Scott Novis

When I first got my iPad, I was very impressed with the media capabilities. Watching Videos with NetFlix, Reading the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today and Epicurious is just gorgeous. It replaced my kindle the day I got it. And the games are decent, but there are still limits to what you can do with a touch screen (compared to a controller ) but the visual quality is outstanding.

Still, the one big draw back was creating content. Keyboard support is spotty, and there’s no easy way to flip between apps when you want to clip something from a website to put into a Pages document. Even creating emails felt like an iPhone app and not something you would expect to find on a useful computer with a screen this big. And don’t get me started about pen based input. It’s still a joke.

So I figured that the iPad would be mostly a reader or browser, until I saw Photosplash.

The first real program I used to create anything meaningful on my iPad was MaxJournal. During our vacation I kept a daily journal of what we did and attaching photos to it was cool. The iPad is still a nightmare to get photos on for me because I tied it to the iPhoto library on my home machine. Once you’re out on the road, getting photos onto it was not trivial. I had to upload them to a web page with another computer and copy them down. I know why Apple didn’t put an SD card reader on the iPad. There’s open, and then there’s open. Apple believes in open with their permission. But like Jobs wrote in multiple emails, if you don’t like it buy something else.

However, back to Photosplash. This is a very, very clever application that allows you to selectively color photographs. And for the first time, it’s a creative program that feels way more natural on the iPad than any other platform I could image. The gist of it, is that they made coloring with the tip of your finger feel intuitive, and natural. Like coloring with charcoal, or finger paints. The ability to zoom in – even beyond pixel depth, to smoothly trace a region or a line is just amazing.

In just a few minutes I was able to create these images, photos that would have taken me hours to do in Photoshop, mostly because I’d still have to figure out how to do it.

And for the cost of the program? It was well worth it. Now that I’ve seen it, it seems like it is possible – I can’t wait to see what else they come up with.

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I have been using PDA’s forever. Going all the way back to the original Palm. Along the way, I was always obsessed with having a real keyboard. So I have a bizarre collection of foldable portable keyboards. Perhaps even more bizarre is that I kept them all. Well one of those turns out to be a Bluetooth keyboard manufactured by Think Outside (now iGo.com).   After a little googling, I found the PDF guide for the keyboard and learned that

<Ctrl> <Left Fn> <Right Fn>

When held together will put the keyboard in discovery mode and low and behold the iPad will actually work with this keyboard!  In fact, it works quite well.  The Windows key acts like the Mac Command button, and the arrow keys and all the other function keys seem to work normally.

That has to be the first time ever that holding onto something for 10 years proved to be useful!

And the included Stand holds the iPad pretty well.

– Scott

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There’s so many things to learn, it’s hard to keep track of them all.  I found this one on Lifehacker.

I think like most people, I just don’t have the time to go through all my stuff.  I often wonder who does have the time to tag every picture with faces, or to correctly label all your music.  I’m sure it’s a wonderful thing if you do it, but my music collection has been a mess for… oh… 10 years?  When did I go digital?  Heck I don’t even remember.  I do remember seeing my first iPod way back in 99.  So it had to be shortly after that.

So I got a decade of crud built up in my collection and no amount of purging, murging or (what rhymes with *ging?) crying?  pounding?  well you get the idea.  Nothing has really made it better.  So we live in an uneasy truce.  My iTunes library holds yet another project I will never get to.

But today I found a very clever hack with smart playlists that lets me enjoy my music without cleaning it up.  Here’s the gist of it.  A lot like using SQL queries to get lists of information that you then run new queries against (called sub-queries or views) you can create a smart playlist, then use ANOTHER smart play list to filter it.  Essentially, you create 3 playlists, each that filters your music by quality and how recently it was played.  Then you create a master list that combines those three.  Songs you like a lot get mixed in more often.  Using shuffle, it’s every bit as good as Pandora.

