was a row of hotels and resorts dotting the coast just north of the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. Clemente’s plane went down around 9:30 p.m., the DC-7 cargo plane loaded down with medicine and food for the people of Nicaragua after a massive earthquake just a week prior.

Maybe Zisk and his teammates saw it go down into the shark-infested Atlantic Ocean. He most likely was nearby when the plane crashed.

Perhaps dreaming of things is something Zisk and I have in common. That is, aside from our choice in baseball gloves. My mom tells a story about the time we went to look at the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. where we were living at the time. Her friend from Germany and her daughters came along, too, but they didn’t have anything to do with baseball, Star Wars, or the Emergency TV show, so my mind wandered. As the story is told, I was so far off in my dreamland that I walked into the Tidal Basin and got soaked. From that point on, my mom’s German friend and her daughters called me, Hans Guck in der Luft, which was the translated title of an English children’s poem by Heinrich Hoffmann called, Johnny Head-in-the-Air.

As he trudged along to school,

It was always Johnny's rule

To be looking at the sky

And the clouds that floated by;

But what just before him lay,

In his way,

Johnny never thought about;

So that every one cried out

"Look at little Johnny there,

Little Johnny Head-In-Air!"

In Pittsburgh, Richie-Head-in-the-Air wasn’t having much success winning over his manager, Danny Murtaugh. Not to mention trying to fill into the very big shoes Roberto Clemente left behind. 

Things started well. At least for a little bit. Zisk was a 24-year-old rookie in 1973 and batted .324 in 103 games. He appeared in 149 games in 1974 and batted .313 with 17 home runs and 100 RBIs. That was good enough to earn him some votes in the MVP balloting in the National League. Zisk was just playing ball without a care in the world. He didn’t know what he didn’t know, and that was a good thing. Zisk, it seemed, had his head in the clouds.

Ultimately, that is what ended his time with the Pirates.

The reason why the Pirates decided to trade Richie Zisk to the White Sox after the 1976 season was because he was Richie Guck in der Luft. Yes, the Pirates had a crowded outfield with Dave Parker, Al Oliver, and Omar Moreno starting to come into their own. But the reason why the Pirates traded Zisk was that Murtaugh believed him to be, “a lazy dreamer.” 

“He’d stand out in the field and think about a movie he’d seen,” Murtaugh said, unaware that sometimes that’s all anyone can do when they are standing alone in the outfield. Or maybe being a “lazy dreamer” is all anyone wanted to be.

***

I wasn’t allowed to be a lazy dreamer when I first tried out that Wilson baseball glove. After learning what it was supposed to do, my dad took me outside in an attempt to use it properly. The concept was easy -- put the glove comfortably and snug on your left hand. Then, when the ball came your way, guide your gloved hand in an upright fashion toward it. When the ball was inside the glove, squeeze your left hand inside the glove so it cocoons the ball. 

It sounds easy. In fact, it is easy. It even looks easy and sounds easy. What sounds easier than a game of catch?

The thing is, making it look and sound easy takes a lot of hard work, and my dad was determined to get me from ignorant novice to smooth and easy in record time. That meant practice. Lots and lots of practice. And at first, practice was brutal. After taking a gauge of how much natural ability I had the very first time I slipped on that glove (not much, it seemed), I was ordered to stand with my back against a giant oak tree that grew in the center of a grassy courtyard behind the apartment. This was a sink or swim moment, or, in this case, catch or get drilled. With my back against the tree, I stood at alert as the baseball -- as hard as a rock -- flew out of my dad’s hand from 10-to-15 yards away. The drill was simple: learn quickly to catch the ball or go home covered in welts.

There was no lazy dreaming, nor a chance to be Hans Guck in der Luft with my back against the tree. This was serious business and I was determined not to get killed. Moreover, I was determined not to get killed while exhibiting proper catching technique.

And though it was quite traumatic, I caught on quickly. I had a few bruises on my arms and body, and a thumbnail was bent backward with part of it falling into the grass and dirt near where the ball dropped after a muffed catch. But I was on my way. After the horror of that first, serious attempt, catching a baseball with my Richie Zisk glove was all I wanted to do. Plus, that glove went everywhere with me, hanging from my left hand or serving as a pillow when I’d fall asleep on the floor in front of the TV. 

That glove made it through two seasons of little league where I was the shortstop for our team, and thousands of games of ball played in that courtyard, snagging tennis balls, rubber balls as well as baseballs. That glove went with me on trips to visit my grandparents in Pennsylvania and Las Vegas, on vacations to the beach, on picnics, and very likely on walks around the Tidal Basin while gazing at cherry trees with my head in the clouds. 

***

Dreamer or not, the trade worked out well because Zisk became a cog in the middle of the White Sox lineup. But when kids like me were getting Richie Zisk gloves for Christmas, the 1978 season was quickly approaching and players like Zisk and Goose Gossage were the big-time free-agent acquisitions that winter. Goose, of course, signed with the Yankees, won the World Series, and went on to put together a career that landed him in the Hall of Fame. Zisk went to the Texas Rangers where he received a 10-year, $3 million contract with the hope that he would be the difference for a team that won 94 games and came in second place in 1977.

It was a good start in Texas. The Rangers were in first place in late June and hanging around the top of the standings at the All-Star break. Meanwhile, the fans voted for Zisk to be the starting right fielder in the 1978 All-Star Game in San Diego where he batted cleanup and went 1-for-2. It was a pretty good encore for the 2-for-3 showing and two-run double he had off Tom Seaver in the 1977 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. With it, Zisk had shown that he was a solid All-Star who had not quite reached his prime.

Before the 1980s began, Richie Zisk and the Texas Rangers were a stock that was worth buying.

But that was as good as it got.

In 1979, the Rangers were on the way backward. They finished in third place and fell to fourth in 1980. Zisk, meanwhile, did not fall off statistically. But he did not exactly improve, either. In 1978 he was an All-Star with 22 homers, 85 RBIs, and a .262 average. In 1979 he hit 18 homers with 64 RBIs and a .262 average. He remained in that statistical neighborhood in 1980, and the writing was on the wall … it was time for the Rangers to cut bait and start over again. That’s when the Rangers used him as the centerpiece in an 11-player trade with Seattle.

Zisk played three more years in Seattle before his career ended after the 1983 season. The injuries began to mount. What was missing from the statistics on his Baseball-Reference page was the number of knee surgeries Zisk had when he was playing for Texas and Seattle. He had five of them. Then he injured his wrist and that led to another surgery.

By the time he was finished playing after the 1983 season, Zisk still had four years left on that 10-year contract he received from the Rangers. They weren’t putting his autograph on gloves by that point.

But once upon a time they did.

Richie Zisk had a nice career. Was it the type of career where a guy gets his signature pressed onto baseball gloves to be put under the Christmas tree? Apparently so. Maybe not in an age where things like a player’s Q-rating mattered more than his batting average. And no one would ever confuse Richie Zisk for the players in the following years whose names ended up on hundred-dollar baseball gloves. But perhaps that glove was the perfect personification of Zisk’s career – short, a little thin in the pocket, but ready for game action if you don’t have anything better.

If only we all could be described that way.

***

Eventually, I outgrew that Richie Zisk glove and for my third season in little league I got a larger Wilson glove with George Brett’s signature in the pocket. George Brett, of course, was a star and was building his case for the Hall of Fame when I got that glove in late 1979 before the 1980 season. By that time I had learned that breaking in a glove was something of an art, and I was determined to get it just right. That meant the George Brett model was soaked in oil before several balls were placed in the pocket and wrapped up with rubber bands and twine. It also meant the silly dreamer Zisk had been traded for the hard-nosed and intense Brett, who nearly batted .400 in 1980, was voted the MVP and led his Royals to the World Series against the Phillies.

Most of the baseball world spent the 1980 season breathlessly waiting for updates on the local news to find out how many hits Brett had that day as his batting average inched toward .400, or dropped into .390s. Either way, I felt like I had a stake in it because of my glove. George Brett and I were connected, while Richie Zisk had a spot in the back of a closet, only to come out when someone showed up without a glove. Richie Zisk found a spot on the bench until he finally disappeared without even a goodbye. Where did that glove go? Was it misplaced in the move to Lancaster from Washington? Had I given it to a friend to borrow and it was never returned? Had it been thrown out as I grew and graduated to very specific and specialized gloves for the different positions I played in high school and American Legion ball?

Wherever it was, it was gone.

That was until one day when I was surfing around on eBay and plugged in the terms, “Richie Zisk,” “Wilson,” and “baseball glove.” As fate would have it, someone in the suburbs near Detroit was selling the exact glove I got for Christmas way back in 1977. The price was $17, which makes me wonder how much it sold for nearly 45 years ago. No matter the price -- then or now -- I got a bargain. 

Decades later, the glove fits just as I remembered. The pocket was was tight, “Grip-Tite,” as advertised. The fingers fit just as snugly, even a grove for my index finger on the outside of the holes. And when a ball arrived, the leather snapped open and closed easily. It wasn’t as soft as a pricier or newer glove, but, hey, what do you want for 45 years old and less than 20 bucks.

The old glove performed just as expected -- Richie Zisk still could snag them. The problem, it seemed, was the operator. Several throws into testing out the old glove, my right shoulder suddenly felt like someone drove an ice pick through it. The old rotator cuff was worse for the wear. Bursitis, tendonitis … some type of -itis. The glove works, but the arm doesn’t. 

