JohnA Passaro's Blog, page 42
August 7, 2016
The New York Twins
I am not an Arod fan, not even close, but what the Yankees did to him today was classless.
Every superstar of his magnitude deserves a farewell year or 1/2 of a year.
Arod handled himself the best he ever has in any press conference. I always thought tried too hard and came across fake.
Not today.
He came across genuine and protected the Yankees by deflecting any questions about what the Yankees wanted to do.
Basically, the Yankees came to him and told him they were releasing him and he asked to play in one last game so his mother can be in attendance to watch him play.
That game is next Friday.
There are 3 games until then.
He more than likely will not play in those.
As much as he tried to protect the Yankees, you could hear bits and pieces of the truth come out during his press conference.
What do the Yankees gain by cutting him now instead of announcing this would be his last year with them?
What would it hurt them to let him get 700?
Then let him sign with another team and pursue 715…
I came away with the impression that the Yankees made a calculated decision that by assigning Arod to his new advisor position up until December 2017, that if he wanted to play for another team he would have to forfeit the $21 million legally owed to him.
Knowing how much numbers mean to Arod they felt they could save $21 million.
This is a move the Twins would do, not the Yankees.
This is the type of thing of how curses start for organizations.
The curse of Arod?
714-696 = 18
18 years without a Championship coming up.
Welcome to the era of the New York Twins.
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June 22, 2016
I Watched Game 7 with Kurt Vonnegut
I watched Game 7 of the NBA Finals with Kurt Vonnegut.
Actually, I watched it with my four kids, Maverick, Travis, Cassidy and Jessica, my wife BettyJane, and our two dogs, Bandit, and HOV.
Vonnegut just whispered into my ear, from time to time, from afar.
The chance of all six of my families lives syncing for two hours is as remote as an NBA team down 3 games to 1 and coming back to win a championship.
I don’t know how it actually occurred, to sit down together to watch the game, as it most certainly was not planned.
The six of us eating, drinking and talking amongst each other as if there was no other place anyone of us wanted to be.
Somewhere during the first half, my wife and I caught eyes and we both realized just how special this moment was.
It was then when I first realized Vonnegut’s presence,
“If this isn’t nice, what is?
As human beings, we so rarely notice when we are happy,” he whispered in my ear.
I couldn’t agree more.
I savored the moment.
As a bandwagon fan rooting for the Golden State Warriors I was extremely displeased when the NBA suspended Draymond Green for game 5 of the finals.
The conspiracy theorists shouted the NBA wanted the series to go longer, to force a Game 7 which would generate millions of dollars.
At first, I too was crying foul.
But not tonight.
Tonight, as I just look around and see my family all in one place, I would like to thank the NBA forcing a game 7, whatever their selfish motivation might have been.
For without a Game 7, I’m 100% positive we each would have been involved separately with something of less importance.
But thanks to Kiki Vandeweghe and the NBA, there is a Game 7.
And Game 7’s are special.
People stop their lives for them.
People gather together to see the magic.
Why?
Because fates are determined.
Game 7’s are the one time where you are guaranteed to see one competitor go to Disneyland, while simultaneously seeing another falling uncontrollably down the mountain, like the skier on the Wide World of Sports promotion.
There is so much at stake.
In sport, there is no bigger spot than a Game 7.
By definition game 7’s can not happen every day.
They happen when two sides have won the same amount as they have lost.
Game 7’s are a teams culmination of great wins and devastating defeats.
In life, the most important team you will ever play for is your family. And you need to live every day like it is a Game 7.
However long the season has been, or however beaten, battered and injured you are, none of that matters when another day arrives. The only thing that matters is the need to put forth your best effort. To execute in a big spot.
Sometimes a family, like a team wins with a team effort.
Sometimes a family like a team needs for someone to carry their teammates on their back and carry them.
Sometimes in the game, like in life, there are no set plays when you are diving for a loose ball – you just use your sheer will and tenacity to get it.
Sometimes life is designed so you could be the one to do something that has never been done before, to come back from being down 3 games to 1.
“Tens of millions of people are viewing this game worldwide,” the announcer says.
It is then Vonnegut says to me,
“Although some people in life are celebrities on a national stage, other people’s destiny is not to be famous, which is actually more admirable and of much more importance. People’s destinies are to serve the place where they find themselves needed and feel most fulfilled, no matter how small or obscure it may seem to the rest of the world.
I am certain you are highly valued and badly needed right where you are, here with your family.
Your destiny is to build, strengthen and hold your family together.
Please love that destiny.
For families are all that are important in the world.
The rest is Hoopla.”
When I look back at Game 7 many years from now it will not be the Kyrie Irving’s go ahead 3 point shot with under 10 seconds to go that I will remember, or LeBron James hitting a free throw with an injured wrist to seal Cleveland’s first Professional Sports championship in over 60 years, but rather it will be Kurt Vonnegut’s message to learn to acknowledge and appreciate the small sweet moments of everyday life – as he would say,
The rest is Hoopla.
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June 17, 2016
Behind the Bookcase
Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me.
Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.
Anne Frank
74 Years ago
Never loose sight of the fact of how much each of our lives impacts one another.
How our private struggles and injustices, if we allow them to can and should be used for the betterment of humanity.
