Interest vs. Commitment

I have been evaluating talent for over 18 years.  It started when I began doing baseball lessons, then as a scout, now as an intern.  The mechanics are not much different from looking at a persons swing or their health.  Evaluating is a learned skill set.  So I want to address interest verse commitment.  I see people all the time that are interested in changing some aspect of their life.  They want to loose weight or get a degree so they can get that job they want, or even meet a mate.  Then I meet people who are committed to these things.  There is a huge difference and unless you are paying attention you might miss them.  Here is the real bottom line.  Interested people will do what is convenient to obtain what they want.  If things work around their schedules, friends, family, work, and activities they will continue to chase their dreams.  When things start to get in the way of their lifestyle or situations get tough and they now are going out of their way or things are not convenient anymore they give up.  Committed people are a different breed.  They do whatever it takes to obtain their dreams and goals.  Which means when things become inconvenient and they will they change their situation, adjust, adapt, and keep moving towards the prize.  The problems are not the focus they are just obstacles and the goal is always in front of them.  The "Do Whatever It Takes" or DWIT is a solution based thinking.  I have been in Chiropractic College for the last three and a half years.  I was Committed to this process from the beginning.  I have failed classes, been set back a quarter, and even failed my last set of board exams.  So?  My eyes are still on the prize.  I am a chiropractor.  I have not finished school and I do not have that piece of paper in my hand but in my mind I am a chiropractor.  I've seen the graduation ceremony so many times in my head that I know it has already happened.  I hope that it really is as amazing as I have imagined.  I could have quit a thousand times and in the first year I wasn't so sure I was smart enough or even if I had the qualifications to even be here.  I'm in class with biochemist, biologist, athletic trainers, and some other fields that I wasn't even sure existed.  So of the smartest and intelligent minds I had ever experienced.  I was just a former professional baseball player and baseball instructor who had been a chiropractic patient for over 25 years and had been adjusting teammates using the moves that had been done to me without any formal training.  The hardest thing was I have only seen my daughter a handful of times in the last three years.  We talk and text but I really miss her presence.  When I came to Palmer one of the reasons was because it was close to her.  Then she moved away.   Another inconvenience I have had to adjust too.  I have had to create a budget and stick to it.  Which means many weekends spent at home, rarely eating out unless someone offers to pay, walking places to save gas,  planning how many miles I have to drive in a week and planing work around this.  I wasn't able to afford all the cool seminars so I looked for other alternatives.  This weekend I borrowed an extremity adjusting video series from my preceptor doctor and watch that.  Cost $0.00 and four hours of my time.  I have found many educating doctors online.  I paid for 2 years of medical training online for $99.00  over 500 lectures and I didn't start watching them until four months ago.  I have obtained $400.00 medical books for $30.00 and use them weekly.  I could have spent that money on shoes or clothes or my girlfriends but my focus and commitment has been constant.  When my ways of being line up with my choices then I know I am committed to my wants, dreams, and goals.  When my choices go against my gut feelings then I know I am off the mark.  It is funny that the definition of sin is failing to hit the mark.  So when I am not in line with my purpose I am actually sinning.   I have seen this over and over in the last three years.  I have made choices that have gone against my purpose.  I once had a class that I thought was so boring that I would just sit in class surfing the Internet looking at crap. I couldn't understand how I failed the class.  I had not mastered the material.  Honestly I did not even know the material.  The second time around I paid very close attention an obtained a B.  So my money and time have really been spent doing the things that will require me to obtain my goals.  I'm not saying you have to be this focused Nazi and not have any balance in your life.  I have the mentality that I can have it all.  I have been in relationships, played lots of baseball, trained my body into the best shape ever, traveled a little, and experienced the bay area.  I have also said "No." a lot.  Going out and partying it up and knowing full well that I will not be studying the next day has made me avoid this behavior.  If I lived around whether things were convenient I would have quit this program in the first week.  There is nothing convenient about this program.  It stretches my limits all the time.  Maybe I wasted days and weeks studying material in such a tired state I felt like I was not retaining any of the information.  Maybe subconsciously I really was.  Some people can not go through life and miss a thing.  They have to go to that wedding even though it falls right before finals week.  Or that concert, or trip, or even go home all the time miss because they miss their family.  I laugh when they tell how much money they get and all the crap they blow it on.  It's a loan.  That trip to South America that cost $3000.00 today will be $30,000 with compounding interest.  Or the new car or truck, all the furniture, and trips to Vegas and Hawaii.  They will be paying on that stuff  for the next 20 years even after they have sold it. I kept things to a minimum.  I worked my butt off because I didn't take all the loans and I did not buy things with my loan money.  I used my earnings.  I have even maintained a $500.00 a month car payment.  I should have sold it, but I like my Jeep.
So I was willing to DWIT to have it.  I worked late nights whenever I was called to.  I umpired all spring and summer as many days a week as I could.  I cooked for myself and ate lots of rice and oatmeal.  I didn't get a gym membership until my last year and I only kept it for five months.  I do not need a gym to motivate me.  I can work out just as hard with body weight or use the free gym at the apartment complex.  Today I work in a clinic that has a gym in it.  It was one of the reasons I chose it.
I hope this is starting to make sense.  There is a huge difference between being interested and being committed to something.  When you chose to do something then make sure you are committed to it.  Your effort and enthusiasm will be high and positive and it will be fun.  Chiropractic school has been hard but I will say it has been fun too.  If you know me then if its not fun I will not do it.