Time is undefeated. If only tendons held up as well as old leather.

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Old man yoga for aging runners

I love reading training plans and logs of what people do to get ready for a race or how they stay fit. That’s partially why I put my running workouts in public so people can figure out any mysteries. Maybe they can borrow something to put it in their own plan? Maybe they can take something I do and make it better?

As mentioned, I like this stuff and I don’t plan on stopping running or training . Not ever. It’s pretty much what keeps me going from day to day, so quit? Nah. Can’t do it.

Some days, though, it gets hard. Ten to 13 miles a day will do that. There are days where it feels like it will be impossible to run a step. Other days, I think it’s time to bail out after a jog to the end of the block. But for some reason I keep going and it gets better. Actually, it becomes fun. Quit? Hell, I don’t want to stop!

Getting to that point takes a lot of work. I’m old and I’ve been pounding out the miles for the last 25 years. It used to be that I could run twice a day, eat a couple cups of rice, get some sleep, and head out to do it all over again the next day. These days, it takes every bit of knowledge I can muster. Diet, sleep, massage with those thera-gun things and Pro-Tec Orbs are in heavy rotation. But the thing I can not skip is the 15-to-20 minutes I spend doing yoga.

Yeah, that’s right, yoga. Runners have been bending and posing for a long time, and though I dabbled with it for the past decade, I never dived in. I am, admittedly, as flexible as a rock. That has always been the case even when doing pre-game and pre-practice stretching for football, basketball, and baseball. I always looked at stretching like using dental floss — a little bit goes a long way.

But after years of threatening to become a yoga practitioner, I’m all in. Admittedly, I am a novice and still as flexible as a rock. However, the practice has cleared my mind, given me something to work on, and, amazingly, increased my flexibility just a little bit. It has become so enjoyable that I’m up to two sessions of a simple yoga routine per day.

I don’t even know the proper names of all the poses, though I have been sure to include poses that work on my balance, back, arms, and core all while stretching my legs.

So, for all those who look to see what other people are doing, here’s my yoga plan that I go through everyday (sometimes twice a day) that seems to work very well for an aging long-distance runner.

Here it is:

1. Plank - 1 minute (I started at 15 seconds and built up, pushing to 2 minutes)

2. Child pose (knees together)

3. Frog pose (knees far apart)

4. Cobra

5. Cobra with legs lifted and arms back

6. Upward facing dog

7. Table

8. Balanced table (left leg up, toes down and right arm extended; switch)

9. Cat poses (I usually don’t do these — I really can’t do them)

10. Table

11. Downward facing dog

12. “Hanging man” and slowly roll up

13. Standing: legs far apart, toes pointed out, and bend, touching the ground

13a. Same but lean and reach toward right knee/ankle; then left ankle

14. Keep legs apart, and lift right arm, leaning left and touch ankle; switch arms

15. 4 Warrior poses - arms outstretched, then one arm pointing forward and another back; bend the front knee; arms up, back legs lift

16. Mountain

17. Tree - both sides

18. Sit down, legs straight, forward reach

19. Butterfly pose (bottoms of feet together)

20. Lie back

21. Bend knees, feet on the floor, knees together, drop knees to right and head looks to left; switch

22. Lift feet up and repeat 21

23. Knee hug

24. Baby pose (lie on back and grab toes)

25. Bridge with arms extended behind head and arms behind back

26. Corpse pose

That’s it. I’ve been doing this routine every day for two months, and mostly outside. Every so often a few visitors join me (socially distanced, of course), and they have fun with it, too. It’s a great way to get the blood flowing in the morning before a run, and it’s a good way to unwind at the end of the day.

So, get on it! Better yet, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or anything else, send them my way. The aim is to keep at it and keep going, so let’s work on it.

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A little update ...

See, not even a week into doing this thing, and I’ve already quit. And worse, I have begun to transition to fully embracing the Oxford comma!

What is so significant about taking on that weird-looking Oxford comma? Well, for one thing it means I have given up on journalism-style writing. At least for the time being, anyway. You see, life is short, and some day you will wake up and, bam!, you will be on the doorstep of turning 50. Crazier than that, you will find yourself in that position in the middle of a worldwide plague, where society is reconfiguring itself after centuries of injustice, and where you notice every single ache and pain while your anxiety works overdrive in thinking it’s the worst possible scenario.

In other words, just another day!

But here’s what’s been shaking over in these parts … after decades of threatening to do it, I’ve been spending hours a day working on a novel. Yes, the written word! Books! There’s a real future in novel writing from what I hear. Why not jump in when it’s just getting hot?

OK, OK, that’s just silly. The fact is as long as there are people living on the earth, they will be creative. Or, at least, try to be. Telling stories, in whatever form, is never going to go away. So, since I’ve already been in a band that put out a self-produced record, a novel seems like the next logical step. Hopefully, with the rate I’m working and diving into the project, I hope to have a first draft finished by the end of the summer.

As far as this little corner of this website goes, it’s kind of been put on hold. Truth be told, I really don’t care that much about sports writing these days. Chalk that up to a been-there-done-that scenario. It just doesn’t seem to be as fun as it once was, and I’m not really interested in rehashing the past for a trip down amnesia lane. There are far more capable people doing that sort of thing and doing it well. Todd Zolecki is one guy who wrote a terrific book (I’m really proud of him – he did it right!), and I also enjoyed the baseball book called, The Wax Pack. That was a lot of fun.

The dilemma is what to do with this thing, and I decided I’d just write about running and adventures and whatever interests me on a specific day. That is if I find the time. The thing with all this writing is that it’s kind of all I want to do these days. I don’t know where it’s going and I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but that’s the fun part. I’ll get there when I get there.

In the meantime, yes, running. I still do that quite a bit and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t found a ton of interesting writing on running out there. Oh, there is some. Indeed, there is. Matthew Futterman wrote a terrific book that I wish never ended. So good.

So, this will take shape. It will get there. The thing is I have short patience for the ordinary and the mundane, so I’m going to do my best to do the opposite of the conventional wisdom. Hey, it’s worked so far!

Anyway, for those coming here looking for something, try out this … I stumbled on these 68 bits of unsolicited advice from a man who just turned 68. I liked it, so I attached the url and cut and pasted it below. It comes from a guy named Kevin Kelly, who it appears is on Twitter at @kevin2kelly. So, a big shout out to Mr. Kelly.

Here are the 68 bits of unsolicited advice:

• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.

• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.

• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.

• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.

• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.

• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.

• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.

• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.

• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.

• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.

• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.

• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.

• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.

• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.

• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.

• Don’t be the best. Be the only.

• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.

• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.

• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.

• Promptness is a sign of respect.

• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.

• Trust me: There is no “them”.

• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.

• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.

• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.

• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.

• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.

• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.

• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.

• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.

• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.

• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.

• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.

• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.

• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.

• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.

• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.

• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.

• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.

• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.

• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.

• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.

• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.

• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.

• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.

•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.

• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.

• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.

• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.

• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.

• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.

• Art is in what you leave out.

• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.

• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.

• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.

• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.

• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.

• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.

• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.

• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.

• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.

• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.

• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.

• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.

• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.

• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.

• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.

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Why the Hall not?

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Why the Hall not?

So I was talking with Kevin Cooney the other day about a whole bunch of things. Kevin, as we all know, is a bit of a talker, and if you don't cut him off quickly, you're in for the night. Think I'm kidding? Try it sometime. If you really want to know why Kevin has his podcast, it's because he likes to listen to himself talk.[1] I kid Kevin because I can. Truth is, I can make fun of Kevin because I like him and he's my friend. Also, his podcast is pretty good. The latest episode with Robert Costa might be the best one yet.

This time I listened to Kevin talk, and somehow we came around to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Kevin is a voter for the Hall of Fame as a 10-year veteran of the Baseball Writers Association of America. I am not a voter. I've been out of the BBWAA since the 2017 season, so no Hall of Fame vote for me.

Anyway, it's my theory that almost everyone that deserves to get into the Hall of Fame gets in. Eventually, of course. There are plenty of players who had to wait and wait and wait until they got the call. Ron Santo comes to mind. He was always worthy of enshrinement in Cooperstown, but for some dumb reason, his induction never happened during his lifetime. For Philadelphia fans, Richie Ashburn is another player who had to wait a long time before he got his due.

There are others, of course. Some obvious and not so apparent. So here's a list of players I believe should be Hall of Famers. Some might not be eligible for voting yet, but as I wrote, eventually, every worthy candidate gets in. Some unworthy ones, too.

The list of players who should be in the Hall of Fame:

Dick Allen — This one is sentimental because Allen is a Pennsylvania and Phillies legend. But a closer look at his statistics shows a player who is right there. Twice he led the league in home runs, he made the All-Star team seven times and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting three times. He was an MVP with the White Sox in 1972 and the Rookie of the Year with the Phillies in 1964. On the advanced metrics front, he led the league in OPS four times and had an OPS better than .900 six times. What's missing from his resume is the postseason appearances. He was on the infamous 1964 Phillies and just missed out with the 1971 Dodgers, and 1972 White Sox. His only playoff appearance came in 1976 with the Phillies at the end of his career. He played just 54 games with Oakland in 1977 before hanging them up.