Imagine, if the struggle behind this bookcase, stayed behind this bookcase, and never was revealed to the world. Imagine if Otto Frank, Anne Franks father, never published her secret diary; how different the world would be.
It is amazing to come to understand, a seemingly common teenage girl – in her own way -changed the world.
We all can do the same.
In our own way.
It is human instinct to put one’s best foot forward, to put up your own personal bookcase.
To face one’s struggles privately is human nature.
But to do so stifles and limits the benefit of the struggle.
The world needs to see the struggle.
To reveal the struggle behind one’s bookcase takes an extraordinary amount of courage and truly benefits the world.
We need to listen to the people behind the bookcase in our own worlds.
And find a way to help them.
To be their Miep Gies.
Everyone is struggling with something no one knows about.
Recognize when a bookcase is hiding a struggle or injustice in someone’s life.
Find the secret entrance and get to them.
Otto Frank once said, “I hope Anne’s book will have an effect on the rest of your life so that insofar as it is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace.”
74 years later and Anne Frank’s book is one of the most-read books in the world.
Through Anne Frank’s struggles, the world saw the invincibility of the human spirit.
A seemingly common thirteen-year-old-schoolgirl did her part to change the world.
Now, let us each do ours.
Live brave.
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June 15, 2016
Life On Earth
I recently watched a TV program where an undercover cop got arrested with the gang he was trying to infiltrate.
The gang didn’t know he was undercover.
During the arrest the forces at be made it seem like he was part of them.
Which made me think.
Maybe, there are people on this earth who are undercover.
People who have been sent by a higher power.
People whose lives intertwine with ours for a brief time.
People who are sent into our lives at the exact moment we need them.
They provide us with a spark or dust off a belief system we once had or encourage us when we need it the most.
When they accomplish what they were sent to do, they move on.
Maybe, the forces that be have it all choreographed to look real and seem natural.
I believe the Universe uses us all in this way.
By intertwining each of our lives.
I believe we are all that undercover cop.
Good amongst evil, risking our lives for the betterment of mankind.
The only difference being, at first we don’t know we are undercover, either.
Until we figure it out.
That’s life on earth.
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June 14, 2016
Listen, Trust, Act
Your Soul Knows – Chapter 10 – JohnA Passaro
Life is a succession of lessons
That must be lived
To be understood.
Helen Keller
I recently came across the original artwork for the logo of the Long Island Playmakers, a travel baseball team I founded in 2001.
The artwork is a silhouette of Derek Jeter, making an off-balance throw while suspended in mid-air.
My mind drifts back to the time when I just knew I had to form this team, some 14 years ago.
I have learned when there is a feeling brewing inside of you, tingling at your soul, you must listen to it without question.
Trust it without confirmation.
And act on it without hesitation or delay.
Disregard all logic, ignore the probabilities, and mute your ears to the naysayers.
The tingling is inside of you for a very distinct reason.
A reason that is so unique to you, to your life, and to your future happiness.
A reason, so profound, it cannot be comprehended in the present time, but its vast magnificence will one day reveal itself to you in splendor, at the absolute perfect moment in time.
That feeling brewing in your soul is absolutely on time and is precisely on point.
You need to believe that.
There is nothing more significant to your future happiness than for you to be in harmony with the magical feeling in your soul.
Listen to it, trust it and act on it.
Your reason, when revealed, will fill the synapsis between the how’s and the why’s of your life.
They say the soul is like a parent to us, guiding us and giving us great advice along our life’s journey, and we are the child doing everything we can to ignore this advice.
Eventually, every child in the end finally understands their parent’s advice was dead on, they just couldn’t see or understand it at the time. Their life just needed time to develop.
One day in the future, when you are able to view your life looking backward, that inner feeling – your soul’s advice to you – will unmask itself and the pieces of your life’s puzzle will come together.
Until then, while you are forced to view your life looking forward, that feeling may seem fragmented and insufficient.
Trust the gaps in rationale and in logic.
Make the leap of faith.
Your soul tingles for a reason.
That tingling is your soul’s GPS system.
It knows.
It is able to see around corners, over mountains, and through the fog.
It will lead you to where you are meant to be at the exact moment you are meant to be there.
Listen to it.
Trust it.
Act on it.
And eventually, you will understand why the tingling was gnawing at your soul.
I know.
For I listened to mine.
In September of 2001, my soul tingled at the thought of building a youth baseball team to travel up and down the East Coast of the United States to compete in youth national baseball tournaments.
With nine-year-olds…
Believe me, as I am writing this I am snickering too.
At the time, my soul tingled at the thought of coaching and teaching young athletes life lessons through the sport of baseball.
The tingling told me to make it a top priority in my life.
Above all else.
It sounds absolutely crazy; I know…
My soul tingled at the thought of planning, training and coaching young athletes to compete at their highest level, on a national stage.
My soul tingled more intensely when I thought about teaching them how to win.
My soul led me to teach nine-year-olds about life through baseball.
I tried my best to dismiss the tingling feeling as being illogical and irrational.
It just didn’t make sense.
Of course, it didn’t make sense to me – I didn’t have all the data at the time.
But my soul did.
What sane person builds a travel baseball team of nine-year-olds to travel up and down the East Coast of the United States?
“Why can’t you just play in your neighborhood league?”
“Why is it so important for you to travel?”
I didn’t have the answers to these obvious questions.