For mine, I had to weed out Spoken Word, Children’s, and about a dozen other non-music related genres.  Then I created a list called “Banned” and anything that gets dumped in there gets excluded from my smart play list.  Over time I can go back and decide if I want to keep any of that junk.

Give it a whirl.  The only thing that confused me is that iTunes will change what options you have available depending upon what you are filtering against.  For example, select “Author” and you get one set of options.  Select Last Played and you get a different set of options.  Just play around to see which song attributes have which options.  Ultimately by combining different lists (rather than creating one UBER list) you can make some very powerful song combinations.  I’ve been listening to mine all afternoon and nearly all the things it’s playing are awesome, including some music I haven’t heard for a long time.

So give it a whirl.  It’s cool.

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For quite a while I’ve used 1Password on my Mac to keep the 10,000 passwords I have to manage across all my accounts. This week I came across two tools that I’m very impressed with. The one problem with 1Password is that it doesn’t support google chrome (yet). And there’s no PC or Linux equivalent.

Well, Last Password (http://lastpass.com) is an amazing application that supports EVERY SINGLE browser I use. It stores all the information with one master password and early on I’ve been very impressed with it’s integration and utility.

The other nifty little tool I found via lifehacker.com. It’s a site called Password Card. (http://passwordcard.org). A Password card is quite clever. It’s basically a simple index card you carry in your wallet that allows you to create strong passwords and not have to remember them. How does that work?

Simple, you remember an index into the card, like square blue, or diamond green. Right now I’m playing with a triplet to recall like square white h9 or solidcircle purple v8. What does all that mean? You go to the solid circle symbol, then scan down to the purple row, and start reading off 8 characters vertically.

The reason for the 3rd option is that not all sites agree what makes a “strong” password. Some love the 8 random characters, symboles and digits, others need to see 9 before they thing a password is strong.

The genious of this system is that all you have to remember are simple things like a symbol name and a color, but the password itself is really difficult. You print the card, laminate it, and stick it in your wallet. Even if someone gets your wallet they won’t know what indexes to use to get your passwords. I’ve been using it for a few days, and so far I’ve been slowly upgrading all my passwords to “strong” passwords. It seems to work pretty well, especially with a tool like lastpass to help.

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Update:  It’s harder than I thought it would be to remember things like color, symbol, direction count for each website.  And as good as last pass is, it can’t cover every situation.  Like desktop apps that need to login.  For example evernote, or iCal, or Mail.  Keeping track of the symbol / colors is trickier than I thought.

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The last two nights of little league baseball have been crazy. I watched both my sons teams build huge leads, and take certain victory into the last inning only to give it all up. We didn’t lose, but we didn’t win. That makes 3 ties for me this season. Coupled with my 3 at the end of last season I have 6 total ties. I think that has to be a record.

The last two nights were the wackiest as both teams took commanding leads into the last inning. Tuesday night, I brought in a developing pitcher and figured what could go wrong? 3 runs later and loading up the bases I watched the tying run come to the plate and I thought, man we need to end this. So I brought in an ace. Bang. Grand slam. THEN we get the out to end the game. Score 9-9. We have up 7 runs.

The culprit was everyone waiting for someone else to make a play. Any one of 3 or 4 kids could have won the game at any time if they caught the ball, threw the ball, or held onto it. But the real culprit was me who left the developing pitcher in too long. I think now I realize it’s better to pull a kid while he’s on top then to let him struggle.

This is probably why you see Major league managers pull a hot pitcher. Because they grab theme before they get into trouble. So everyone is thinking why are you pulling that guy? He’s on fire! Yup, but he’s about to go very, very cold.

Last nights game was crazy. My son was pitching the best game I’ve ever seen him pitch. Then at the top of the 6th inning he drilled one into his foot batting. Now he’s hobbling around, no way can his pitch. It’s his plant foot. So we go to a decent backup. He gives up a run but gets two quick outs. Then we start walking guys. I’m not going to see a repeat of the previous night so we pull him right away. Only to have the next kid do the same. We walked the bases loaded with the bottom of the other teams lineup. The easy outs got a free pass so we could get to their best hitters.

