Frank Thomas joined the White Sox while I was still stationed in Korea in the Marines and had a great second season that I followed in box scores in the Stars & Stripes in '91.
I was home in Chicago area for the '92 season on thru the 2000 season and he just mashed the ball. He could hit for power, average and he walked a ton. He was the Big Hurt. Of course now he has deservedly made the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. He should have. His numbers over time were up there with the greatest, Musial, Williams, Mantle etc. But there was a time, 2000 to be exact that I disliked him and that was in 2000. It was the one year I had season tickets to the Sox and also first round playoff tickets. He was the opposite of clutch in the playoffs. The stadium would rock with chants of M-V-P! M-V-P! every time he came to the plate but by the end of the two home games, I was chanting L-O-B! L-O-B! as he was constantly coming up with runners on and leaving them on base. (He went 0-9 with 4 walks in the 3 game sweep by Seattle and we were out of the playoffs that fast). When we finally won the World Series, Frank was an afterthought, a part of the past, though he would kick around the league a few more years. In the 90s though, he was the best hitter in baseball and deserves being a first ballot guy.
Congrats Big Hurt.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
You May Ask Yourself, Well, How Did I Get Here?
Picking up and moving an entire family over 600 miles to the southwest was not anything on our radar going into 2010. In fact it was probably the furthest thing from our projected future at that point. Alas, God had a plan for us and needed to shake us up to make us realize it. That meant a pretty big storm in our lives and some pretty negative things brought down on us by people we fully trusted. It's water under the bridge at this point and forgiveness abounds but the bottom line is some very negative and wrong things were done to us by people who should have known better and from whom we expected better. The fact they've done it to others since then makes it all the worse but from our view several years down the road, God used it to put us where he needed us to be and where we needed to be in point of fact. God doesn't miss opportunities, even when they stem from negative circumstances.
What's really ironic is about a week before the storm hit my wife and I had an epiphany moment of just how good things were going and how God was blessing us and using us for His will so no doubt Satan had to act. We went from that epiphany to the abyss rather quickly. We barely survived it financially, it basically broke us but with the help of family and friends and my great employer we muddled thru somehow. 2010 and early 2011 were a very rough time for all of us. The kids knew we were stressed and knew things were tough for us all, especially financially. We were struggling with decisions of how to get out of the hole and yet afford the health care we needed for our new special needs child born in 2009 and in need of several surgeries and special care, and 2 hour drives into and out of St. Louis to get that care with gas prices sky-rocketing and our pocket books emptying. Insurance alone clobbered us as we went from no cost to over $300 a month for coverage and we were now doing that on about 1/2 the income we'd had prior. We needed comfort and support but the church where we sought it was also responsible for the situation so that aggravated things quite a bit. We opened ourselves to thinking outside our normal comfort zone. I started applying for history jobs all across the US hoping to improve our lot and in early 2011, an opportunity for my wife broke thru the fog. It was a church in Oklahoma considering her for a call as preschool director and DCE.
Oklahoma? It had never been on our radar at all. But the ministry was intriguing and fit my wife's gifts well and when she got the call, we took a leap a faith and accepted it. More irony here as folks would be like, your going to Oklahoma, do you like tornadoes? Actually, we had far more tornadoes in Illinois and in fact, we got the call about the call during a tornado warning in my parent's basement. Anyhow, I started applying for jobs and soon had a pair of interviews and a job at a college in OKC and we were on our way.
My wife left in July to start work and tried to wrap up my job and get the house packed up for movers coming at the end of the month. Things were looking up, so Satan jumped in again and tried to derail our move. They called last minute and tried to reschedule for a week later which completely threw off our plans. Finally, they came a day late and we got the boys, thanks to my awesome sisters assistance, to Oklahoma and waited over a week for our stuff to arrive several days late, but it did finally arrive. We were there and it was hot.