I just knew playing in our local youth baseball league was not what my feeling was telling me to do.
That just didn’t make me tingle.
That is the only way I knew how to explain it.
No one understood it.
Including myself.
Never in my life had I ever experienced this type of inner knowing.
At first, I thought I was having a mid-life crisis.
I wasn’t.
I had a great life, a great wife, and four healthy kids.
I loved everything about my life.
But the overwhelming tingling feeling just wouldn’t go away.
“Why now?” I asked myself, trying to understand something that could not be understood at the time.
“There will be plenty of time to do this when the boys are older,” I tried to rationalize to myself.
“Why now, why such a sense of urgency?”
My answer to those two questions was always the same:
“It makes me tingle.”
I tried to pass the feeling off as being an irrational, fleeting thought that would eventually go away.
It did not.
Instead, the feeling intensified.
It demanded my attention.
It demanded that I listen to it.
It demanded that I trust it.
It demanded that I act on it.
Whenever the thought of building and coaching a youth baseball national tournament team entered my mind, it was as if I tapped into a vein of pure happiness.
Utopia.
I knew, I mean I just knew, I had to trust this feeling.
It was such a deep, never felt before kind of knowing, one I could not ignore.
So I didn’t.
In 2001, despite the ridicule and against all logic, I succumbed and trusted my internal compass.
I just knew I had to.
Going against every logical and rational fiber in my body, I formed the Long Island Playmakers National Tournament Teams to travel up and down the East Coast of the United States.
I founded two teams in all, one for each of my sons.
And I made them my top priority in life.
Above all else.
I prioritized the teams above my work; above all of my non-baseball friends and I even prioritized them above my extended family.
I am not saying this was right; I am just saying it was what I did.
Something was telling me it was that important.
I understood what I was doing was totally illogical and irrational, but I did it anyway.
The thing is, your soul doesn’t live in a logical or rational world.
It is your soul; it lives in a spiritual, all knowing world.
It lives in purified air; air that is comprised of truth, love, belief and knowing. Knowing about everything, about everyone, everywhere, forever.
I believe your inner feelings are there to lead you on that path.
The path on which you experience your own unique journey.
The journey that is called life.
I believe every experience we go through in life is preparing us for what is to come in our lives.
To teach us the life lessons we need to know so we can best be prepared to handle our ultimate test, somewhere in the future.
I believe that our lives are an accumulation of life lessons that can only be learned by personal experience, to be completely understood.
Reading about a life lesson, or someone lecturing you about one, pales in comparison to feeling and experiencing that life lesson first hand.
I truly believe that.
I believe that the best way to teach someone something is to make that person believe they are learning something else.
I believe the Universe does that to us.
It takes us on goals and missions in our lives we believe are the most important things to us at the time.
It does this to teach us lessons that we need to experience and learn, so we can successfully execute them when our real mission in life finally arrives.
I believe that if you really listen, your soul will talk to you.
All that we have to do is trust it, and act on it.
Throughout my Long Island Playmaker journey, I devoted six years of my life to building, coaching, and traveling with twenty young athletes and their families up and down the East Coast of the United States, competing in the most competitive youth baseball tournaments in the country.
We played against every great team, on every great field, and in every great tournament.
Over those six years, I invested an insane amount of time, money and energy into youth baseball teaching young athletes life lessons through sport.
It was the number one priority in my life.
It seems absurd, doesn’t it?
My mission was not only to teach young athletes how to hit, how to throw and how to catch a baseball; it was larger than that.
It was to teach them how to set a seemingly unachievable, dynamic goal and how to achieve that goal through belief, teamwork and by overcoming adversity.
In essence, my mission was to teach young athletes how to win at life.
As a team.
Yes, I valued and I taught winning.
“Playing a game and not caring about winning is like being alive and not caring about living.”
I also taught the value of a loss.
“It has to hurt. When it hurts it means you care.”
“When you care enough, you will figure it out.”
“You will learn more from your losses than you will from your wins.”
I taught unity:
“We win as a team, we lose as a team.”
I taught about taking responsibility and about not making excuses:
“No blame, never blame. Blame is a loser’s game.
Either you are part of the problem or you are part of the solution.”
I taught how to be a great teammate:
“Pick up your teammate when you see him down.”
“The most valuable player on the team is the one that makes his teammates better.”
I taught how to sacrifice for the betterment of the team:
“A teammate is not someone who wears the same jersey as you, a teammate is someone for whom you would sacrifice for, and they for you.”
I taught about how to focus in on what is important, the end goal:
“The goal is to score runs – you do that by getting someone on base, moving him over and then someone driving him in.
I taught how to be the best at something:
“You need to live, breath and sleep it, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It can’t be part of your life, it has to be your life.”
I taught about selflessly filling roles that needed filling:
“There is no batting order –depending on when you come to the plate will dictate whether your mission is to get on, to move a teammate over, or to drive him in. Every one of those parts is equally important, without someone getting on, there is no one to move over or to drive in.”
I taught about belief:
“The most valuable player on the team is the player who, when the team is down by a few runs in the seventh inning, still believes we can win. You don’t need talent to do that, you need belief.”
At the time, I didn’t know why I had such an overwhelming desire to build the Long Island Playmakers, or why we had to be so competitive, or why teaching young athletes how to win was so important to me, or why I was so obsessed with teaching life lessons through the sport of baseball.