Allen also gave one of the best/funniest answers to a question I ever heard one day at Citizens Bank Park when he was on hand to talk about a young Ryan Howard and his place amongst the all-time great home run hitters. When asked if he had ever seen a player with as much opposite-field power as Howard, Allen replied, "Yeah. Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Frank Howard, Billy Williams." Then Allen stopped, looked over the top of his glasses at the questioner, and asked, "Should I keep going?"

I wish he would have, but by that point, I was already on the floor in hysterics.

Fred McGriff — McGriff is another one like Allen in that he ticks off all the proper boxes. Plus, he was ridiculously consistent, belting at least 30 homers in seven straight seasons. It would have been eight straight if the 1995 season had not been cut short because of the strike. How consistent was McGriff? In his first full season in the big leagues in 1988 when he was 24, McGriff hit 34 homers with 100 runs, 82 RBIs and a slash line of .282/.376/.552. In his last full season, when he was 38 in 2002, McGriff hit 30 homers with 103 RBIs and a .273/.353/.505 line.

Where McGriff has it over Allen is the postseason (yes, the postseason matters, folks. After all, winning in the playoffs is the whole point of the regular season), where he made it five times, winning the World Series with the Braves in 1995. Counting the playoffs, McGriff has over 500 career homers and nearly 1,600 RBIs. Like Allen, he was often the most feared hitter in every lineup he appeared in with San Diego, Toronto, and Atlanta (sorry, there wasn't much to fear with those Tampa Bay teams in the late 1990s and early 2000s). He also hit the hardest home run I ever witnessed in Game 2 of the 1993 NLCS when he smoked a line drive so hard and fast that the crack of the bat and the smash against the façade in right field at the Vet sounded at the same time. It was the closest a human ever might have gotten to reproducing thunder and lightning organically.

 Ron Guidry — I give extra points for postseason performances (it's really what matters most) and for dominant stretches. In Guidry's case, he has both. He pitched the Yankees to the World Series in 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1981 and he emerged as the most dominant pitcher in the American League in 1978 when he went 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA. With breaking pitches and a fastball that had many thinking he was the next Sandy Koufax, Guidry finished in the top 5 of Cy Young Award voting four times (winning it once). Add in the World Series and his two rings, and Guidry posts a 3-1 record with a 1.69 ERA with zero games where he allowed more than two runs.

Another interesting aspect of Guidry's career is that he most lines up (statistically) with Koufax, Roy Halladay, and Max Scherzer.

Steve Garvey — My memory of Steve Garvey is of a player who always seemed to get the big hit at the most significant point of the game. He also was a Phillie killer, and he posted monster stats in the playoffs. He was always in the All-Star Game, always in the running for the MVP, seemingly always on the national game of the week (every game was not on TV back then), a masterful fielder, and he never ever took a day off. Before Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak, Garvey made a healthy attempt at it by appearing in 1,207 games, for the fourth-longest streak in history.

Garvey was the National League MVP in 1974, a two-time All-Star Game MVP, and a two-time NLCS MVP with the Dodgers and the Padres. He collected six 200-hit seasons, made it to the World Series five times, and batted .338 with 11 homers, 22 extra-base hits, and 32 runs in 55 postseason games. His best game might have been Game 4 of the 1984 NLCS, where he went 4 for 5 with 5 RBIs and a walk-off homer against Lee Smith just when it looked like the Cubs were headed to the World Series (they have to wait another two decades because of Garvey).

Perhaps working against Garvey is his squeaky-clean image and one of a clubhouse politician. Who knows? Garvey was a bit before my time. But from talking to players from his era on why Garvey did not get more Hall-of-Fame consideration, the answer was always, "Because he's not a Hall of Famer."

End of conversation.

For whatever reason, that doesn't sound right to me. His numbers and my memories are pretty darn good, but it always has been my policy to take the word of someone who has better first-hand knowledge than me. His peers from his era say he isn't quite there, I guess that's the way it is. Nevertheless, he looked pretty good on TV, and he crushed the Phillies in the 1978 NLCS with four homers in four games.

Omar Vizquel — Way back before the Phillies were dominating the NL East, I asked then up-and-coming shortstop Jimmy Rollins who his guy was at shortstop. Was he a Nomar guy or Jeter? "Neither," Rollins said. "Omar Vizquel. He's the smoothest." No one was close to Vizquel with the glove of any shortstop in the 2000s. That shows with the 11 Gold Glove Awards and the admiration from his peers. And like Ozzie Smith, who Vizquel is probably the most comparable, he turned himself into a solid hitter in a long career. Vizquel played for 24 seasons in the big leagues, retiring after he had turned 45. Yes, that matters. Staying healthy and on the field consistently is probably the most challenging task of any athlete, and there are just a handful of players who did that as well as Vizquel. He also got 2,877 hits, got to the playoffs six times with Cleveland, and to the World Series twice.

Curt Schilling — I remember the time when Curt Schilling was inducted onto the Phillies' Wall of Fame when a team official said the team could not put it off any longer. "We ran out of guys we could put in ahead of him." That pretty much sums up Schilling's endearing qualities. Moreover, he seems to know it. Schilling seems to think he won't get into the Hall of Fame because of his politics. I told anyone who would listen (including Schilling) that I voted for him, and I think he's an absolute douchebag. But forget what I think. I'm nobody. The fact is he wasn't well-liked by his teammates, either. Again, not a big surprise there.

But leaving it to his performances on the mound, Schilling was one of the handful of pitchers from his era that everyone wanted to take the ball. Schilling should get in for two reasons. 1. His postseason performances are incredible. 2. He was pretty damn amazing for the 1997 Phillies, which is one of the worst teams ever to play in Philadelphia.

No, the Hall of Fame is not a personality contest. Ty Cobb and Cap Anson prove that. Schilling will get in eventually, but it might not happen until there are guys they could put in ahead of him.

A few of the players listed above won't get the votes from the writers in the BBWAA (or they are already off the ballot) and will have to wait for the select committees to elect him. That appears to be the way in for a few others, too, like (in no particular order):

Jimmy Rollins

Scott Rolen

Andruw Jones

Bobby Abreu

Jeff Kent

Todd Helton

Matt Holliday

Mark Teixeira

Lou Whitaker

Yes, some of those guys could get in via the BBWAA. For instance, Jimmy Rollins has a pretty good shot, and there is something about Todd Helton that just seems to be the profile for a Hall-of-Fame hitter. But, of course, there are a few elephants in the room. Bonds, Rose, Clemens, Sheffield, etc., etc. Let's just take a big cop-out and leave that one for the BBWAA and the voting committees.

[1] I kid Kevin because I can. Truth is, I can make fun of Kevin because I like him and he’s my friend. Also, his podcast is pretty good. The latest episode with Robert Costa might be the best one yet.

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Resetting (and a smoothie recipe)

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Resetting (and a smoothie recipe)

Spend enough time on the internet or social media and you’ll undoubtedly run into the think pieces about how America and the rest of the world will look when “we come out of this.” Some have written how health care will improve or no longer be tied to one’s workplace.

Others have discussed how an improved work-life balance will improve with more options for tele-commuting and less on red tape and mindless, bureaucratic hoops workers will have to jump through.

Yes, and better health care. Always better health care.

I have a few thoughts, too, though not necessarily of the think-piece variety. Instead, my are more off-the-cuff ideas that might gain momentum when we come out of this reset. For instance:

1.     Health care. Duh. It’s a right, not a privilege. If a criminal can get an attorney, why can’t a sick person see a doctor? Moreover, what moral authority gives an insurance company the right to deny any treatment to anyone? Enough of the bullshit on denying health care to everyone already. Enough.

2.     Better housing. This might come as part of improved care for the elderly in full care and assisted-living. However, it comes, people need affordable housing and we need housing that provides enough space for people to be healthy and access to the outdoors.

3.      Unchecked capitalism. Yeah, this theory is over. For too long Americans have been taught that we have to moral and just, but we also have to get as much as we can and beat the other guy so we can amass more, more and more. Perhaps we can finally realize we are all on the same team? Sure, some people should earn more because of their ability, skills, education and hard work. But let’s not be pigs. Just because we have the idea that the world is a rat race, it doesn’t make it OK to be a rat.

4.     People will pay more attention to their everyday health. This is the big one. Whether that means more people will develop lifelong exercise habits or will be much more mindful about what they put into their bodies, personal health has a chance to really take off. Over the last two months I have seen more people outdoors running, walking, riding a bike and just blowing off steam. Whether that translates into healthy habits and eating is the unknown, but it seems like it should happen. Why? People probably don’t have the chance to eat crappy food in the breakroom at work. Nor are they stopping on the way home to dash through the drive thru. Sure, some might be ordering out a little more, but probably not for three meals a day. This is important because a ridiculous amount of diseases and conditions are formed by people’s eating habits.

5.     Anxiety and depression will increase. This is a given. But perhaps we can finally improve our mental health? Let’s hope so.

In terms of healthiness, today, I read the newsletter from Dr. David Sinclair, an anti-aging innovator, and he offered some advice. Here’s what he wrote:

My advice to a friend was to get in the best physical and mental shape these next couple of months: 

* Maintain cardio fitness, which will increase capillary and red blood cell counts. Lift weights if possible. Move.

* Don’t be low in iron but also don’t overdose.

* Keep taking your medicines unless an MD says to stop.

* Eat less often during the day. I skip at least one meal, usually breakfast, and eat sensibly at other meals.

* Avoid super intense exercise or long-term fasting.

* Take 2500 - 5000 IU of vitamin D3 a day, which doctors say keeps your immune system in good shape.