I mean, if you’re going to give up the lead that’s the way to do it right? Then follows the gong show of dropped pop ups, ground balls going by two fielders to the fence, kids out of position, and beautiful strike out pitches getting past the catcher so they’re called balls. Kids not catching the ball when it’s thrown to them, or not hanging on to it for that final out. It didn’t help that the umpire completely blew a call at home plate early in the game which cost us a run. We had 5 or 6 chances to end that game and win it. 4 or 5 kids could have saved that game. No one did.

We took a 7-1 lead into the sixth inning and gave up 5 runs with 2 outs. Final score, 7-7.

I keep telling my kids that we’re tough to beat, but the reality is also that we need to finish. All of my latest ties we have allowed the other team to come from behind. I saw this play called Honus and me. In it Honus Wagner said, “Baseball is organized humiliation.” I also saw in the epic Ken Burns documentary about baseball that, “Baseball is made to break your heart.” Earl Weaver said baseball is the greatest game because, “you must give the other man his turn.” You can’t run out the clock, or play keep away, you must give the other guy his turn.

All that makes baseball probably the hardest of all to close, but we need to learn to close it. the lesson for my guys? Everyone can make a difference. Everyone. The key, is that when the opportunity comes to you in the form of a little white ball, make a play. Don’t wait for someone else. You be that guy. Be the guy to pick it up. Be the guy to catch it. Be the guy to throw it. Be the guy. Make a play.

If we can do that, I know we’ll win.

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Well, after spending most of the Easter Holiday focused on my iPad I learned a few things.

1. It’s a little buggy. I have a few apps that crash out to the home screen (Evernote, and the ABC Viewer)
2. It’s really challenging to update a blog with. Can’t wait for the iPad versions of Facebook and Wordpress.

My favorite apps so far?

• Epicurious is georgious
• NPR – it’s awesome to be able to scan the articles, read them, or listen to the content
• GamePlan – Jason Giambi showing how to do drills in a collection of videos almost makes me not hate the money leach that is downloadable content (DLCML)
• Weather
• Google Maps with a window large enough to actually see a map instead of a single street or intersection
• USA Today – I’m now done with news papers. Officially, once and for all. If every paper doesn’t go to this…

None of the games have clicked for me yet, that’ll take some time but I know it’ll be a great gaming platform.

Kindle / iBooks

After a full day of use, my iPad ran down to about 18% of charge, so I threw it on the charger and grabbed my kindle. I started reading Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst (funny but kind of depressing). I bought it through Amazon and started reading it on my iPad. When the batter got low I switched to my real kindle (v2) – but after an hour, I just couldn’t find a decent reading light – I went back, saw my iPad had charged to 40% and I snagged it and resumed reading on it. I may never use my kindle again.

However, there is one stupid thing about both the Kindle and iBooks readers – it’s the margins. Books have margins because (among other reasons) you need somewhere to hold the book without covering the text, or to take notes. But ebook readers a) don’t need margins for notes and b) I have the edge of the iPad or the kindle to hold. Why do I need another INCH of useless screen space? Can’t I just zoom to the width fo the content? This is the most stupid oversite in all these readers forcing me to use 1″ of screen for absolutely no reason. Get over it and let me zoom to the content width – just like mobile Safari.

The guys that nailed this are Marvel with their comic reader. I may actually start buying comics again. I think that was the first time I enjoyed reading a comic in 30 years. It’s better than the print editions.

So all in all, love the iPad. Will be interesting to see how much I really use it going forward, but it is now my default reader, of all kinds of media.

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One of the amazing things that has happened since I started GameTruck is the amazing people that have joined me in this business.  Four years ago in my garage I had this crazy idea to create the ideal environment to play games with your friends.  We’d pull it up to your house.  I built a prototype in my garage, we research trailers, and trucks, and portable generators.  I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew I needed to do it.  My brother Chris joined me on my crusade and my cause became his.