I just knew it was.
I mean it really was.
It was like nothing in the world mattered more.
And for those six years of my life, nothing else did matter more.
In total, over the six years, I coached both Long Island Playmakers teams in over 1,000 baseball games (no exaggeration); we competed in over 80 tournaments, and in 12 national tournaments, from Long Island to Florida.
We played in The Cooperstown Dreams Park Tournament eight times, the AAU Nationals twice; we played in almost every “Ripken” and “Sports at the Beach Tournament.”
It was the best time of all of our lives.
Ask anyone who was part of it.
There is a quote from the movie, ‘Friday Night Lights,’ that says it best:
“When you look back at this time, I dare you to beat it. I just dare you.”
That time in our lives will never be beaten.
Every tournament the team attended was a mini-vacation for every member of the team and their families.
We would load up our trucks, throw a luggage rack on the roof, and travel anywhere we could find a team as crazy as we were.
We stayed at countless hotels, we surrounded ourselves with great friends, we spent an insane amount of money, and yes, we played baseball, too.
Virtually every weekend for six years, both of the teams I coached competed against the best competition we could find. Then we would travel back home for five days of practice, fine-tune our game in order to play our next opponent, in our next event, the following weekend.
We repeated the process over and over again, for a brief six years.
I can’t express the fun, the joy and the quality time my family and I experienced during those years, or the intense relationships we formed with the other parents along the way.
The travel, the family time, the mini vacations, the camaraderie just could never be topped.
We were living the life of a professional youth baseball player, with one exception; it was like what Shoeless Joe Jackson said in the movie “The Field of Dreams:”
“We would have played for nothing.”
We actually loved the sport so much we paid to play the game.
And that didn’t bother us at all.
Practice, travel, play in a tournament and repeat it all over again the next weekend – all year long, for six years.
We traveled so much my four-year-old daughter at the time, Cassidy, actually thought the “Hampton Inn” was her home.
All throughout this great journey, I heard people ask:
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why are you investing so much time and effort into youth baseball?
“Aren’t there more important things you could be doing?”
“Why don’t you wait until the boys are 15 – when it really matters?”
Those questions were all legitimate ones – just ones I could not answer with any logic.
“Because I just know I have to do this, and I have to do this now, while the boys are young,” I would answer outwardly.
Inwardly I said to myself, “I’m doing all of this now because it makes me tingle.”
It really was baseball heaven.
Until it wasn’t.
Like with all great things, the magical ride of the Long Island Playmakers eventually came to an end.
With success and high school approaching, the team transitioned from a team into a compilation of individuals, each with a different goal and agenda, not what I intended when I founded the organization.
It is exactly what happens when a member of a successful band wants to branch out on a solo career. It is impossible to be a member of a successful band and have a solo career at the same time; one will most definitely suffer.
One day, during the seventh year of the organization, I woke up to a coup where 90% of the players I had recruited, trained and coached for almost half of their life followed my assistant coach and started a new organization.
Absolute and total destruction.
One would think.
I did not.
My assistant coach took all of the Long Island Playmakers players, but he didn’t take the most important part of the formula – my belief.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself or sitting there wallowing in the destruction of what had just happened, I decided to just build it again.
“There is no way you can recover – all the best players on the Island just left, who else is there to recruit?”
“You might as well just face the facts, it’s over.”
“It was a nice ride – just enjoy that it happened.”
I heard over and over again by the baseball community.
I ignored the noise and I listened to my soul.
My soul said to let it go, to not harbor any ill feelings about what had happened; that every ounce of my energies would be needed to build it again.
In my soul, I believed I could build it again.
I needed to do it all again.
So I did.
There were just six months to the start of the next season.
All “the best” players were unavailable.
The question of “Why did they leave?” hung over me.
None of that mattered to me.
I had total, illogical and irrational belief that I could and would build it again.
Something was telling me it was important to do so.
So I did.
The first thing I remember doing was eliminating the doubt; ignoring the odds and the difficulty of accomplishing this feat.
I just put my head down and went to work.
I believed and thus put myself in a position for good things to happen.
And over time they did.
Miraculously, there was a local team that had lost half of its team to a similar event.
We combined forces.
In just six short months, I had rebuilt a team that was ready for a competitive season.
The season arrived.
My new team made it to the finals in the very first tournament in which they ever played in.
And wouldn’t you know it, our opponent in the championship game was my former team.
You can’t make this stuff up.
I always said I could beat myself with someone else’s team, and on that day, I proved that arrogant phrase true.
That win, in that tournament, after having to start completely over after total destruction, taught me one of the greatest life lessons I have ever learned:
Behind love, belief is the second most powerful force on this earth.
When belief, love and passion are combined, they produce growth.
Belief is not rational or logical.
It is magical.
People have always asked me if I hold a grudge against the assistant coach that poached my players and my team, and my answer is,
“I am so thankful he did, he taught me so much about belief.
I am sure it happened for a reason.”
It absolutely did and I would soon learn why.
A year after my Long Island Playmaker journey came to an end, life revealed to me the answers to all of those questions that had been asked of me during my baseball coaching years – all of the why’s…
Why was it so important to me to train young athletes to compete at such a high level?
Why did we have to travel?
Why was I so obsessed with teaching life lessons through the sport of baseball?