Why I hate the Cubs.

It all started out when I was a kid living in Battle Creek, Michigan on Vermillion Road.  My best friend in the world was Greg Roderick.  He rarely come over to my house and I think I lived at his.  It was the sports complex of the area that was why Greg and I spent so many hours of the day together.  His dad and mine had worked together at Clark Equipment together and were good friends and I looked up to him as a father figure after mine past away.  Greg and I would play football across the street, basketball in his drive way and baseball in the back yard.  Greg's backyard was the beginning of my displeasure of the Chicago Cubs.  You see when we picked teams Greg was always the Cubs.  I was everyone else.  The Tigers, or Cardinals, even the Expos.  I had an Expos hat from a team I would bat boy for and liked Tim Wallach.  Later in life when I settled on a number that I have preferred and it was 29 for TimWallach.  Greg had the Cubs jersey and hat and the pride to go with it.  I just wanted to be the Cubs once and wear the hat.  He was much bigger than me and showed great potential as a player.  We had many battles in his back yard and even today I think about how it shaped me as a player.  So I just wanted to beat the Cubs all the time.  In the beginning it was just like the real season.  Cubs were about a .500 team.  We were even but in true Cubs fashion he would fall apart or I would get hot and well you know the story.  Cubs loose.  He would probably tell the story a different way and say it wasn't that bad but it was.  Greg was a right handed hitter and pitcher. I was a left handed hitter and right handed pitcher.  He would have to hit the breaking ball going away and his would fall inside on my front leg.  A pitch that every low ball hitting lefty loves.   My second reason is in 1996 I was given a private workout in Arizona with the Cubs.  I came down in great shape and determined to make the team.  I wanted to get on the Cubs for one time in my life.  So Tom Gamboa gives me a shot.  He doesn't run me or check out my arm he just puts me in a group of big league hitters.  Dave Magadan, Matt Franco, and I thought the third was Tyler Houston.  These guys crushed the ball and I was a little nervous and even intimidated.  I preceded to foul of eight of my ten swings.  Tom Gamboa is walking away now.  Dave Magadan was this ball of positive energy and when I get out of the cage he pulls me aside and says, "You have a great swing kid just let it loose."  Then he steps into the left side of the box and starts hitting the hardest line drives to the left center gap and have so much fun doing it.  My second round starts and then after a few well hit balls Gamboa gets up and walks back over to the cage with interest peaked a little.  Then round three and four with better and better results and I'm feeling good.  Mags is hugging me and loving every minute of it.  "This f'n kid can hit!"   He walks over to Tom and says, "Gammy you gotta sign this kid, he can swing it."  Now I will never forget the next words that came from Tom Gamboa.  "He's too old."  I was 24.  I had never been drafted, played two years of Independent Professional Baseball and hit .416 and .329 in those two years and I was still refining my swing.  The look on Dave Magadan's face was utter shock.  The look was that look of what the heck I am 33 am I to old?"  Dave was loosing his hair and was even a little grey.  I would say he looked 40.  I was a little disappointed too.  I thought if he just wanted to see me hit then I had done a great job of showing him.  I only hit one out and it was an opposite field line drive. These fields are not normal dimension of 330 feet on the lines in and 400 feet to center.  This field was 360 feet on the lines and 420 in center.  They want to see if you have pop or serious pop.  That's when I really started to understand the power of intention.  I opened my mouth and and uttered these words, "Well maybe the White Sox will sign me."  Eight days later my agent called me and said I have a job for you in South Bend, Indiana.  Class A for the Chicago White Sox's is the assignment.  I got on the phone with the player director of the White Sox and sold him on who I was.  He signed me on a phone interview and no tryout at all.  So that is why I hate the Cubs so much.  Funny and true story was this.  Remember Tom Gamboa?  Check this out at a White Sox game FAN ATTACKS TOM GAMBOA .   That was one of my fans.   No not really I just thought it was coincidence that he was attacked at a Sox game.  I have no ill will towards Tom.  He did my workout as a favor to my hitting coach Perry Husband. I was so upset I probably never thanked him so this is my public acknowledgment of his favor and my many thanks.  I was blessed to be on the field will Dave Magadan, Matt Franco and Tyler Houston who is a personal friend today.