It was up and down.  I remember buying a copy of the secret in Florida while I was going there to open a Studio for the Walt Disney Company.  I didn’t know what was going to happen.  I didn’t know if GameTruck would survive, but after reading that book I realized I spent a lot of time focusing on things I didn’t want and not things I did.  So I spent more time focusing on the future I wanted.  I wanted orders.  I wanted bookings.  We wanted people to experience our parties.  And when I got home, they called.   Bookings went up.

I wrote an email to all our family and closest friends and I told them about my dream and I asked for prayers.  And they prayed.  And people called.  By the summer a miracle had happened.  Disney had a change in strategy and Florida was no longer in the cards.  But more miraculously GameTruck business had exploded.  Even more amazing a fantastic partner materialized out of thin air and David Wachtel joined me on my quest to build a brand new business, heck and industry.

It felt like yesterday but that was already three years ago.  And yesterday the most amazing thing happened.  I flew to Atlanta to meet a group of brand new Franchise Owners.  They had their GameTrucks pulled into a circle in a giant parking lot – a pack of bright green elephants glowing in the soft spring rain.  I was in awe.  Here was an idea, that had started in my garage, a dream I had not only of making kids happy, of bringing people together with the best of video gaming but also teaching them how to be great gamers.  Giving them a role model.  But I also was helping people realize their own dreams of owning their own business, of establishing their own true asset, one that could generate more income than it could consume.  From California to Georgia, from Portland to New Jersey, all across the country people – great people, were joining me, joining us the GameTruck team on our mission to change the way people play.

I was in awe.  Richard Bach wrote that the law of the universe is Magnetism.  The Secret says the same thing.  The Bible tells us that we can do miracles if we can believe.  So many people have said it much better than I but I stand as a witness to the power of a dream.  Yet, the most motivational quote I read this past year came from Zig Ziglar, and it is this, “You can have everything you want in life.  Just as soon as you help enough other people get what they want.’”  I love that quote because it puts focus and vision on everything we do.

We help people play together.  We help people get into business.  We help people be successful in play, in business, and perhaps someday even in life.  I am amazed and honored to be part of such a great group of people.  I think I’m finally learning what it means to be living the dream.

– Scott

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I forgot that I connected my blog to Facebook.  So when I had to repost 3 years worth of articles to get my new wordpress site up and running the entire flood of articles appeared on my wall… and apparently a lot of other peoples.

Neat.

-Scott

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I really try to be a disciple of David Allen.  In principle I like the Getting Things Done approach.  For me there are a few key aspects of it I like.

First, I really like to “process” stuff.  When my office get’s overwhelmingly messy, or my desk gets snowed under, I always know I can go back to square one and clean it.  I have never been able to clean and organize stuff like I can with his system.  In a very focused blast I can ask, “What is this?” and either throw it out, decide on a next action and add it to my todo’s, file it, or put it where it belongs.  In no time I can clean almost any room.

The other part of his system that (in principle) I really like, is writing down everything, getting it all out of your head, and then recording it as projects – BUT you also sort it by context.  Like tasks tend to be more productively completed if you do them together.  In other words, if you are in phone mode, then be in phone mode.  Get as many calls out of the way as possible.  If you are running errands, find out how many of them you can lump together.  Batching up tasks in a way that makes sense by your ability to do them makes all kinds of sense to me.

There are other aspects of his system that are attractive too but I don’t adhere to them nearly as much such as the weekly review and the tickler file.  But the one thing I have noticed is that at times I get… stuck.  I hav all my projects and todo’s in one place in one application that syncs across all my computers and even my iPhone.  But then I will just sit there and stare at it and think… I don’t know what to do.  I can’t help but feel that I haven’t captured everything – or worse, I have captured it all and I don’t know where to start.