What was the sense of urgency to do this while the boys were young instead of the most logical time when they were in high school?
Why did I need to prove that I was able to start over from absolute destruction?
On a normal day in August 2009, my son Maverick decided he no longer wanted to play the game of baseball – something deep down was telling him he shouldn’t go to his game on that night.
Very contrary to my nature, I let him walk away.
Something inside of me said to let him do so.
It was on that night Maverick walked away from the game of baseball that all of those questions got answered.
It was on that night Jessica lost oxygen to her brain.
In just six minutes, my life changed forever.
Had Maverick gone to the game that night, we would not have been home to help Jess get medical attention.
The medical attention included putting Jess into a medically induced coma, in order to help her brain to heal.
My wife and I spent over 141 straight days with Jess in the hospital, at her bedside.
After the initial feeling of total destruction in my life, I knew the only way to rebound and rebuild was through my formula of:
Belief + Love + Passion = Growth.
I built a team of healthcare believers who believed in Jess’s recovery.
The team worked in unison to achieve a dynamic goal – to have Jess recover to her maximum capacity.
When the doctors and hospitals felt they did all they could do for Jess, BettyJane and I took Jess home where we elected to be Jessica’s 24 hours a day, 365 days a year caregivers.
By choice.
“Sacrifice is giving up something you value, to get back something you value more in return.”
Either I, or BettyJane are with Jess at every moment of every day.
During the day, my wife takes care of Jess, and at nighttime, I do.
My wife and I have been outside of our house together only a few times over the last five years.
One of us is always at home with Jess.
Traveling together is not possible or plausible at this point in our lives.
That is our choice, one we would make over and over again.
There is nothing more important to us than to care for and cure our daughter.
While looking back at my life and trying to understand the how’s and the whys of it all, it dawned on me why it was so important to build a team, to travel up and down the East Coast like there’s no tomorrow, to teach young athletes life lessons through sport.
They say you teach best what you need to learn the most.
I believe that.
I suddenly realized my passion for teaching young athletes life lessons wasn’t for them.
It was for me.
I was being prepared by the universe for things I had no idea I needed preparing for.
It was so I could learn everything I needed to learn to be prepared when I face my real opponent, which was to become Jessica’s caregiver.
Teamwork, belief, being a great teammate, sacrifice, yearning to win, overcoming total destruction, learning and rebounding from loss, it all made sense now.
The best way to teach somebody something is to make them think they are learning something else.
I believe we go through certain experiences in our lives so we can learn the life lesson we will need to master – to beat a bigger, future opponent we will one-day face.
I also believe these experiences have to be so important to us that we need to believe at the time, that it is all about them, but it is not.
They are just steps on the staircase to a higher, more important experience we will one day need to conquer.
That tingling inside of me was able to see years into the future and led me on a path that would best prepare me for what was to come.
I truly believe that.
Today, BettyJane and I are teammates.
Our family is our team.
It is the most important team I will ever be on.
Our goal is to score more runs than we give up, to be more happy than sad, to win the day, to win the game of life.
Our goal, just like everyone else’s in this world, is to find happiness and meaning in our lives, to make a difference in our world, to matter.
We do that through caring for and curing Jess and by living and loving life.
We pick each other up constantly when the other one is down.
It truly hurts because we care.
Over the six years I learned how to build a team, to focus its players on one dynamic, seemingly unreachable goal.
“To have one head, ten hearts and one beat.”
The sacrifice for the betterment of our family BettyJane and I make every day was taught to me through the sport of baseball.
I can remember hearing myself say:
“Sacrifice is giving up something you value in order to have the possibility of getting something you value more in return.
No player wants to give up his at bat and bunt, but he does it for the betterment of the team.
So the team can score a run.
And runs are what win ball games.”
The same is in life.
As parents we make sacrifices. We give up things of value so our families have the possibility of getting something greater in return.
“Take a pitch. It allows the base runner to steal a base and it wears the other pitcher down faster and when he is tired, we will strike.”
Nobody wants to give up what they value the most – their time and energy, but we do it so our families can win. As parents, we selflessly fill the role that is most needed by the team, our family. The role that is most needed in my family is the sacrificial role of being a caregiver. It is not glorious, or even pleasant, but it is what scores runs in our lives which help my family to win each day.
“On this team, the guy who just gave up his at bat and advanced a runner with a sacrifice bunt is met at the dugout steps with a high-five, just as if he had just hit a home run, that deserves our praise, that is what is going to make us win.”
Being a caregiver is making the ultimate sacrifice in life. It is willingly exchanging time in your life in order to take care of a teammate.
“You are not a teammate because you wear the same jersey, you are a teammate because you would sacrifice for that person and they for you.”
BettyJane and I willingly do this every day, and will continue to do so indefinitely.
During my baseball coaching years, I taught the value of being a great teammate:
“Pick your teammate up when he is down.”
The most important person on our family’s team is the one who believes we can still win when we are down in the score, late in the game. There is nobody more important during a crisis than the individual who lifts his family’s spirits, someone who makes everyone around him have belief and hope.
“The most valuable player on the team is not the player with the most talent, it is the player who makes his teammates better.”
Over the six years I taught the importance of yearning to win:
“Yearning to win catapults one to prepare to win, and that is what makes champions.”
The desire to win in life is extremely important.
“Playing a ball game just to play the game and not to win the game is like being alive and not living.”
