Preparation

For once, a serious post. Those of you who know me know that I have many goals for my life. One of them is quite shallow. That is, to attend the Super Bowl. It will likely never happen because I can't and will never be able to justify paying $6,000+/ticket on StubHub or any other ticket exchange unless I wind up filthy rich somehow. For me to go to the Super Bowl, I'll need to find face value tickets somewhere or be comped them. The point of this post though is that I sometimes have very vivid dreams that I do have Super Bowl tickets and it's the day of the game. In these dreams, I never make it to the game though I'm in the host city and near the stadium. I've had lost tickets, stolen tickets, been at the "complex" and unable to find correct stadium, etc. It has really gotten me to think. How often in our lives do we really want something badly and then not prepare for it? I think we halfheartedly expect it to happen on its own or to not at all for us and resign ourselves to that end. Obviously, in my example, there is not much preparation I can do in advance not knowing which Super Bowl I might go to and all the planning would need to be done once I acquired tickets. But I just wanted to put it out there in a broader sense as it's something I've been thinking about since Sunday. What are your goals in life and what are you doing to prepare yourself for them? Do you have a plan in place to see them through? I certainly don't, but I think it's about time I start putting something together.

Book Review "3 Nights in August"

Quite a while back, a friend of mine, Craig T, posted a quote on his website from Charlie "Tremendous" Jones that said "You are the same today as you'll be in five years, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read." Just as it inspired Craig to read more, it has done the same for me. Especially since I don't like meeting new people, I figured I better pick up a book.

With Tony La Russa recently signing a contract extension and the Cardinals letting McRae go and hiring McGwire, I thought of a book I finished about 2 months ago called "3 Nights in August." It's by Buzz Bissinger, who also penned Friday Night Lights. In the epilogue, he explains that while he didn't intend for the book to be an answer to Moneyball, it turned out being considered that. The book is geared more toward hard core baseball fans, and La Russa and his staff (at the time of the book anyway) are certainly of the old baseball guard and not the Harvard MBA, number-crunching stat nerds that are praised in Moneyball. The book chronicles the Cardinals 2004 season through the window of a 3 game series. The book goes inning by inning, sometimes pitch by pitch through a 3 game series (in guess what month). Mixing that with La Russa's baseball stragedy, career experiences and life, and the season so far keep the book flowing and not feeling as if it's a book simply about a 3 game series. Overall, I recommend the book to anyone who is a baseball fan and particularly anyone who as read Moneyball, to see the other side of the story.

Also, another book to keep you going through the baseball offseason, I finished "The Long Journey" home this fall as well. It's the story of a minor league prospect during World War II. It's a good mix of baseball and history.