* Keep blood sugar levels in check by avoiding sugar and processed grains.

* Focus on plants. Meats should include fish, preferably on the low end of the food chain to avoid heavy metals.

* Eat colored plants, either fresh or snap-frozen, and don’t overcook them. They contain xenohormetic molecules that activate cell defenses.

* Include nuts, avocado, and olive oil in your diet. Oleic acid from these foods will activate SIRT1, the defense enzyme, the same way resveratrol does (fasting also liberates oleic acid from fat stores). 

* Keep humidity up in the home to maintain airway health and mucus. If your house isn’t humidified, get a humidifier for the bedroom.

* Turn off breaking news channels. Read a book. Listen to a podcast. Make something.

* Get sufficient sleep. Consider L-theanine. Avoid screens at night. Avoid big meals and alcohol near bedtime. Download f.lux software to dim the screens. If you use your phone in bed, wear blue-light blocking glasses.

Dr. Sinclair is someone I pay attention to a lot. A frequent guest on many podcasts and the author of a new book on aging, Sinclair’s ideas not only make sense, but also are very smart and easy to follow. So, yes, Dr. Sinclair is my guy. Look him up. 

Meanwhile, I have changed a few habits – adding and subtracting – in my never-ending quest for personal perfection. One change has been the addition of breakfast (rarely did I ever eat breakfast aside from some tea and a Clif Bar). In addition to green tea, I make a smoothie every morning that packs in a day’s worth of vitamins and healthy stuff.

Nope, I’m not going to keep it to myself. Here it is:

Morning smoothie (serves one)

- 1 banana

- 2 handfuls of blueberries

- 4 strawberries

- 12 ice cubes

- 1 tablespoon of flax seeds

- 1 tablespoon of chia seeds

- Splash of orange juice

- Three spoonsful of Greek yogurt

- 1 scoop of Chiroflex superfood powder

- Raw honey

Throw all that in a blender and mix it together for two minutes. You can stir in the flax and chia after the blender does its number on the other ingredients. Or, you can skip the seeds altogether. The same goes for the superfood powder. Or, if there is another powder you prefer (Athletic Greens, et al), go ahead and use that. The Chiroflex powder is pretty sweet, which I like. It also is packed with vitamins and essential nutrients, which I also like. Some people might even add kale or whatever else type of green they prefer. That just seems like a different drink to me.

Additionally, I have thought about adding a tablespoon of natural peanut or almond butter to the mix, but I haven’t gotten there yet. Instead, I just lick it off the spoon. This might be better because I really like raw peanut and almond butter.

Of course, this hasn’t replaced my green tea habit, which is as strong as ever. I am also sampling as many green tea varieties and brands as possible, and just got to The People’s Green Tea, by The Republic of Tea. That’s my favorite these days. I think I’m sticking with this one.

Anyway, there’s some things. If you have any suggestions or ideas, send them my way. I am always curious about new ideas and people’s habits and thoughts on these regards.

 xoxoxoxxox

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A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom!

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A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom!

I spent some time today wondering if there was any moment where I did not know about Little Richard.

If I did, that moment probably came when I was really young and only really knew about Batman and Spider-Man and the Lone Ranger episodes that aired over the radio. Yes, believe it or not, there were radio serials in my lifetime. I don’t remember the details or any of the storylines. I just remember that I listened to the Lone Ranger, and it was probably on the same station that aired Paul Harvey.

But even if I didn’t know Little Richard, I probably heard Tutti Frutti and knew the lyrics, A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom! I probably tried to sing them. 

He was our guy. Just like everyone, his songs hit us when we were children, and they still get us going now. Timeless and perfect. 

Yes, Little Richard has always been there. I remember him popping up on the Today  show before taking off for school in the morning. I remember seeing highlights of an all-star band featuring Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend performing Lucille at the 1979 Concert for the People of Kampuchea. That concert was a veritable who’s who of popular and cutting-edge music of the time. It featured The Who, The Clash, The Specials, Queen, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Wings, The Pretenders, Elvis Costello & The Attractions and the McCartney fronted Rockestra.

That all-star outfit had the likes of John Bonham, Dave Edmunds, Kenney Jones, John Paul Jones, Laurence Juber, Denny Laine, Ronnie Lane, Robert Plant, and Townshend. No slouches amongst them.

The songs that supergroup did aren’t too memorable. But they closed the show with a Little Richard song.

Of course.

And why not? After all, even if Little Richard didn’t invent rock-n-roll, he most definitely was the one who set it free. That’s probably just as important because if something doesn’t have a spirit, it can’t live. Little Richard gave the music its spirit.

He was there at the birth. More importantly, everyone was influenced by him. You can hear it in Paul McCartney’s vocal style and the way Elton John pounds the keys on his piano. Jimi Hendrix leaned how to perform from Little Richard when he toured with him at the start of his career after leaving the Army. Imagine that. First, Jimi Hendrix joins the Army as a paratrooper and the he joins Little Richard’s band. If that isn’t an education, nothing is.

Little Richard certainly could have taken credit for Prince’s style choices, and through the late 1950s, he was just as famous as Elvis. James Brown and Bob Dylan borrowed from Little Richard. Without Little Richard, there is no Elvis, no Jerry Lee Lewis, no Beatles, no Jimi Hendrix, and there sure is no such thing as hip-hop.

David Bowie said it best: “When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.”

He isn’t alone in that regard.

Here’s the crazy thing about Little Richard … Though he continued to perform well into this century, Little Richard did not have a top 10 hit since “Good Golly Miss Molly,” and that one came out in 1958. Imagine that? Little Richard could play concerts every night in the 21st century on the strength of songs he wrote 50 years earlier. Better yet, those songs sounded just as fresh, and they performed with tremendous energy. Little Richard was all energy. That was part of his charm.

Just watch this clip of Little Richard inducting fellow Macon, Ga. native Otis Redding into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. Better yet, watch the reactions of those sitting in the audience like Bruce Springsteen and Keith Richards.

He gave it all up in the late 1950s. It wasn’t that the fame was too much because Little Richard spent the majority of his life showing up at events, appearing in movies, and on talk shows just because he was Little Richard. He was stylish, colorful, fun, flamboyant, controversial, funny, charming, warm, and a mountain of energy.

He was unapologetic and quite simply, Little Richard. He was a lightning bolt who lit up everything and turned the dark skies bright.

Richard Penniman died at age 87 in Tennessee on Saturday. But it really seemed like he was alive forever, and, likely, it will always feel like that.

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What's going on here?

I have been thinking about all sorts of ways to get back to revamping this website and the reasons for doing it always outweighed the reasons for not doing it. But it wasn't until I saw my friend Michael Billig out on the streets of our neighborhood that I finally started to formulate a plan. 

Or, as they say, “get my shit together.”

Michael is one of those guys who makes gets you excited after 30 seconds of talking to him. His enthusiasm and energy are really infectious and since he wanted to see more content on this website, well hell, that’s a good enough reason for me.

So, I'm going to relaunch this.

There is a plan in the works. Sort of. I mean, who really has a plan. We just have ideas and if the ideas piece themselves together after a while, then maybe we can call it a plan. But in the interim, the “idea” is to make this a bit of a multimedia extravaganza. Let’s go ahead and call it an explosion. As I continue with this, the idea is for all sorts of different types of posts. A podcast is in the works. There will be essays, reporting, interviews and things like that.  So, stay tuned. It’s all going to come together.

I’ll admit that I’m a little rusty at this. I’ve been out in the netherworld for a little while, far away from proper civilization in places called York, Harrisburg, Lancaster. Believe it or not, they have running water and internet access out in those places. There is lots of space for proper social distancing, too, so for those of us who like to go out and wander around, this fact bodes well.

As we get into this relaunch and I start to shake off some of the rust, there likely won’t be too much warning. I’m just going to keep it low-key like that. Since I have the time and I’m not going anywhere for awhile, I think I’ll just try to shake off the cobwebs and loosen up my brain a little bit.

That’s the plan, anyway.

I hope I come up with some interesting stuff to make it worth it for everyone out there. Or, perhaps, maybe I just hope I can make myself feel good. Hey, let’s not kid ourselves – this is self-aggrandizing as hell. Just look at the name of the site, for pete’s sake!

Anyway, thanks for the indulgence and thanks for checking in. I’m going to be coming at you really soon.

xoxoxxoxox,

jrf

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#runforahmaud

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#runforahmaud

Running has been one of the great passions of my life. Sometimes it is the first thing I think about when I wake up, and I am always happy when I've completed a daily run of any distance. Yes, I have my daily goals for the length I want to run, but that's beside the point. Just being able to get out there to do it is a gift.

That's not hyperbole, either. I mean it. Running is my mantra. It isn't so much as something I want to do as it is something I have to do.

And to paraphrase the great Chico Esquela, "Running has been very, very good to me." Because of running and my ability to run, I have been to parts of the country most people to get to see. My logs show that I've run in nearly half the states in the U.S. and three different countries. In 2018, I ran halfway across Bermuda when it was hot and humid. I've run in Detroit and Dallas, through Sweet Auburn in Atlanta, north out of Central Park and into Harlem, all over Washington, D.C., North Philadelphia, up the rocky mountains of Colorado, through the orange-scented neighborhoods of Pasadena, and through the desert around Las Vegas. New Orleans; Boston; Indianapolis, Milwaukee; Minneapolis; Cincinnati and Kentucky; West Virginia, Lancaster City, Lancaster County into Amish country.