When you care you find a way. You figure it out.
“It has to hurt, if it hurts that is good – it means you care.”
I taught to believe before most anyone in the world did.
“They could take away everything and I can rebuild – as long as I have belief.”
The ability to come back from seemingly absolute total destruction is possible as long as you believe, when most wouldn’t.
Currently, Jessica has made tremendous advancements on a relative scale.
A scale that started out with the starting line that was as close to death as one could be.
Today, Jessica is currently non-verbal and non-mobile, equidistant between death and life.
Which way that she will go will be based on love and belief.
It will be based on our ability to continuously have a big goal, to feel the reward is worth the effort.
I truly believe that.
It has taken an extreme amount of effort to get to this point.
We hold out hope and work towards the day when she improves as much as is possible for her to improve.
I truly don’t feel like I am missing out on anything in life – taking care of my daughter is exactly where I want to be.
There are whole weekends were I do not leave a room now, or weeks that I do not leave the house, that is fine – as I have done enough traveling in my lifetime.
I write this story for a few reasons.
To let you know about the magnificence of your inner voice.
Without speaking, it will talk to you.
Listen to it, trust it, and act on it.
No matter how illogical or irrational its message may be.
It is always on time and exactly on point.
There is nothing more important to the overall joy and happiness of your life than to listen to your inner voice.
It is your soul, and your soul knows.
When you get a tingling inside of you, follow it.
It knows things you can’t know right now.
Trust it more than anything in the world.
Act on it.
Eventually, you will understand why.
I write this story to relate to you the power of belief.
Believe in belief.
It is the second most important emotion in the world.
Dare to believe before anyone else does.
I write this story to relate to you the importance of teaching the yearning to win.
“Yearning to win catapults you into action, to prepare to win, it makes you expect great results and inspect your losses, to learn from them.
You will learn more from your losses than your wins.”
I know I have.
Why does God let bad things happen?
I don’t know the answer to that question yet, but I get the feeling that over time my life’s picture will fully develop and the answer will be revealed to me, along with the trees grown from the seed of the greater good.
I look forward to being able to review the next twenty-two years of my life in retrospect.
I believe everything in life happens to you for a reason.
Every person you meet, you meet for a reason, at the right time, at precisely the right moment and then they move on.
When you have the opportunity to look back at your life all of the pieces do come together.
All of the experiences do combine to create a total picture.
Are all of the things that will happen in life fair or just?
Most definitely not, but magically that too is part of the universes formula.
How?
Only the universe knows at the time.
We eventually find out.
Until then keep living.
Keep feeling.
Keep loving.
Keep moving forward.
The universe is more complex than we can ever imagine.
There are eight billion pieces being juggled by the universe all at once, all intertwined, all interconnected.
The universe is complex, but it is very simple.
It runs on love.
‘More love’ solves everything.
So keep putting your pieces together.
Keep loving.
Keep believing.
Keep living forward so when the right time comes you can review your life in reverse and understand.
I put the artwork of the Long Island Playmakers logo and all the other pieces to the puzzle of JohnA Passaro back into my box, and I put the box back on the top shelf.
I take a deep breath as I have a renewed faith that everything in life happens the way it is supposed to happen.
Or else it would have happened differently.
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6 – Delayed Divine Explanation
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May 24, 2016
The 2% Toll
Becoming a champion is not about doing 98% of the work that is necessary to achieve your goal.
It is about doing the 2% that makes the difference.
The 2% that is hard.
The 2% nobody wants to do.
The 2% that only the 2% do.
The 2% which separates very good from great, great from elite, the elite from legendary, 49-1 from 50-0.
What you do, over and over, at first adds up, then multiplies and eventually has an exponential impact on the end result.
Running sprints and your toe just misses the line because it is more important to beat the guy next to you by cutting corners then it is for you to come in 2nd by doing things right – there’s your 2%.
Drilling a move and only getting in 49 great reps, instead of 50 – there’s your 2%.
Up by 14 in a match and turning on cruise control instead of scoring the 1 point necessary to end the match – there’s your 2%.
Making a late night visit to your local gym to use the sauna instead of running to lose the weight – there’s your 2%.
Restricting your body and depriving your brain of water and expecting to perform at peak levels – there’s your 2%.
Tuning out your coach who is making an adjustment of a bad habit he has noticed in your match, one that you got away with against an inferior opponent, and one he is warning you won’t get away with against a great opponent – there’s your 2%.
Being the 2nd wrestler into the room for practice – there’s your 2%.
Allowing yourself to rationalize the reason you were just taken down in practice is because you are cutting weight – there’s your 2%.
Not attending a tournament to protect your national ranking – there’s your 2%.
If the truth be told, there are enough opportunities to make up the 2%, the only thing is you haven’t yet realized the importance of the compounding of just 2%.
To make the ascension to the next level the toll is only 2%.
Are you willing to pay the 2% toll?
It is the 2% toll to inner peace.
Knowing you did everything you could do, there wasn’t one more thing you could have done in your quest to achieve your goal.
The difference between regret and inner peace is only 2%.
In the end, it is a price well paid.
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Twenty-six years ago, my mission in life was to win a New York State Wrestling Championship.
I committed myself to a lifestyle, I made the sacrifices, I put in the time, I starved myself, I even shaved my head.
