Facing Tough Competition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlLi0Hrx9QE Don’t some people really upset us?   Though hopefully not incurring the fate of the cyclist, is not our tendency to at worst confront or at best avoid them?   The annoyers--o ur supervisors, co-workers, subordinates, public officials, neighbors, and oftentimes family members.   Admittedly there are those I don’t care for.   Be it a case of different interests, personality differences, religious beliefs, or varying viewpoints, don’t we tend to gravitate towards those with whom we share commonality?    Is our attitude then further reinforced by what we see and hear in our communications media:  argument and disagreement, taunting and belittlement, right vs. wrong, little forethought for reason and compromise?    We each have the ability to shape the thoughts and ideas of only one person and that is ourselves.   Given that, w hat are we doing to shift attitude? Fifty years ago,...

If you have been around young children much you’ll know that one of their first organized athletic activities is soccer.   At the ages of four or five, their attention is centralized.   That is to say that the tendency of the young girls and boys is to gravitate towards the crowd, whatever place on the field has attracted the largest concentration of bodies.   Soccer, at this stage, more resembles a rugby scrum sans the rugged physical contact. Amidst the conglomeration of chaos there always seems to be a kid or two who coyly slips away from the magnetic force of the crowd almost influenced by a sense that causes them to linger or wait.   Occasionally, when the ball squirts out from the scrum the intrepid ones find themselves with an unimpeded path to their opponents goal.   They score!   Even at such a tender age a certain intuition, an indefinable something, begins to have impact.   It was said of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky that what made h...

“Your talent is God’s gift to you.   What you do with it is your gift back to God.”   Leo Buscaglia Nearly a century ago, in 1920, he cracked 54 home runs, more than all but one other major league team!   The runner up that year, George Sisler, had just over a third of that number at 19 round trippers. He went on to hit a career total of 714, a record that held until 1974.   So prolific a ballplayer was he that a candy bar carried his namesake.   Whether it be the “Sultan of Swat,” “Colossus of Clout,” or “King of Crash” many would concur that George Herman “Babe” Ruth was the most dominating player to have ever graced America’s professional baseball diamonds.   What was it about Ruth that distinguished him from his contemporaries and still to this day holds him in the highest esteem? Two research professors at Columbia University made it a mission to find out.   Following a game in 1921, Babe Ruth was shepherded out of Yankee Stadium ...

Having spent the better part of this millennium until recently in St. Louis I grew to become an avid follower of the Cardinals.   Time spent at the current Busch Stadium and its predecessor was a slice of baseball heaven.   St. Louis has arguably one of the best fan bases in all of the major leagues, attracting upwards of 3.5 million in annual attendance, good for second in overall turnstile counts the last three years in a metropolitan market that ranks 19 th in population.   Beyond numbers, though, Cardinals followers are a highly baseball-educated fan base.   Among those in the crowd, it is not uncommon to observe as many as three generations of family members in attendance, 80 year old ladies keeping score, and intelligent conversations about lefty-righty batting-pitching matchups.   A great appreciation of St. Louis baseball history exists.   From Dizzy Dean to Stan Musial, from Lou Brock to Ozzie Smith; from Budweiser Beer to Clydesdales; fr...