Passion/Obsession

     Before I begin this blog, I owe my readers an a apology. Last week's edition was a rather lengthy post. I felt time crunched because of the impending All Star Game. As a result, I self-edited rather than relying upon the incisive eyes of my editor, who was just concluding a well-earned 2 week vacation. Not knowing whether or not she could find time to look at my writing.

     Well, that was a mistake. There were plenty of errors. One no more egregious than saying the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 1994, when I know all too well that they broke Yankees' fans hearts in 2004.

     She is off again, babysitting the grandkids. I promise to do better this time.

     One more thing. While I remembered much of what was published, I did research some events to be sure of the date and players involved to insure accuracy. Otherwise, I could have been subject to the fact-checking of The New York Times or The Washington Post.  Way too much of that going on lately, so I wouldn't want to divert their attention from more important activity.

     In The Harvard Science Review from the Spring 2014, author Carrie Sha defines passion as "an intense desire or enthusiasm for something; the zealous pursuit of an aim." She notes that "obsessive individuals are controlled by very unwanted thoughts," as opposed to "passionate individuals make deliberate decisions on their interests."

     My desire to watch the All Star Game in the past just as I did this past week was the result of my passion for the game. Which I derive as a very good thing. Having stayed up for all 10 innings to see the AL be victorious in DC and to watch a record 10 homers swatted starting with Aaron Judge's blast off of NL starting pitcher Max Scherzer through to the game winner hit by Alex Bergman of the Astros and the NL's last gasp home run by Cincinnati's Joey Votto, I would have believed I was being a bit obsessive. But author Sha indicates that obsessive-compulsive disorder is more complicated and stands in the way of a normal, productive life.

     Thus, I want to let you know that the All Star Game is not the only things that I have a compelling need to see or do.  Thanks to my parents and specifically my father's insatiable need to gamble in Las Vegas, I was exceptionally fortunate to travel the country by car numerous times into my 20's.

     Therefore, I accumulated a ton of states that I had been in. Somewhere in my 40's, I decided that I would travel to all 50 states by time I was age 50. Check that off of my list.

     With that traveling out of the way, then there was the need to hit all major league franchises' stadiums by age 70. Twenty-four of them are done. I have Tampa Bay, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee, Kansas City, St. Louis and the dreaded trip to Boston's Fenway Park to finish in the next 27 months.

     But that isn't enough. I have had this fascination to visit all of the major conference campuses. The Atlantic Coast Conference has been completed. I need to go to Washington State in the Pac 12.
what I have seen of the Big 12 leaves me trips to Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State.  I must travel to Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska to finish the Big Ten; my drive by of Lincoln, Nebraska on the I-70 does not count. With the SEC, all I have left is Mississippi and Mississippi State to do. For a finishing touch, I did see each of the Big East football schools.

     For good measure, I have seen all Ivy League and Patriot League campuses. The current Big East is a quandary for me--do I go out of my way to see Creighton, Marquette and Xavier? Probably not.

     I have also been to a number of other campuses that are within the lesser conferences. They include UNLV, Fresno State, San Diego State, San Jose State, New Mexico, New Mexico State, Colorado State, BYU, Weber State, Utah State, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, Cal State Northridge, Cal State Fullerton, University of Buffalo, Cal State Long Beach, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, Northern Arizona, Wyoming, Northern Colorado. Southern Utah, SUNY Binghamton, LIU, Hartford, Oral Roberts, Oklahoma City, Portland State, Sacramento State, Delaware, UMBC, Eastern Michigan, Northern Michigan, Alabama-Birmingham, Georgia State, FIU, UCF, University of Tampa, FAU, UNC-Charlotte, George Mason, William & Mary, ODU, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Towson, James Madison, Radford, Furman, Liberty, Marshall, Western Kentucky, George Washington, all of the service academies and Notre Dame. Name a school and I have probably been there.

     Yet I felt that I needed to do some D-III conferences, given my graduation from Franklin and Marshall.  So  I have traversed the entire Centennial Conference, of which F&M is a member; the NESCAC; the New Jersey Athletic Conference; every UAA school but for Washington-St.Louis; a good portion of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Ditto the Liberty Conference; CUNY ; the Landmark Conference except for Scranton; about half of the Middle Atlantic Conference; much of the NEWMAC; some of the Ohio Athletic Conference; 7 of the 8 SCIAC schools (how did I miss the University of La Verne in all my trips to California?); a good portion of the SUNYAC; plus a lot of smatterings of other D-III conferences throughout the U.S. The completion of some conferences like the UAA is on my very busy bucket list.