I had the hunger, the desire, and the determination, but I came up short.
For many years, after I graduated it seemed like I got nothing out of my six years of total dedication to the sport. That the trade-off of what I gave and what I got in return to this sport was way out of whack.
I hated wrestling for it.
To put every ounce of your soul into achieving something and to get nothing out of it in return was beyond my comprehension and I just could not justify it in my head.
Until, I had adversity in my life.
And slowly but surely, I started realizing how much the sport of wrestling actually has given back to me.
Much more than I ever knew.
6 Minutes Wrestling with Life is much more than a wrestling book.
It is a book on life, love, loss and belief.
Get ready to laugh, cry, smile and think…
READ THE COMPLETE BOOK ONLINE
9. BE THE GUY WHO SETS THE BAR
14. ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK
16. FISH HOOKED – DON’T TAKE THE BAIT
18. DAY 28 EERILY PARALLEL LIVES
22. TOURETTE’S WITHOUT TALKING
23. 6 BEDS – 7 PATIENTS – 0 PATIENCE
28. AN AWAITING RESERVOIR OF “CAN DO”
33. SLEEPING WITH MY SNEAKERS ON
37. ONLY LIGHT DRIVES OUT DARKNESS
38. FROM MELROSE PLACE TO ER OVERNIGHT
43. ADULT LARGE – TAKE THE HIT
52. EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON
55. TODAY IS A GREAT DAY TO BE ALIVE
May 15, 2016
Every Breath Is Gold Trilogy
Every Breath Is Gold Trilogy
6 Minutes Wrestling with Life, Again, Your Soul Knows
Get ready to laugh, cry, smile and think.
There is a club in this world you do not join knowingly.
One day you are just a member.
It is “The Life-Changing Events Club.”
The fee to join the club is hurt beyond belief, payable in full, up front, for a lifetime membership.
The benefit of the club is a newfound perspective on life, and a deep understanding that you may not be happy about your current situation, but you can be happy in your current situation.
The club does not provide a directory of its members, but when you look into a member’s eye, you can tell that they, too, are part of the club. Members are allowed to exchange brief eye contact that says, “I didn’t know.”
Being a member of this club is the last thing anyone intentionally wants in their life.
Being a member of this club is the best thing that ever happens to a person in their life, and there is not a person who would ever give up their membership.
If you really look and know what you are looking for, you can spot the club’s members. They are the ones who perform a random act of kindness; people who do something for someone who can never repay them. They are the people spreading joy and optimism and lifting people’s spirits even when their own heart has been broken.
I have paid my dues.
My lifetime membership arrived today.
Not by mail, but by a deep inner feeling I cannot describe.
It is the best club I never wanted to be part of.
But I am – for life.
READ ONLINE
6 Minutes Wrestling with Life -(Book 1)
Again – (Book 2)
Your Soul Knows – (Book 3)
May 11, 2016
111 Ways to Start to Recover From a Life-Changing Event
Life is hard.
And unpredictable.
Sometimes, life will throw you a curve.
When it does, the solution is easy; you just learn to hit a curve.
But what do you do when life throws you a grenade instead?
One that goes off and disrupts or destroys nearly every aspect of your life.
Death, a divorce, a diagnosis – a random act of violence.
You wake up one day, and your current life is no reflection of the life you once knew.
If this happens, I’m not going to tell you everything is going to be alright – because I don’t know.
That is going to be up to you.
The term ‘alright’ is going to take on a new meaning to you.
What I will tell you is to buckle up – because it is going to hurt like hell – for that I do know.
It is going to hurt more intensely than you can ever imagine.
Enough to paralyze you.
And when you do learn how to move again, you will be moved to your breaking point.
Many times over.
The pain will be enough to fill your every thought with quitting and throwing in the towel.
Don’t.
When you get pushed to the edge, to your breaking point, instead of using a period in your life, use a semi-colon.
Go on.
There is more story to write.
More life to live.
More love to feel.
Hang in there.
Tread water for as long as you can.
And even longer if you have to.
Kindness will find you.
The best day in your life hasn’t been lived as of yet.
The goal is to believe that.
As you sit there, looking around at the destruction in your life, what you do not yet realize is the adversity you have experienced, although devastating, has secretly given you a gift.
A gift so valuable, you will never want to relinquish it.
Although this gift is available to everyone, nearly everyone is too busy to recognize it.
They say “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
You are now ready.
Look around you, at first, you may not see anything at all.
But I can assure you the teacher is present.
Buckle up, because you are going to go on the ride of your life.
From the depths of despair to the heights of euphoria.
Right now you can only see the ways your life has changed for the worse.
Those changes are quite obvious.
The good news, and yes there is good news, is your life has the possibility to change for the better.
Significantly.
It is a universal law when the universe takes something of value from you, it must give you the gift of the seed of something greater in return.
One day, I don’t know when probably sometime after all your human emotions have run their course, you will come face to face with ‘your gift of the seed of something greater.’
What you do with that seed will be totally up to you.
You could plant and nourish the seed and experience the miracle of its growth, or you could pay it no attention and allow it’s fruit to die even before they get to the vine.
Make your choice wisely.
The seed is the greatest gift you will ever be given in your life.
You don’t know that as of yet.
But you will in time.
If there is anything you ever trust again – trust in the fact that the seed, if planted, will produce boundless fruit in your life.