The list goes on and on.

Everywhere my feet can take me, I've tried to see it and make some sort of adventure out of it.

Different runs stand out, but they were all memorable. Every single one of them. Everywhere I ran was unforgettable, and never once did I feel unsafe.

Not once. Never have I felt unsafe. 

Maybe that's because I'm privileged, and perhaps it's because I look like the kind of guy that runs a lot. It could be the technical-style shirt and shorts or the colorful Nikes or Asics shoes. Perhaps it's the look of determination as I wind through those efforts. People tend to leave me alone when I'm out there. Even the people who I know and who honk their horns at me have to tell me about it later because I don't see them. I'm pretty zoned out into my own little world that cars and other moving vehicles and people are obstacles to either avoid or be on the lookout for. 

Day or night – in the middle of the day or the middle of the night, it's pretty nice to be able to lose yourself in your own mind for a while. It's a blessing to be sure. A gift.

So caught up in my own world that it would never make sense to me that a person so clearly out for a run would ever be mistaken for anything else. Just like the idea of someone on the drive home from work, or to the grocery store, or anywhere else, was doing something out of the ordinary. Something someone would look at as illegal. I have never really been disturbed when running, and I have never been pulled over while driving my car for no good reason.

Some of my friends don't have it so lucky. They are questioned when they are driving or walking through a neighborhood where "they might not belong." They get pulled over in their cars while driving home from work or on a drive back from the grocery store. They have to answer questions about where they are going, what they are doing, and why they are there.

It doesn't make any sense.

Imagine what it must be like to go for a run and to not be able to get lost in your own thoughts. Imagine being a former high school football player and out for a run as a means to keep and shape and have to deal with people harassing you for doing something as simple as exercising.

What happens when you are out for a run, and two people in a pick-up truck and a shotgun imagine you are a burglar with no other proof than you are running. 

Ahmaud Arbery was just running. That's it. He was 25-years old, an athlete, and was doing what 25-year-old athletes do. He was out for a run. Nothing more, nothing less.

But because he was a black man in the United States, he was killed because he was running. Just running. A white father and son in Brunswick, Ga. driving around in a pick-up, and a shotgun allegedly decided to kill Arbery because he was black and he was running. Before doing so, they reportedly chased him around, terrorized him, blocked his path, and then they shot him.

He was just out for a run. Just like thousands and thousands of people in any city do every day. The difference was Arbery was black, and that made him unsafe.

***

This Friday, May 8, would have been Ahmaud Arbery's birthday. So as a tribute on social media, runners are heading out on Friday to dedicate their efforts to Arbery. There's a hashtag -- #runforahmaud, and more information linked here. So whatever you do, whether it's a walk or a run or anything, think of Ahmaud Arbery. Then think of how lucky one must be to be able to go for a run.

Just a simple, life-affirming run.

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Replaying the past

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Replaying the past

It was probably when I was eight or nine years old when I noticed the advertisements in the back of Baseball Digest for something called APBA Baseball. The ad was simple. It had some text describing that APBA Baseball was a simulation game based on statistics and probability. The main component of the game was a set of dice – one larger than the other – and a bunch of cards. The cards held the magic.

About the size of a baseball card, an APBA Baseball card had a players' name listed at the top, along with his vitals: height, weight, birthdate, city of birth, and the position he played. Below that was a series of numbers in three columns. The numbers on the left side represented the dice roll and were listed as 11 to 16, 21-26, 31-36, 41-46, 51-56, and 61-66. Say a dice roller/player rolled the two dice and one die showed 4 and the other 1 – that represented 41. To the right of the 41 on the players' card showed another number. That number represented the result of an at-bat.

Simple, right? Similar to Strat-O-Matic, which seemed to have more of a national following than APBA, but the idea was basic.

Along with the game cards mini sandwich board-style results that one used to look up what the numbers indicated. Better yet, the figure was based on the circumstance of the play. If the bases were empty or there was a runner on first and third (or any scenario), the dice had a reading for that, too. Moreover, a pitcher's grading affected the outcome, also. Pitchers were rated A, B, C or D, based on their statistics and ratios, which further provided answers to what the result of a particular play was. 

Statistics, probability, dice, cards, and baseball. All in one little game that took approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Those 20 minutes could add up to quite an afternoon and evening. The APBA Baseball company was located in Lancaster, Pa., not too far from my house. It was probably too far for a bike ride for my friends and me when we were pre-teens. Still, a parent could always drive to the company headquarters (and later, we could), where we could purchase the latest edition of the cards every year so we could re-play the entire past season of our favorite teams. My friend Chris Bernhardt and I would hole up in his room (or mine), blast the air conditioning in the heat and humidity of the summer months, and get to work on our teams. We'd play dozens of games a day by ourselves. Chris usually played the New York Mets – the 1986 club was a particular favorite. I would play the Red Sox teams of the late 1980s.

Sometimes when we would complete a season and the statistics would be entered and updated on a ledger after each game (and then compared to the real statistics), we would take on another team's schedule. Usually, it would be the Phillies or the Orioles, the two teams closest to Lancaster, Pa. and who were broadcast on over-the-air TV every night.

And the late 1980s were really the peak for APBA and over-the-air broadcasts of baseball. Never would it be so simple again. Brooks Robinson and Chuck Thompson in Baltimore and Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn in Philadelphia would call games as we played our own from the season before. It indeed was a pastime. That's what we were doing with our games – both real and imagined. There were no complications and no crass capitalism that we could see. Just baseball. That was it.

But just like those over-the-air broadcasts, APBA slowly faded away, replaced by faster, more graphically enhanced video simulation games. APBA still exists, but it isn't located in Lancaster anymore. Its building remains on Millersville Rd.; still the same low slung, brick-red building from a different era, but APBA cleaned out and moved to Georgia. It still produces its card-based game, but the emphasis is on its computer games that essentially emulate the dice/tabletop version. 

A couple of weeks ago, while goofing off on the internet and searching around for info on APBA, I stumbled over something called Out Of The Park Baseball (OOTP), which was a computer-based simulator being used by the gang at Baseball-Reference to play the 2020 MLB season. For those looking for any indicator of how the 2020 season might have played out, maybe the Baseball-Reference crew can offer a little interest. 

For me, the 2020 baseball season is of little interest. At least in terms of the OOTP game. Instead, I was interested in how past seasons could have turned out in the simulation, so I downloaded the game, loaded it onto a couple of computers, and got to work. First, I tried out the star-crossed 2011 season for the Philadelphia Phillies. During the golden age of the franchise from 2007 to 2011, the '11 team was probably the most stacked of them all. Yes, this includes the 2008 team that won the World Series, the 2009 team that went to six games in the World Series against the Yankees, the 2010 team that went on an epic 49-19 run over the final two months of the season to climb from ninth-best record in the National League to the best record in the majors.

The 2011 team won a club-record 102 games, which, coincidentally, is the last time the franchise had a winning record. It seemed poised for another World Series appearance until it ran into the proverbial hot club in the St. Louis Cardinals, who snuck into the postseason, upset the Phillies, and pulled off a stunning victory in Game 6 against Texas before winning Game 7.

As Charlie Manuel used to say, "Funny game."

Nevertheless, I got to work on the 2011 Phillies season with on OOTP Baseball and seemed to struggle with the club through the first half of the season. Injuries were an issue, as they are to many baseball clubs, even computer model ones. For this simulation, it seemed as if the entire pitching staff couldn't stay healthy, except for the indomitable Cliff Lee, who just kept chugging along. In real life, the 2011 Phillies starting pitching staff missed only 23 starts from its top five pitchers, and three of them – Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Lee – turned in at least 216 innings. For comparison, only three pitchers in the 2018 and 2019 season combined, tossed more than 216 innings. 

So, my version of the 2011 Phillies, for all of the injuries, still won 97 games and the NL East. There was no sign of the Cardinals in the playoffs. Instead, my OOTP Phillies beat the Brewers in the NLDS, the Giants in seven games in the NLCS, and then took out Texas in the World Series.

Just the way it was supposed to be.

With 2011 vindicated (sort of), why not see what the World Champion 2008 team could do? Well, that one turned out to be a disaster. With me at the helm, the '08 Phillies not only missed the playoffs but also didn't reach .500. It was pretty humiliating.

Maybe not more humiliating than the next simulation. See, with the OOTP game, I can knock out an entire 162-game season in an evening if I really get after it. For APBA, it could take weeks (maybe even a month), to knock out a season for just one team playing the games at the same rate as OOTP. With that in mind, I tried in inexplicable …

I started with the 2000 Phillies, the very first team I covered as a writer for Comcast SportsNet, and began to work my way through the seasons. The idea was to go from 2000 to 2015, which was the last year of games I wrote about. The exciting part is playing the games (with different outcomes) in which I was present and explicitly remember. Maybe I didn't recognize them for what happened on the field. But perhaps it sparked memories from what happened before the game in the clubhouse. Or what a player said after the game. Or what my friends and I laughed about in the press box or in the dining room.

Those were the things I remembered the most. Oh sure, there were no-hitters and division, or playoff-clinching victories sprinkled in, and that stuff was interesting and valuable. After all, the games and the players made the work enjoyable. But just being there, around all those exciting people were some of the best times I'll ever have.