Unfortunately whenever I feel like that the Internet is only a few clicks away to keep my mind busy.  Honestly, I’d be more productive if I played a game instead.

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Normally, this time of night I would sit down and start to code, or maybe play a game, or catch an episode of Fringe streamed off my PS3. But tonight, after a great baseball practice I felt the need to share one of my favorite all time baseball stories.

The Beginning

I guess it all started about 18 months ago, in the fall of 2008. We got together with some friends and decided to put together a winter baseball team. All our boys were moving from Farm to Minors – from machine pitch to kid pitch and I knew two things. First, kids that played some winter ball and then went into little league were a lot better prepared than kids that only started up a month before the season began. Second, I knew that the jump to kid pitch was a big jump. I lied, there was a third thing I knew. On my farm team were 4 or 5 kids who didn’t get drafted into the minors. Getting drafted was tough.

Early Goals

So we pulled together some friends and we said, “hey look, we all want to play minors next year and there’s no guarantee any of them will get drafted.” So we figured if we put together a team for winter ball, played up against better competition and focused on pitching, we could:

1. Teach the kids how to pitch
2. Get them ready for showcase improving their chances of getting drafted
3. Get them ready to face live kid pitching

What I also had in mind is that I wanted to learn how to teach pitching. I often saw a lot of kids that wanted to pitch, but no one knew how to teach them. I figured if everyone bought into the idea that our focus was to teach pitching and get drafted, who cared if we won any games or not? That was a good idea, because it turns out we only won a single game – but all the kids improved. They all learned to pitch. And most importantly, every single one got drafted into minors.

Now The Fun Begins

The one drag about playing in Tempe South minors was that we did draft. I couldn’t just pick my whole team. I could only get a few of the players that I’d invested months in teaching. Sometimes that was a good thing. Some kids just need a change of scenery and I’d helped them as much as I could. With other kids it was hard for me, the kid, and parents. We wanted to play together, to keep going but I just couldn’t pick everyone. However, this I didn’t expect. It was awesome knowing someone on every team in the league. We had friends everywhere. So my team, my Red Sox, started practicing, and drilling, and learning and my God was it fun. I love teaching baseball.

This was my first year managing in the minors, so I was a little nervous. I was going up against legendary local coaches like Griffin Merkel, John Briscoe and Mark McGinnis. Virtually everyone in the league had coached and managed more than I had. I was lucky to be selected as a manager. Some of these guys managed a real club team, a team that had gone 17-0 in fall baseball. What did I know? But I gave it my all and most importantly so did my beloved Red Sox.

Scrimmage

After three weeks of practice, we scrimmaged the Cubs. We had a plan. I was ready. The boys were ready. We got shelled. It was a humbling experience, but like winter ball, we weren’t really playing to win. We were playing to learn specific things about our team. Who could pitch, who could play here, and who could catch? And after that, we spent two practices covering lessons we learned during the game.

The Season

Finally it was time for the season. And here’s my real story. Surprisingly, we came out of the gate and won our first game. It was a close contest, but we prevailed. Putting our players in positions of strength they did really, really well and it was fun. Then we won our second game. It was a little less of a nail biter, but we pulled it out. After the third win, it started to feel like something special. I remember our third contest. We faced Jay Bauerle’s Indians. It was a close game. We lead the whole time. But when my starter began to get tired, the Indians came roaring back. They pulled within one run in the bottom of the sixth. And we put in Bandit. (One thing you should know about my teams. I always give the kids nicknames). With the tying run on third and two outs, Bandit struck out the last batter to seal the win. My best friend and assistant Coach Ed looks at me says, “I think we found our closer.”

Suddenly, it felt like this was a special team with a special group of kids. We were undefeated. But we weren’t the only ones. The Astros – coached by Kevin Costigan and John Bistany, were right there matching us win for win. And suddenly Astros V Red Sox started to look like a showdown. And it was. The Astros were a great team. And yet, we prevailed. We started the season 7-0. We eventually went on to finish in first place with a record of 10-1-3. Three Ties! We were a tough team to beat.