The fruit you never knew existed.
The fruit that will nurture you back to health.
You have paid the full price for the gift.
You might as well open it.
I will not insult you and say the gift is in any way a fair exchange for what you lost.
Or even that you should be grateful for the exchange.
And I know it is not an exchange you sought, and one if given the choice, you would undue.
But when all is said and done, you have two choices.
You can open the gift.
Or not.
That is up to you.
The exchange may not be what you want in your life right now.
But it is what you have.
And it is much more valuable than you know.
I have never met a person who experienced a life-changing event who ever wanted to give back their new found perspective of life.
I know you do not believe that to be true, in time you will.
Inside the gift lives what you lost.
Opening the gift is the only way to keep it alive.
Rebuilding your life makes it’s spirit flourish.
I know right now you want to lie down amongst the rubble in your life, to just blend into the destruction.
They say the greatest mistake is in giving up.
Don’t.
It is your duty to build again.
The normal reaction will be to try to rebuild a life exactly as the one you had before the grenade went off.
That will prove futile.
As you rebuild, if you attempt to replicate your past life you will realize if you rely on the pieces the grenade destroyed, you will come up short in comparison, as gaps and holes will emerge in your new structure, and the result will look nothing like your life before the grenade hit.
The key is to rebuild, not to replicate.
Obviously, there are pieces of your life that are missing.
You are going to need to be resourceful; to do more, with less.
As you rebuild, you will need to get more from your new found perspective of life.
When you do, the rubble will miraculously transform into a foundation on which you will build a new life.
No, it will not be the same.
It can’t be.
There are pieces missing.
But it will make this moment matter.
And it does.
Do not attempt to make answers to your unanswerable questions the prerequisite to your happiness.
Believe, what you do not currently understand, one day you will.
Rather, concentrate your focus on your new-found perspective and live and be alive.
Here are 111 ways to start to recover from a life-changing event.
Dream
Believe more
Doubt less
Trust more
Fear less
Live more
Exist less
Find gratitude
Care
Don’t compare
Always be in the moment
Find compassion
Have empathy
Smile
Laugh
Seek understanding
Pay attention
Allow yourself to heal, to grieve, to cry, to feel
Love again
Love deeper
Fight like hell
Have confidence
Exude enthusiasm
Be amazed
Live in awe
Be an asset to everyone you know
Have passion
Forgive
Be thankful
Say thank you
Simplify
Organize
Optimize
Be resourceful
Earn your keep
Have a vision
Passionately pursue your purpose in life
Find your life’s passion and diligently pursue it
Do something good for someone who has no chance of ever being able to repay you.
Be happy when others find happiness
Appreciate the miracle of a new day
Find extraordinary in the ordinary
Listen to your inner self
Be still and allow the answers you seek to find you
Touch someone’s soul at every given opportunity
Recognize the divine in everything
Reacquaint with an old friend
Allow family and friends to help you
Be a good friend yourself
Be an integral part of your family
Enjoy every aspect of your life – even failure
Embrace your age
Be intimate with your loved one
Feel
Touch
Be held
Hug someone an extra second longer than you usually would
Seek to understand others plight
Learn your parent’s life’s story – you will understand and appreciate it more now
Learn a strangers life story
Make a new friend
Listen to your inner self
Trust your soul
Tap into a universal higher power.
Follow your life’s inner compass
Trust yourself – especially when it doesn’t make sense to do so.
Compliment others
Improve the quality of other people’s lives
Help a lost soul find their way
Mentor a child
Keep a person down on their luck company
Get one with nature
Garden
Care for animals
Value each increment of time
Communicate more with everyone who matters to you
Reacquaint with old friends
Pick up the phone
Send the email
Mail the letter
Send the thank you note
Run into the person in the grocery isle instead of dodging them
Be the difference
Seek solutions
Leave time in your life – to be kind
Pass along a positive outlook on life to your children
Keep your marriage sacred
Be fun to be around
See the miracle in everything
Help others without their asking
Detect fake smiles in others and decipher what pain they are hiding – then do something to make the fake smile turn real
Hear those who are silently crying out for help and share in and absorb some of their pain
Surprise someone – For no other reason other than because you can
Do more than what is expected from you no matter how much is expected from you
Strive to be the “best you,” you have ever been
Challenge yourself
If there is one more thing that you can do – do it
Be there for someone
Eliminate distance in your relationships
Show up unexpectedly
Say hello
Say goodbye
Say I’m sorry
Say I don’t know
Say I love you
Solve problems with love
Add love to everything you do, with everyone you see
Give love freely
Give love first
Look forward to tomorrow
Open all of your gifts
May 6, 2016
April 19, 2016
Contrast
Before any of this ever happened, I thought I knew what it was to be grateful.
This is the kind of thing that happens to other people.
It doesn’t happen to you.
You have things to do.
Or, not do.
You are certainly, most definitely, not in the market for a tragedy.
For an upheaval, for the roar of the earth as it cracks and gives way beneath your feet.
No, that is what happens to someone else.
Until it happens to you.
We are powerless to prevent it, but we are not left powerless.
Tragedy has one redeeming quality: it’s ability to highlight the very best in us and the very best in others.
Our happy is happier.
Our sadness is more poignant.
Our lives are more intense in every way lived in contrast.
Nora McInerny Purmort