Working through that schedule of 16 seasons of baseball in approximately a little more than a week is quite sobering. A couple of the guys I was with aren't here anymore. A few others are like me and have moved on and are not writing about baseball or sports anymore. Some, like me, miss it quite a bit.

Yet, whizzing through all those games in a little more than a week is a punch in the face.  It's a hard reminder of just how much time passes so quickly. It feels like it was just a week ago that I was sitting at the ballpark, getting ready for another game to start and to file another story. It feels like those 16 seasons took about a week, too. 

Maybe instead of finding a game that allows us to relive our past so quickly, we can find one that takes way too long to complete. Because if I can get a chance to relive those 16 seasons in a whole bunch of decades, I'll gladly take it.

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Hey!

Yessir, I finally got the site together, operational and ready to go. The hope is to keep this space updated more often than when it was shut down a couple of years ago. We'll see. There's a lot going on, what with regular life and playing in the powerful rock band, The Sophisticates

So, again, we'll see how it goes. Either way, the site is up and looks just like I want. Yep.

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First we take Manhattan ...

Central Park MapNEW YORK — Wouldn't you know it ... Anton Krupicka was in New York City today for a screening of In the High Country, a movie I caught at the premier in Boulder, Colo. last July. After the movie I had a chance to talk with Anton and told him about how tough runners don't just scale 14,000-feet of rock. Sometimes the tough guys run in the heat and humidity of Central Park.

As it turned out, it was humid in Central Park this afternoon. It was about 92 percent, according to the weather stats, and it would have been unbearable if it had not been for the snow falling over the city.

I didn't see Krupicka in the park on Monday or Tuesday, but I bet he was there. After all, where else is a guy going to run in the middle of Manhattan?

Central Park has it all. There are hills, trails, woods, lakes, waterfalls and wild life. There is also sweeping vistas of the skyscrapers to go along with the nature. Mix in the tourists, the city life and tons of runners and bikers and the park is the nexus of the world. 

It doesn't take long to see the genius of Frederick Law Olmsted within 400-meters inside of the park's borders. Central Park just might be the greatest piece of American architecture ever created. It's truly an inspiring place and there are few better places in which to run in the world.

The test in the park, of course, is running the big loop. Not only is it approximately 10 kilometers around without veering off to other trails, but also the big loop passes by seemingly every social, cultural and financial castes. In fact, one of the prettiest spots in the park is the Harlem Meer and the nature trails on the north side of the park. 

Neither the Meer nor the Harlem side of the park are not part of the Central Park Marathon, a race I'm jumping into on Feb. 23. Instead, the marathon course will be the very same five loops run in the 2007 Olympic Trials, one of the most exhilarating and tragic days in American running history.

It was a great day because Ryan Hall, Dathan Ritzenhein and Brian Sell made the Olympic team. Hall did so spectacularly while Sell fought for third place as if he was in a gang fight. Hall also established himself as the most talented American-born marathoner ever by obliterating the field and a hilly course in 2:09. Over terrain more favorable to fast running, Hall might have challenged the American record.

2012-04-15_10-50-32_633The tragedy occurred nearly 30 minutes and approximately 5.5 miles into the race when Ryan Shay collapsed and died on the course of a heart attack caused by an enlarged heart. By the time the ambulance got into the park and carried Shay to nearby Lenox Hill Hospital, he was gone. In a cruel irony, the ambulance carrying Shay passed the leaders of the race near the nine-mile mark. Hall, Ritzenhein and Sell had no idea what was happening.

These days there is nothing to indicate the exact spot where Shay collapsed. But for those who take their runs through Central Park, no marker is needed. 

We can feel it.

There is a rock along the side of the road just north of the Boat House on the east side where Shay fell. For those of us who know what happened on Nov. 4, 2007, our eyes are drawn to the spot as we close in on the Boat House. Running through that area of the park feels like a sacred act. It's like passing through a shrine site where one of "our guys" went down.

The memory of Ryan Shay is one of the reasons why many of us run. Distance running, and marathon running in particular, is as beautiful as a sport can be. Bathed in simplicity, running is as pure as athletics can be. But it’s also a cruel sport. Often, every weakness is exposed during a competition no matter how strong or well prepared a runner is.

But then again, that’s part of why we love the sport so much.

The only memorial to Ryan Shay in the park is a bench, located on the other side of the road from "Ryan's Rock." The inscription reads:

"It is necessary to dig deep within oneself to discover the hidden grain of steel called will.
Ryan Shay, 1979-2007

It's going to be an honor to run a marathon in Central Park along the course used for the Olympic Trials. It's also going to be tough and hilly. It's going to take a lot of strength.

It always does. 

***

Here's a shot of the Harlem Meer from a run around the park last January:

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This is a shot of the park from the Essex House on 59th Street from last February:

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And this is the statue of Fred Lebow, the legendary director of the New York City Marathon:

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Quick turnaround

When you decide to run a marathon on low mileage and no long runs, it's difficult to gauge how fast you'll go. The only way to know is to go out there and run it.

So that's what I did on Nov. 30 in Sparks, Md. at the Northern Central Trail Marathon. The result was 26 miles in 3:21:13, (almost an hour slower than my best time) which was a good indicator of my fitness.

Here is what it looked like:

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The splits for the race were strangely consistent, despite not training the way I would have liked. I got a little tired and tight around 21 or 22 miles, but was able to keep moving at a decent clip.

You know ... considering.

Splits

Nike+

It was a pretty good day. The footing on the course was a little tough in spots, and it was cold. But the race was fun and well organized. 

The best part about the race was I didn't get too banged up. The day after I ran five miles with only a bit of post-marathon soreness. By the end of the week, I was holding myself back so I don't overload myself so quickly.

But that marathon itch is tough to scratch. Because I'm old and time is short, I'm running the Central Park Marathon on Feb. 23. That one is five loops around the park, a very familar loop from trips to New York City.

It should be a lot of fun.

And then after that one, how about the Garden Spot Marathon in Lancaster County, Pa.? Yeah, why not? I know a lot of serial marathoners and it seems as if the weekly workload isn't too hot. The key will be to drop some weight and get those long runs in.

I'm ready.

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Of altitude, mountain climbing and running ...

IMG_0616So...

I had a bunch of in depth and insightful thoughts on how running in humidity is tougher and more difficult than running at high altitude. Then there were the ideas about the Trayvon Martin case has been one of the great injustices and how Americans are really bad at understanding nuance.

These were going to be trenchant posts all related to running and surely will come out on this site again soon enough. However, they are going to be put on the back burner for a time because I just got back from Colorado.

And just like always, it's a trip to Colorado that has jump started another build-up for a marathon.

How so? How could an old salty veteran like me be rejuvenated by yet another trip to Estes Park, the Rocky Mountain National Park and Boulder? After all, it's not like I haven't gone up there to put in some miles before.

Certainly this is true. Then again, I never made an attempt to run up to Longs Peak and attend a world-wide movie premiere featuring Anton Krupicka running up Longs Peak.

Anton Krupicka? Of course, in a sport like ultrarunning that is filled with badasses and envelope pushers, Krupicka is currently the baddest of the bad. Close followers of running already know about Krupicka because of the superficialities like his long hair, beard and shirtless runs for hundreds of miles per week. Then there are the victories in some of the most prestigious ultramarathons in the country ... these are all the things that get a guy known.

But the thing about Krupicka that is most interesting is that it isn't really about those things. Kind of like the running version of Ian MacKaye, Krupicka is interested in running for the sake of running. It means something to him that can't really be cheapened by categorization or a pursuit of resume fodder. Maybe that's why lately Krupicka has seemingly been focused on running the highest peaks in Colorado instead of trying to get from point A to point B faster than someone else.

Besides, as I learned again last week, there is something about climbing a mountain that teaches a person a lot about where he fits in. Some, like Krupicka and his partner in making In the High Country, Joel Wolpert, find a connection to nature and place in these pursuits. There's a transcendentalism to it.

Frankly, I go the other way. When battling the wind and the chill while moving up the trail up the east side of Longs Peak, I felt like I was small and insignificant. My sense of place was that I was nothing more than a tiny speck -- just a blip on a line to infinity.

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Nope, it's not about me. The warning signs on the trail kind of spell it out. On the mountain (or anywhere else on earth), I don't matter. But you know what? That's pretty life affirming in some weird sense. The idea that we are insignificant should free us of our egos and allow us to be ourselves. In Krupicka's and Wolpert's movie, that theme is evident.

When running up a mountain, Krupicka gets that it isn't about him.

I especially felt that way when looking up toward the Granite Pass:

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Anyway, Krupicka and Wolpert made a fantastic movie. It's a film that smarter reviewers than me say flips the script on conventional running movies. Instead of some inner battle or agonizing fight to complete or win a race, the movie was about running. Actually, make that running up mountains. 

Running. Pure and simple.

Better yet, Wolpert, the filmmaker, is a tremendous photographer. The film was shot beautifully along some terrain and spaces that may never have seen a movie camera before.

Here's a look at the trailer:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/58457574 w=1000&h=562]

Distribution for the film is still being worked out. However, there are tentative plans to hold screenings in West Virginia, New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Lancaster. My suggestion is to download it and to go to a screening near you.

Meanwhile ...

There is nothing that gets a runner going than a trip to Colorado. The altitude, the weather, the lack of humidity, the hills and the scenery are just part of it. Running, in all its forms, really is a part of life in that part of the country. Hell, just being outside is the way it is out there. 