The best part of the entire season was that the kids really liked each other. They liked hanging out together, they liked going to D-Backs games together. The loved playing baseball together. I really enjoyed managing them. It was the highlight of my week.

The Playoffs

We were heavily favored to win. But this is little league. Suddenly those teams that seemed so easy to beat in the begging of the season were hitting and fielding. Easy ground balls in game 3 that lead to hits and runs were suddenly outs. Three of the first four minors playoff games were decided by 2 runs or less. Tempe South has something special. We play at a local field where all 4 diamonds back up together – and it feels like the whole community comes out to watch. Two elementary schools in particular feed our league and on Saturday nights all the minors and majors play – it seems like the whole neighborhood turns out to watch. People will walk, or ride their bikes down to the ball park to see 150 kids play baseball for two hours. There’s nothing quite like it. And as you can imagine, at playoff time, we really draw a crowd.

Losing

While we won our first game, it was a our second that tripped us up. Heavily favored to win the entire tournament we didn’t expect to get into a dog fight. Nor did we expect to drop our second playoff game by a score of 4-3. Four to Three! In a league where scoring 13 runs was common.

I remember being personally devastated. I remember feeling the tension rise as the kids went from discussing what they would do after they won, to realizing the game was slipping away from them. My best hitters started to press. They were swinging at garbage. I had two kids who’d hit 700 all year long – seriously, 3 out of 4 times they came to the plate they hit – both strike out back to back with the tying run on third. We had two excellent chances to tie the game but just couldn’t get the runner home from third. We were shell shocked. All of us.

The Believe Rock

Ed and I didn’t know what to do. Then Ed’s wife Beth suggested Ed loan me their “believe rock”. It was a simple rock, a souvenir, from the Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series win. As the story goes, the Sox had made a similar rock with the word believe on it. And the luck of the rock had helped them win the series. Ed was a little embarrassed to tell me about it. To him it sounded kind of hokey, but something about it struck me just right. We needed to get our minds off the loss and move forward. We needed to get our swagger back – to shift our thinking and the rock seemed like just the thing.

So at the next game – we got to the field early, and because it was hotter than sin out in late May, we all put ice towels on our heads, and we stood in a circle around home plate. I held the stone out and said, “I am Coach Scott, and I believe today everyone will do their best. And win or lose, the Red Sox will play their best game ever. I then passed the stone to the player on my right. Then in sequence the stone made its way around the circle, each and every player stated their name and something positive they believed about the team. Finally the stone reached Ed who said my favorite thing. He said simply, “My name is Coach Ed, and I believe in the Red Sox, and I believe in each one of you.” Then we all came into the middle, put our hands on the stone and chanted, “I believe.”

Beware the Man Who Has Hope

I was going to say that I don’t know if it was the stone or not, but that would be a lie. It was the stone. Granted, the rock can’t play second base, or swing a bat, but it did focus us. It did bring us together. The ritual of sharing our hopes and dreams I believe was a powerful thing and it showed up that day against the Cubs. We found ourselves in the losers bracket, and if we wanted to win a championship we would have to climb up the losers ladder and beat the team from the winning bracket twice. Not only that, but the way the days fell we would have to be very careful and very lucky with our pitching. Little league has strict pitch counts and if players throw too many pitches in one game they are ineligible for the next. Winners get more days to rest. We definitely didn’t take the easy road.

I found out later, that one of the cubs players not knowing who they would play that day, ran up to the field and when they saw our banner shouted, “Oh Crap, it’s the Red Sox!” We won in convincing fashion 13-6. Our boys came out swinging from the first pitch and kept it up to the last. Near the end of the game, I remember looking at Showtime (our best player) and telling him, “You have 14 pitches to end this game.” The meaning was clear. If we went over 14 pitches we would be unable to use him in the next game. He threw only 13. And ended the game with a diving catch near third. The Red Sox definitely believed.

