Brief hello and update! Good Morning! This may be long, but I spent a lot of time over the past few days having sports conversations and thinking about my growth and youth. So this may be broad and not overly specific in some ways. It's more of a combination of open conversations with friends who have happily swung by to speak and get together to see if I'm holding my head together and speech well.
I am slowly working on the reading, writing and updating. Will keep things as simple as possible. Some things are actually going way better even today than I'd expected! A few personal family and home things - oof. LOL. Frustratingly slow and asking help as words are struggled or forgotten, and I'm slowly reviving others which work!
Sorry if some of you have, or have families, friends or others who have had similar health issues like mine. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad or feel the need or desire to discuss. If I do speak about my situation in any way, I'm just happy to say what even others in my family have asked me to avoid raising. Mainly because I feel nice openly discussing as i need to work out the details! Hoping for great things as I may need to work through it all!
Sports was the oddest conversation, and I'll explain why I start with it today. I love sports. Mainly tennis personally to play. And I am 'healthier' in a physical and discussion fashion! So I have enjoyed these. Sorry if you're not enjoying these topics.
I began when I was a child with my (divorced) mother's attempt for me to play tennis at a local place near home in Philly as I grew up. I never had the mental addressability level, despite the physical talent I was literally picking up with the old wood racquets and coaching. I loved it, but it was a one year try back then.
Mrs Bulldog started playing around 2005 or so, on her own. By 2008 or so she asked if I wanted to try - and I decided to join her (probably the worst exhibitor of clothing wore and talent level at the age of 46). My first three seasons I had excellent health, but improper talent access and effort (and probably 25 pounds overweight LOL). So the first three years, for me, were focused on losing weight and slowly learning the talent of position, movement, and timing. Helped me lose 20 pounds and by year four I'd stopped hitting people with lousy hits and talent. I had, originally, made several accidental face and body shots of clinic teachers, players and even broke one woman's glasses and led to her bleeding (sadly and mistakenly).
Since then, over the next 13? Not once. Got my weight from 215 down to 180 by 2017. Now averaging 185-195 and love playing. My wife plays there, and off summer has once a week indoors all season, but I'll take winter breaks because I probably have more business and work issues than taking time to play at 9am. Sigh.
Other sports, which I love, but have limited play times or capabilities, are football (both college and pro), baseball and hockey. Basketball in college I love, but I'm mediocre on pro NBA. I'm sorry, I still follow my Philadelphia teams, but NBA I've found boring and misleading because of talent levels I've felt were promoted for false media reasoning. I won't explain that here, but it was personally misleading and saying guidance that sometimes makes no good logical reasoning at all for my enjoyment.
Still, I've had great luck as my brother had developed in Philadelphia from when he first employed there in the early 90s, where he proved so smart and successful and eventually was running sports media development for media in Philadelphia! His greatness and position allowed me to not only learn and meet great talent, but attend many great teams and events! Sadly, I was living in the NYC area, so most sports news from Philly came from me speaking with my brother. Not enough journalism in NYC that was either promotional (or at times in favor or even honestly given from time to time) or supportive of the Philly teams.
We had grown up in our youth with Philadelphia support (and terrible teams until the Flyers in the mid 70s) that was awful. We grew up playing and learning baseball and soccer - he was much larger and more talented than I was. I was always small. By the time he was 6'3" in high school (in the Poconos) I was 5'6" until I grew 6 inches as a senior! LOL. (side note - my second son had a similar growth situation his senior year!)
By mid 70's, we'd moved to the Poconos. I learned to play soccer and we had a wonderful high school team that actually played well in 1978/79/80! But always really good and maybe short one or two talented levels that could have provided us more state finals. Sigh. Closeness and memories remain great fun.
I still loved sports, and loved playing. I couldn't play basketball due to short height, so that's where I became a numbers person and learned about keeping statistics and learned how to analyze, follow and develop for journalism, coaches and team management.
Even today I remain a statistics analyst reader and supporter! Loved all the new upgrades in analysis since all the work from Moneyball, Bill James and Sabermetrics - which today affects almost every sport in some meaningful and smart way. I had given up on baseball due to drug and steroid abuse, with misguided understanding until Sabermetrics and I was repromoted by MLB baseball! Loved it immensely! I have even done that work for football! And even today some people still complain that it's misleading, wrong, poorly done, etc.
It is not. I may be mishandled improperly or misunderstood by some people, mostly people who haven't figured it out yet. But I love it.
My favorite moment, before Sabermetrics and fully understanding it, was from 1988. I had built the computer work for my business at ABC, where I was working. I'd received a free ticket for SU vs Auburn at the Sugar Bowl and my family and I went when I was 26 for a great weekend! I took what I knew and understood - and published a computer article. People said I was crazy and wrong. I made 2 statements, published the computer breakdown of data and computer number analysis and said it all simply.
1. Auburn will crush Syracuse, the numbers are heavily in their favor, and Syracuse will have to shift their defense to play a certain way. If they do, #1 will be incorrect. If they do what is expected, Auburn may win 34-10 in a higher scoring game.
2. SU can make some changes and analysis and attack Auburn a particular way and win a close score (I can't remember, but pretty sure I'd said 16-13 or 20-17).
OOOF. People criticized my knowledge as if it was out of nowhere and poorly developed.
End result? 16-16 tie because SU did EVERYTHING I'D suggested as a potential approach - and up 16-13 with a few seconds left. Pat Dye instead kicks a tie FG to finish the game. Sigh. An undefeated SU team with one tie game!
I got back to work, and 3 people re-read what I'd produced and shared and were so happy how I'd used the numbers and analysis.
Guess what folks? It still works today - and now it's all done by professionals. So if you're into sports and numbers and analysis, and you've not adopted it all? Well - no problem. Some things are just taste driven. But I love the aspect of reading and learning from math and data analysis.
Thankfully - applied it for Kansas City this week, made a fortune placing an online bet that KC would beat the overrated SF team (I think SF gets terrible support that misunderstands football time and again). I posted my pregame (after my brain surgery! LOL) analysis and one guy called me names of how I was arrogant and misguided and he would criticize me consistently over my analysis. Then everything came true! In every game before the Super Bowl. I was so happy when it came true in the Super Bowl, too.
He would say things about me that were always wrong. Every time he'd misstate my comments and analysis. I had 3 outcomes which weren't what I wanted during the regular season. After the outcomes, I'd give the explanation on why my desires didn't succeed. My team would lose, despite being much better than their games were starting to end the season after a GREAT start. And I gave more information on what my expectations were for them to do better, I further expanded on what MIGHT happen if they failed (and they did fail 5 of their 6 final games over the exact reasons I'd pinned as a potential downswing if they did lose). My friend attacks me instead - saying I was wrong for stating how good the team was, but how I was pointing out the problems my team wasn't having due to talent (which was NOT lacking) but a coaching shortage I'd written about from the start of day 1 this last season!
Sigh. We do try to have as much fun while we can, we try to learn reality, we follow information, we try to analyze and develop reality with data and understanding. But my overall sports analysis has very few failures in reality. I have lost online betting from time to time (ahhhh...I do make bets to support the teams I love, even if I know they are possible long shots but I do love my teams). But overall, my betting capabilities, if I apply what I KNOW - I win really well. But sometimes love for your team means more than what you really know. Sigh.
So now? As I work on my memory and knowledge. Hopefully, very soon. I will be back at the gym again. An hour and a half again running. Lifting, squats and growth. Sports again by mid-summer with tennis!
All the good stuff, hopefully! So will keep pretending I'm 45 and not 62! And go back to the data and analysis I love!!!!