Does anyone read the research?

Sometime I am so confused by the research.  One article says this is good and this is bad.  Curve balls are bad to throw and fastballs are good.  Another article says that curve ball are fine and its fastballs that are harder on the arm.  So what's the truth?  Has there been actual research and biomechanical analysis done?

Here is the Article link from American Journal of Sports Medicine on biomechanic (Abstract)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19448049

The keypoints are in the Results, Conclusion, and Clinical Relevance.


These two articles just have Abstracts:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25251251
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19741352

Photo from zacharymagee.com

They are published articles with no bio-mechanical data just case studies and questionnaires to collect data.  So when reading and comparing data sometime its like apples the running shoes.  The research on one is correct and so is the other but its really hard to link them together.
If you just talk bio-mechanics with torque and arm velocity and stress then a fastball is more stressful than a curve ball.  That is what the data reports.  So do we stop throwing so many fastballs or do we find the real culprit......overuse.  Or is overuse the real culprit.  I know that the same muscles in the arm are made of the same fibers as those in the legs.  Runner train and train and keep increasing their speed and distance.  Do runners have overuse injuries?  Yes they do.  They have stress fractures, (the most common one), sprains and strains to joints but rarely the tendons and muscle tear like in the classic Ulnar Collateral Ligament tear in pitchers.  I personally think running 13.1 or even 26.2 miles is more traumatic then throwing 100 pitches.  There are some marathon runners that go out and run 6-8 miles the day after the have run a full marathon.
Training may be the key also.   Alan Jaeger says players do not throw enough.  I think he is right too.  I think he is right about older players that their bones have stopped growing.  After really studying the anatomy of the elbow and shoulder I am firm when I say this.  The combination of overuse, growing epiphysis, developing muscles and tendons and lastly inflammation are the real culprits.  Then the parents, coaches, and player ignore sound medical advice about dealing with an arm injury.  Feeding the young player anti-inflammatory pills is not the great fix all either.  It is probably a major contributor to the problem.  The elbow is a high tissue turn over area.  Meaning tissue in the synovial region is constantly being replaced and repaired.  Anti-inflams stop that turn over to reduce inflammation.  So the repair is slowed, but it needs to happen.  The young pitcher feels better because the inflammation has gone away and range of motion is restored so they think, "I can throw again!"  With out explaining this any farther are you seeing the problem?  It really is a combination of things that lead to the demise of that pitchers arm.    

Check or Zach Magee's article too.
http://zacharymagee.com/trouble-with-the-curve/