On a Mission

For our next game it was the same. We’d show up early, perform our pregame ritual of sharing our beliefs about the game and each other, and then we would go play. Win or lose, I believed everyone would do their best. Again, we scored 14 runs and gave up less than 10. We stayed alive to play another day. We joked we were playing Maximum Baseball. If we won it all we would play 7 games. The regular season was only 14. We’d play another half season – if we could get there.

And finally, we faced our nemesis, the team that had knocked us into the losers bracket – and that was the most intense hard fought game I can ever remember playing in. But we prevailed. Both teams played an excellent game, but in the end, we were able to pull it out. We were going to the championship against the A’s. We had made it.

A Championship to Remember

The first game of the championship was quite dully actually. We had all our pitchers so we threw our ace. Big Sarge. He threw a complete game and The Red Sox won in dominating fashion. However… the rain started to fall. A second game would have to be postponed. 6 days later – Game 2 of the Minors championship was on.

It didn’t start well for the Red Sox. The A’s threw their crafty left handed pitcher and our batters hungry for hits just couldn’t hold back. We played a strategy where our B-Pitchers would start the game (hopefully chewing up innings) so that we could finish with our Ace. That strategy didn’t work out quite like we planned. We were the visiting team and after 2 innings we found ourselves down 7 to 0. That was hard, but… our catcher – we called him Mad Dog – caught a runner missing home plate when he ’scored’ a run. The player ran up to the plate but never touched it and went into the dug out. Mad Dog turned to the Umpire and said, “he missed the plate.” The ump said, “I can’t help you but your coach can.” Mad Dog came to me and I told him what to do. “Go stand on home plate. Throw the pitcher the ball. Now have the pitcher throw you the ball. Step on the plate. Now look a the umpire.” (this is called an appeal) The ump called the runner out. I couldn’t believe it. Our stands erupted in cheers and so did our boys. It was a silly play – the other side just didn’t realize he’d missed home. But we needed the lift and at the start of the next inning it showed.

I will never forget standing at third base, in my coaches box, rocking back and forth waiting for something to happen. And it did. My son got a lead off double. Then right behind him Showtime blasted a home run to the fence. He absolutely crushed the ball and with the speed of those two kids there was no way anyone was going to get the ball in before they crossed home plate. Suddenly it was 7-2 and I thought, “here we come”. A couple more hits, some aggressive base running and we were able to scratch out 2 more runs. Suddenly it was 7-4. A much closer game. Finally we were able to bring in our ace. And the battle was on. We held them scoreless, and took the lead. 8-7 the next inning. Then they took it back, 9-8. The last batter in our lineup tied the game with a home run. 9-9. Our defense held in the bottom of the 6th inning to send the game into extra innings. It was a crazy, a minor league second game championship that went into extra innings.

For what ever reason, we came out swinging. We scored 5 runs in the top of the 7th and held the A’s scoreless. I’ll never forget the look on Rocket’s face (my son) when the batter hit the last out of the game, a pop up to first. Everyone rushed in on Sarge but gave him the room to make the catch. I could see that Matt so badly wanted to get to that ball but he believed in his teammate, gave him space and watched anxiously as he caught it cleanly and the game was over. We had done the impossible. We had climbed up from the losers bracket and won a championship. We had believed and we were rewarded for our belief.

Legacy

I have no idea what will happen this season. But I do know that I now carry a believe rock with me where ever I go. It was a gift. A pocket size river rock with the word “Believe” inscribed in gold letters. A special souvenir for a season I’ll never forget. Whenever I get down, whenever I feel like the world has turned against me, I remember those boys and the purity and strength of their belief, and I have faith. Confidence makes all the difference. You just have to believe.

Sometimes winning it all simply means that you kept the faith when life threw you a curve.

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