Before we get into the trek up the mountain, here's the week of running in Colorado ...

Tuesday, July 16, 2013
10.05 miles
Fish Creek

Ran down Fish Creek Road and then turned around and went back up. Started at around 8,170-feet of altitude and went down to 7,500-feet. It used to be that I had to run on the narrow shoulder going up (or down) Fish Creek, but now there is a beautiful new running trail made of crushed cinders.

Perfect.

Better yet, my pace held up and lends credence to my theory that humidity is more difficult than altitude.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013
10 miles
Fish Creek

Same exact run as Tuesday. The difference was I ran faster, especially down the mountain.

Thursday, July 18, 2013
10 miles
Fish Creek to Lake Estes

Mixed it up by going down Fish Creek and, instead of going back up, I circled Lake Estes. The trail around the lake is built up now, too. Good stuff.

We need more running trails at sea level.

Friday, July 19, 2013
7 miles
Longs Peak Trailhead to Granite Pass

I didn't think I was going to get too much farther than the Boulderfield on the Key Hole route to the summit of Longs Peak, but man oh man was the "run" tougher than I anticipated. Aside from the rugged terrain, the toughest part was the chilly and windy climate above the tree line. Like a dummy I wore a sleeveless shirt and got a little worried about exposure. Also causing worries were the clouds and threatening-looking clouds on top of Longs Peak.

Very tough. I worked my ass off and covered just 7ish miles in two hours.

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Friday, afternoon

5.25 miles

Added a second run because I don't feel like I actually ran while on the mountain. About 3 or 4 miles in, I got pretty tired.

Saturday, July 20, 2013
10 kilometers
Fish Creek

Gassed. Quads were pretty sore. Felt OK through the first half and then fell apart.

Sunday, July 21, 2013
11.5 miles
Fish Creek to Lake Estes

Still tired and sore but didn't tie up. Definitely got tired at the end, though, but that was probably from the sun beating down on me instead of the altitude and the run. Perhaps the flatness of the trail around the lake helped.

The mountain ...

Yes, it was difficult. Surprisingly, it was more difficult than expected. At one point of the "run," I had a clear view of the Twin Sisters Peak, a run I bagged in 2008 that began at 9,000-feet and ended at 11,428-feet above sea level. On that run, I struggled on some of the switchbacks and long steps. I also got a tremendous headache above the treeline near the summit. It made me want to get to lower altitude quickly.

Twin Sisters from Longs ...

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So maybe the reason why I thought the ride up Longs would be "easy" was because I forgot about the experience of going up Twin Sisters. It's like the old saying that a person shouldn't race another marathon until they complete forget about the last one.

Bingo.

Anyway, I didn't get any altitude headaches on the way up. I did feel as though I was going to freeze to death, though. I should have brought a long-sleeved shirt.

More importantly, I realized that I'm no Krupicka and maybe mountain running isn't my niche. It's really tough and maybe not as rewarding as running in cities, trails or near historical sites. Plus, you don't really run up the mountain. You just kind of keep moving ... you survive it.

Hopefully I'll remember all of that the next time. Hopefully it ends with a few pictures from the summit and not the clouds resting on top of it.

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Progress, or something

So we tore off three more weeks of workouts and it's difficult to see any progress. Worse yet, July started with a case of the dreaded DOMS, which is somehting I never experienced except for after a marathon.

I guess this is what happens when a guy gets old.

Nevertheless, June was pretty uneventful. I missed one workout because I was up until 4:30 a.m. covering the NBA Draft and struggled with some heat and humidity while with the kids at the beach.

On the plus side, I got to run a bunch of flat loops in Philadelphia and the beach, which is a good way to check out strength and leg turnover. It also begs the question if there are any hills at all in Philadelphia?

The city is flat as a pancake.

Anyway, here's the non-eventful June. Let's hope July offers more progress and challenges. Tentatively, I'm hoping to turn out some good runs in Colorado, like an ascent of Longs Peak, as well as some quality miles in Detroit at the end of the month. 

That town looks flat, too.

Anyway, here's how we're building up for the Harrisburg Marathon in November ...

June 24-30

June 30, 2013
10.3 miles
Tired legs and a weak hamstring after running nine miles of hills on Saturday. Wasn't into it, but as the run progressed there was no point in stopping before 10 miles.

June 29, 2013
12.03 miles
After running on flat roads for a week, why not try a roller coaster loop for nine miles in the Lancaster County Park? The good part about the run is there was lots of shade in the park. I also saw a deer even though crossing paths with wild animals on a run freaks me out. The rough part? Up and down those hills. Oh well ... hills are a good way to build strength.

June 28, 2013
ZERO
Up all night the day before covering the NBA Draft. I didn't get home until 4 a.m. and didn't get to bed until a while after that. Rather than run tired and risk an injury with a weak muscle, I stayed indoors. Otherwise, it was a pretty crazy night. The Sixers didn't just blow it up, they nuked it. Hard to imagine that there will be many survivors from past seasons.

June 27, 2013
5.01 miles
Started out with some solid 7s and then the heat/humidity and a stomach ache ended the run. It didn't feel like typical stomach pain from heat cramps, but maybe it was. Whatever. Sucked.

June 26, 2013
6.25 miles in morning
4.11 miles in early evening
Felt a little better in the morning with the heat. Still tough to acclimate, though. The evening runs have been fun and I felt fairly fresh.

June 25, 2013
5.04 miles in morning
5.07 miles in early evening

Doubled up. Remember when doubles were 12 to 15 in the morning and 5 in the early evening? Doesn't seem like it was all that long ago. Nevertheless, the short, quick doubles are a good way to beat the heat. Seem to get more out of it, too.

June 24, 2013
3.6 miles
Planned to take a day off after driving all morning to Ocean City. But then I thought about Gary Player and how he always worked out after traveling as a way to combat fatigue and jetlag.

Week: 51.4 (more like weak).

June 17-23

June 23, 2013
8.35 miles
Covered the Phillies game all day and ran on Kelly Drive on the way out of town. Hadn't planned on running, but realized I would have felt like a piece of trash if I didn't do it. Ran steady 7s around the flat, river route.

June 22, 2013
10.01 miles
Slow.

June 21, 2013
10.26 miles
Slooooow.

June 20, 2013
10.14 miles
Hamstring grabbed a bit. Nothing to get worried about. Ran most of the time on grass. The change in surface may have caused the hamstring thing.

June 19, 2013
10 miles
Moved a little bit. Didn't slow down until the last 5K.

June 18, 2013
10.01 miles
Solid. Ran in the rain. No big deal.

June 17, 2013
10.07 miles
Just a boring, old 10-miler. Nothing to see here.

 

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Here we go ...

Remember me? The runner? Yeah, well I'm older and much slower than I used to be, but at least we're gearing up for another stab at it.

That's right, on Nov. 10 I'm running the Harrisburg Marathon. Since I'm in the masters class now, the goal is to try and win as the fastest old guy. The problem is there are a lot more fast old guys and I'm not sure I'm one of them.

We'll see, though. I figure if Joan Benoit Samuelson can run 2:50 at Boston at age 56, I ought to be able to do it, too.

Right?

Anyway, as the weeks progress I will update the training progress. Mostly I'm doing it for myself because I like writing and reading other training blogs. I don't suspect others do, but whatever. Hopefully, it will be interesting to the other running-type geeks out there.

And since I travel often and take a camera with me on rare occasions, maybe I'll spice it up with different things I come across on the roads. Since I started the training again I've run in Washington, D.C.; New York City; Indianapolis; Chicago; Dallas; Houston; New Orleans; Boston; Florida; Atlanta; Philadelphia; Valley Forge; State College and probably a few other places I forget. I also have trips planned to Colorado and Detroit where I'm excited about getting out and running around. 

Anyway, here's the first week of serious training:

Tuesday, June 4 (morning)

7.1 miles
Not the start I wanted, but it worked.

Tuesday, June 4 (evening)

3.2 miles
Nothing gets a runner in shape quicker than doubles. I think it's a metabolism thing. Whatever it is, it's fun. No, it often doesn't feel like fun when you try to push yourself out the door. But once you get going the low-key easy ones are fun because they pay off.

Wednesday, June 5

10 miles
Didn't get out until after work and then ran in South Philly through the Navy Yard. What a treat that was ... empty roads of a near-deserted city as well as the remnants of American industrial and military muscle. The old Naval parts were bloated, tired, rusting and abandoned. Sprinkled in is new office space for the new American corporate and technological muscle.

And everyone had gone home so I had the roads to myself. Fun.

Thursday, June 6

10.1 miles
Consistent mile splits through the neighborhood. The pace was solid even when running on grass for a couple of miles.

Friday, June 7

4 miles
Dark and rainy. Ran on a crappy indoor track and a treadmill at the YMCA and hated it. It's not the YMCA's fault (well, the crappy track is). I just don't like running inside.

SaturdaySaturday, June 8

12.1 miles
Ran nine miles of hills in Lancaster County Park. I had hoped to go 14-plus, but the hills were pretty tough and by the 10th and 11th miles I was shuffling a bit. Otherwise, it was a lot of fun. The County Park is slowly becoming a favorite place to run.

Check out the elevation ... it's not altitude, but there were some climbs.

Sunday, June 9

10.1 miles
Easy 10 through the neighborhood and some of the neighbors were out to chat a bit. Otherwise, the run was a lot like Thursday ... consistent and steady. Nothing to get excited about.