     Many traditionally black schools have made the grade: Delaware State, Howard, Hampton, Norfolk State, Florida A&M, Morgan State, Bowie State, Alabama State, Southern, Prairie View A&M, North Carolina A&T, Winston-Salem State, Clark, Fayetteville State, South Carolina State, Xavier of Louisiana and more.

     So I also collect spring training sites, although that is not a great priority. I have seen the Yankees' homes in Fort Lauderdale and Tampa; the Phillies in Clearwater; the Pirates in Bradenton; the Red Sox and the Twins in Fort Myers; the Senators when they were in Pompano Beach; the Cardinals and Marlins in Jupiter; the Brewers when they were in Sun City in Arizona; the Giants in Phoenix; the Indians when they used to be in Yuma; the Tigers in Lakeland; the Red Sox, when they were in Winter Haven; the Dodgers when they lived in Vero Beach; the Mets in Port St. Lucie; the Orioles in Miami and a few more which escape my mind.

     I have been in a myriad of college stadiums and arenas just to see them. We went to Stanford Stadium; Notre Dame Stadium; Wallace Wade Stadium and Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke; Pauley Pavilion, the legendary home of UCLA Basketball; The Dean E. Smith Center and Kenan Memorial Stadium at the University of North Carolina; Tulane Stadium; Notre Dame Stadium; Jordan-Hare Stadium at Auburn; Clemson Stadium; Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia; Grant Field in Atlanta; the Petersen Events Center on the Pitt Campus; Byrd Stadium and Cole Field House at the University of Maryland; the Carrier Dome in Syracuse; Gampel Pavilion, the home of UConn's men's and women's basketball; Memorial Field at Dartmouth; Schoellkopf Field at Cornell; Falcon Stadium, the home of the Air Force Academy; Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin; Reynolds-Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas; Ohio Stadium, the great horseshoe where Ohio State plays. Remember, these are among the places I entered to look at. The number of other arenas and stadiums on campuses I have seen while driving by and from the outside is way too much to enumerate. From 37,00 feet, I even saw Kinnick Stadium, the home of the Iowa Hawkeyes, while flying home from Las Vegas in May.

     On-campus college games I have attended include Rutgers (of course), Princeton, Columbia, UVA, Wisconsin, Miami (FL), Delaware, Cincinnati, Lafayette, Lehigh, Bucknell, Penn, Muhlenberg, Moravian, Juniata, Mc Daniel, Ursinus, Swarthmore & Haverford (when they played football);Yale and Wesleyan. This does not include the baseball fields I have played on.

     Lest you think that I have focused all of my energy on the colleges, I have been to enclosed stadiums for games--the Kingdome in Seattle; the Humphrey Dome in Minneapolis; the Skydome in Toronto; the Georgia Dome and Minute Maid Park. I have been to Chase Field in Phoenix and Marlins Park in Miami with the roof open. I was in the Astrodome, but only on a tour because MLB was on strike in 1994.

     I have been in all of the buildings in which the New York area teams have played in except for the Barclays Center; all of the Philadelphia venues except for Lincoln Financial Field and The Palestra; I have seen Washington teams in 2 of 3 baseball parks; Baltimore baseball in Memorial Stadium and Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I have seen basketball at the Boston Garden; hockey in the Air Canada Centre and 2 sites in Pittsburgh as well as The Fabulous Forum in LA. We saw the Cavs pre-Lebron in Quicken Loans Arena. I even talked my way into the closed Charlotte Coliseum just to see the honeycomb prints on the Hornets' basketball floor. I was in the Baltimore Civic Center to see the Knicks and Bullets the night Earl Monroe was traded to New York. I even was in Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, home of the Steelers, where my daughter and friends filmed a PSA for how to leave the stadium (we wore Steelers garb and were seated prominently next to the actor).

     There is another whole list of pro stadiums and arenas I have driven up to or by such as the old Pontiac Stadium, Cobo Arena the Palace at Auburn Hills, Joe Louis Arena and Tiger Stadium, former homes of the Lions. Pistons, Red Wings and the Tigers; the LA Memorial Coliseum; the Staples Center; Fenway Park; the Mercedes-Benz Superdome; Candlestick Park; Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego; the Miami Orange Bowl; and Broncos Stadium at Mile High in Denver. I have even gone behind Pitt's School of Law to gawk at the wall of Forbes Field that still stands as a monument to the history of the area. and driven to the locale of Connie Mack Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia, now occupied by a church.