Total: 57 miles

It's a start.

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Week 1: Solid

Ideally there has to be a goal, some sort of endgame. Asthat goes my plan had always been to run a bunch of marathons and if I was ready for it, the ultra marathon national championships in Boalsburg, Pa. at the end of the October. 

Hey, when the speed is gone, the endurance prevails.

Regardless, I’m not interested in running marathons if I’m not fit. Yeah, I can probably go out tomorrow and hammer out 26.2 miles. It would be slow and I might be out of commission for a couple of days after it, but what would be the point? The idea this time around is to be fit enough to bounce back quickly and jump into the next run or race.

And so we get to the base building, that steady accumulation of miles and miles of running every day. Because I’ve been off for so long, racking up the miles is tedious. Likewise, the changes to the body as well as results from the workouts come oh so slowly.

But maybe that’s the fun part. There is absolutely no stress on putting in the work. There are no workouts to hit just perfectly and no races looming. It’s just the miles and nothing more.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself…

Anyway, the first week of the new year is in the bag and it went rather solidly. I wouldn’t say strong, but instead it was solidly solid. It was pretty decent and almost good.

Here’s how it went:

January 1

11 miles

Ran to the Susquehanna River. I was sluggish in the beginning but felt good after getting loose. This is a tough run … not a whole lot of flat stretches.

Might not be able to tell from the picture, but just look at these hills:

Hilly

 

January 2

10 miles

Easy does it. Got out later than I would have liked and ended up running most of it in the dark. For some reason I don’t run very fast in the dark. Even when I feel like I’m moving, my watch always shows a slower pace.

Oh well.

 

January 3

10 miles

 Ran after some hills. Felt good and did some work.

 

January 4

10 miles

Same exact run as the day before. Hills might make you go slow but they clean up the form.

 

January 5

13.25 miles

Ran all over the place. Weaved around the neighborhood, hit some rails-trails park, dipped into the city for a stretch and added a hill or three for fun. By far the best run of the week.

 

January 6

6.25 miles

Woke up with my quads feeling like crap. Took some extra coaxing to get my quads and hamstrings ready to move. They hurt, man! Must be the hills. Thankfully I only scheduled an easy one for today.

61 miles for the week. Solid.

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Dope on dope on dope ...

Tyler-hamilton-lance-armstrongCoincidentally, the reports that Lance Armstrong is mulling a confession for a career-long and systematic doping regimen that helped him win the Tour de France seven times as well as an Olympic medal and plenty of other races, comes just as I finished reading teammate Tyler Hamilton’s book chronicling those years.

Obviously, Armstrong’s admission is too little, too late. But, with anything involving Armstrong one has to look for a Machiavellian plan at work. What is the endgame for a guy who spent two decades attempting to destroy any one who told the truth? It can’t be that he simply wants to race triathlons or marathons again, could it? He can do that any time or anywhere.

Does he really need attention that badly?

An admission is a bit surprising because there are so many obstacles for Armstrong to leap over. For instance, if he admits to doping all those years, he’s wide open to an array of lawsuits. Over the years Armstrong successfully sued or received settlements from entities that claimed he doped. If it comes out that he actually did everything as reported by the likes of Hamilton and Floyd Landis, there’s going to be a long line of folks trying to get some money.

Armstrong also would be open to federal perjury charges in Landis’ whistle-blower suit against the US Postal racing team. In other words, in order to admit to doping, Armstrong would have to be reassured that he would not lose all of his money nor spend time in jail.

Bigger than everything is the fact that with an admission, Armstrong would have to apologize to A LOT of people. He destroyed careers, ruined businesses and shattered credibility. In every personal relationship, Armstrong was a nuclear bomb—he was a friend for a minute and then devastating the next.

Lance Armstrong is the Bernie Madoff of sports.

Nevertheless, the book Hamilton wrote with Daniel Coyle is fascinating. Most amazing is how much time, energy and money pro riders put into doping. Considering the best riders were paid a salary similar to a veteran situational lefty in the major leagues, it seems as if the primary goal of many was to do drugs.

Here are the biggest takeaways from the book:

  • Armstrong wasn’t good enough

Oh sure, he won the Tour de France seven straight years in an era in which most riders were doing all the same things. But how many would he have won if he and all the other riders were clean? What if Jan Ullrich wasn’t suspended for a non-performance enhancing drug like ecstasy?

This isn’t suggesting that Armstrong wasn’t a good bike racer. However, I don’t know if he was as talented as Ullrich or Bjarne Riis or Ivan Basso or Iban Mayo or Alexander Vinokourov or any number of the top riders of his day.

In other words, the drugs worked.

  • Everyone who left Lance got popped

Yep, every time a top lieutenant left Armstrong to be The Man on another team, they somehow tested positive. Moreover, they tested positive under extraordinary circumstances. Obviously there was Hamilton and Landis as the biggest names, but what about Roberto Heras? Or, how was it that the biggest threats to Armstrong’s supremacy all met the same fate yet he always seemed to be one step ahead?

Mayo, Basso, Riis, Vinokourov, Ullrich, Hamilton, Landis, etc., etc., etc., all got nailed. Every single one of them.

Everyone got it except for one guy ...

Curious.

  • My hematocrit must be too low

I’m running 10 miles a day and I’m tired … where’s the Aleve or Ibuprofen? Anyone see my rest-day blood?

Back to Lance …

More than five years ago, I spoke with Landis about Armstrong and possible secrets he might be hiding. At first the question was couched that perhaps Armstrong, one of the most famous athletes in the world, had a secret tattoo or webbed feet or something relatively benign. Instead, the response from Landis seemed to indicate that Armstrong was a jerk. Re-reading the question and answer after so many have come forward about Armstrong’s alleged doping is fascinating.

“I don’t think I know anything that anyone else knows. People have perceptions of him that might not be very accurate, but I don’t know any details that they wouldn’t know. The guy is obsessed. With whatever he does he is obsessed, and whatever he does he wants to be the best at it.

“Ultimately, he doesn’t have a lot of close friends because of it and he winds up not being the nicest guy. But that doesn’t make him a doper. That doesn’t make him a cheater. It might make him someone you don’t want to be around, but that doesn’t mean he took advantage of anyone else or that he deserves the harassment some people are giving him, like in the Walsh book.”

Not even three years later Landis said that in addition to not being a nice person, Armstrong was indeed a doper and a cheater… just like all the rest of them.

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Kibosh!

The powers that be (you know, the ones that pay me) shut down this little site. As it stands, I cannot write the off-beat stuff here anymore, but I am allowed to write a book. Therefore, the plan is to use this site as the inspiration as some sort of epic tome about sports, silliness and, of course, love.

You know, the usual stuff.

In the meantime,check back for updates and stuff like that. 

xoxoxox,

jrf

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Game 20

2012-01-28_17-33-21_721

Saturday, January 28, 2012
Game 20: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 95, Pistons 74

PHILADELPHIA — When I was in the eighth grade, the only thing I wanted to do was play basketball. Sometimes I would leave for school early so I could spend time on the school yard shooting before we had to go to class.

At recess and gym I played ball as much as possible and when the school day ended, I was on the way home to play some more. It didn’t matter what the weather was like outside, I was firing up shot after shot for as long as possible.

Once I went to the gym to wait for practice for our CYO team only to find out it had been canceled without warning. Something had come up with the coach and he couldn’t make it, but for whatever reason I didn’t get the notice until I was getting dressed on the sidelines and getting fired up to go. I remember it felt like a tease—here I was in the gym and I couldn’t play.

It took everything I had to hold back the tears.

I doubt Spencer Hawes has cried about missing the past seven games in a row with a strained Achilles. After all, it’s for his own good. The Sixers’ season is coming fast and furious this year and any type of rest a player can get is a big deal. Certainly the Sixers and Hawes will prefer playing in the postseason rather than a midweek tilt against Charlotte.

Still, Hawes has to be pretty bummed out about missing all these games. There were times earlier this year where Hawes was disappointed about coming out of games when the outcome was no longer in doubt. He also seemed pretty down about missing a game in New York with a lower back strain, too.

Hey, the guy loves to play.

That’s good for the Sixers, too, because when Hawes is in the lineup, he has been one of the most effective players on the floor. He is averaging 10.4 points, 8.8 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game, to go along with 1.7 blocks. His 58.8 field-goal percentage was the third best in the NBA this season before the Achilles sent him to the bench.

What stinks about the injuries is that Hawes was one of the most impressive players in training game during the second week of December. He was in the best shape of his career and as ready to play as anyone in the league. The improved fitness helped with his confidence and that was evident in the first game of the season in Portland when Hawes came one assist away from notching a triple-double.

“In the Portland game I don’t think at any point that I was forcing it. It was just the flow of the game, we were moving the ball and guys were finishing shots for me,” Hawes said.

For whatever reason though, Hawes is a bit prone to injury. Whether it’s because he’s 7-feet tall or his biomechanics are flawed or he just has bad luck, Hawes has had his share of nagging little annoyances the past year. After missing seven straight games, Hawes also may have to take a step back when he/if he returns to action on Monday night when the Sixers face the Orlando Magic. Certainly it would be a helluva game to comeback for with the big man matched up against Orlando’s MVP candidate, Dwight Howard.

Then again, that just might be the way Hawes wants it. If he is cleared to play Monday, he’ll be matched up against one of the best players on the planet. Certainly there is no better barometer than that …

 

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