     Back to the colleges for a brief moment. I have seen a college football bowl game--the 1996 Peach Bowl between LSU and Clemson. I have attended the Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden including UCLA and then Lew Alcindor. I have been to a number of Big East Tournament games, the National Invitation Tournament and many doubleheaders at the Garden. I have gone to numerous D III NCAA tournament basketball games and a Final Four in Salem, Virginia. Plus, while on Maui, I entered the Lahaina Civic Center, the home of the Maui Invitational. as well as the home of the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage. Then there was Talladega International Speedway in Alabama, too. Because I was there.

     By no means am I done with this ongoing search for new colleges, stadiums and arenas. Besides the MLB ballparks, I have discussed going to see New Jersey Devils games in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver as well as in maybe Montreal and Ottawa. I want to see the New York Jets on the road--hopefully this season in Chicago. I regret not having gone to a game at Beaver Stadium while my daughter attended Penn State--that is on my to do list. Along with seeing Rutgers football on the road--unbelievably, I have never done that. I want to attend an SEC football game, preferably at Georgia. I want to see the Golden State Warriors and Steph Curry play. And freeze at least an AFC Championship game hosted by the Jets, if not a Super Bowl, should they ever make it again in my lifetime.

     So that you don't think that I am totally sports-oriented, I do like to go to state capitals, see Supreme Courts, and I even went into Federal Court in Anchorage, Alaska. I love National Parks, having been to the Grand Canyon 5 times, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, Redwood, Crater Lake, the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. I have a picture of the southern terminus of U.S. 1--I don't know if I will be energized enough to go to Fort Kent, Maine to see the northern terminus. Plus we have walked across the Mississippi River right after it formed from Lake Itasca in Minnesota. I will go to some foreign lands--Israel is on our radar. However, it should be noted that I took a long train ride while in London so I could see the courts at Wimbledon (I had already been to Flushing Meadows to see the U.S. Open).

    I cannot leave out the best venue of all--the walk from my house to see all of the rounds of the  1993 U.S. Open at Baltusrol, less than a half mile away. Thus, cumulatively, my resume includes a World Series, 2 MLB All-Star Games, the Canada Cup and Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA Finals, along with the NCAA D III playoffs. I have also seen the ALCS and the NFL playoffs. I have no concerns about not seeing the NCAA Final Four or a New Year's Day college bowl game.

     I root zealously for F&M, Rutgers, Georgia Football, the Devils, the Knicks (I cannot see them going anywhere but up--eventually), my beloved Yankees and my Golden State Warriors (for now)--I used to love the Celtics with Larry Bird. I pull for the New York teams when they are in the playoffs.

     Then there are the New York Jets. Season 42 as a ticket holder upcoming. No Super Bowl appearances since 1969. That is blind loyalty.

     I turn on games to check them out on MLB, FOX, ESPN throughout the various seasons. A KC Royals-St. Louis Cardinals intrastate rivalry game will peak my interest as much as an Orioles-Nats game. I love bonus coverage on NFL Sundays and I am happy with Monday Night Football along with its siblings on Sunday and Thursday. I peek in on NHL games on NBC Sports Network or the NHL Network. Same with the NBA Network. I watch racing's Triple Crown. I will look in on the Masters, PGA and the U.S. Open to see how Tiger and the others are doing. Roland Garros, Australia, Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows are must see TV.  UConn women's basketball has been a great saga--one which I watch and root for them to win. I was even intrigued by the World Cup a few years ago and the Sevens Cup in rugby. I look at college lacrosse, soccer and baseball. Every so often, I tune into NASCAR. Softball, volleyball. The Olympics. I am probably by my TV set. It's definitely not Game of Thrones that I am viewing.

     I don't bet on games, notwithstanding that New Jersey has now legalized sports betting. I have a zest for sports that is ingrained in my being. I have always thought that my passion is obsessive--except that I can miss a game of the Yankees, Jets or Rutgers men's basketball and my life will not end. Which apparently falls outside of the definition of OCD which Carrie Sha deciphered.

     I am having lunch in August with a friend of mine who is a well-respected psychologist. I wonder what he thinks about this mania I have--whether I am obsessive or very, very passionate about sports and colleges.

     Then again, I don't know how truly accurate his assessment can be--he is a lifelong Dodgers' fan from Southern California, and still a Raiders fan. His parents are diehard Angels' fans. They have a Rally Monkey doll in their living room, the unofficial mascot of the Angels since 2002, which allegedly helped the Halos to victory in the World Series. The team has done not much else since then.

     That, to me, is the definition of obsessive.