We'd arrived in the summer of 2011 amidst severe drought and 50 straight days of triple digit temps. Thankfully, our apartment had a pool and good A/C. The boys missed our house and their friends but the pool helped. They had shaky starts at school and some rough times adjusting. We struggled for almost a year to sell our house in Illinois and ended up taking a big loss on it. We've been crammed into a three bedroom apartment for going on three years now but we've made it thru the storm. We pulled together and survived.
Family is further away and that's been really tough, but our church family here and the ministry opportunity has been wonderful. God found a niche for us and the only way we were gonna see it as so was to really shake us up. It worked. And all before our littlest one added to his needs when he started having seizures. Now, instead of 2 hour drives to the hospital in St. Louis, we were just 15 minutes from an outstanding children's facility right in OKC. It has been a huge blessing and the care, therapy and schooling he gets here is far superior to that that would have been available to him in Illinois. God had a plan for us and we are ever so grateful for what He worked in our lives. In the end, the storm was the only thing that was going to make us see it, so we are now thankful even for that and how God took good care of us whilst it was raging.
We may be "laters" in the land of Sooners, but we are here, getting red dirty daily doing all that God has called us to here. God is good, all the time.
Amen
What's really ironic is about a week before the storm hit my wife and I had an epiphany moment of just how good things were going and how God was blessing us and using us for His will so no doubt Satan had to act. We went from that epiphany to the abyss rather quickly. We barely survived it financially, it basically broke us but with the help of family and friends and my great employer we muddled thru somehow. 2010 and early 2011 were a very rough time for all of us. The kids knew we were stressed and knew things were tough for us all, especially financially. We were struggling with decisions of how to get out of the hole and yet afford the health care we needed for our new special needs child born in 2009 and in need of several surgeries and special care, and 2 hour drives into and out of St. Louis to get that care with gas prices sky-rocketing and our pocket books emptying. Insurance alone clobbered us as we went from no cost to over $300 a month for coverage and we were now doing that on about 1/2 the income we'd had prior. We needed comfort and support but the church where we sought it was also responsible for the situation so that aggravated things quite a bit. We opened ourselves to thinking outside our normal comfort zone. I started applying for history jobs all across the US hoping to improve our lot and in early 2011, an opportunity for my wife broke thru the fog. It was a church in Oklahoma considering her for a call as preschool director and DCE.
Oklahoma? It had never been on our radar at all. But the ministry was intriguing and fit my wife's gifts well and when she got the call, we took a leap a faith and accepted it. More irony here as folks would be like, your going to Oklahoma, do you like tornadoes? Actually, we had far more tornadoes in Illinois and in fact, we got the call about the call during a tornado warning in my parent's basement. Anyhow, I started applying for jobs and soon had a pair of interviews and a job at a college in OKC and we were on our way.
My wife left in July to start work and tried to wrap up my job and get the house packed up for movers coming at the end of the month. Things were looking up, so Satan jumped in again and tried to derail our move. They called last minute and tried to reschedule for a week later which completely threw off our plans. Finally, they came a day late and we got the boys, thanks to my awesome sisters assistance, to Oklahoma and waited over a week for our stuff to arrive several days late, but it did finally arrive. We were there and it was hot.
We'd arrived in the summer of 2011 amidst severe drought and 50 straight days of triple digit temps. Thankfully, our apartment had a pool and good A/C. The boys missed our house and their friends but the pool helped. They had shaky starts at school and some rough times adjusting. We struggled for almost a year to sell our house in Illinois and ended up taking a big loss on it. We've been crammed into a three bedroom apartment for going on three years now but we've made it thru the storm. We pulled together and survived.
Family is further away and that's been really tough, but our church family here and the ministry opportunity has been wonderful. God found a niche for us and the only way we were gonna see it as so was to really shake us up. It worked. And all before our littlest one added to his needs when he started having seizures. Now, instead of 2 hour drives to the hospital in St. Louis, we were just 15 minutes from an outstanding children's facility right in OKC. It has been a huge blessing and the care, therapy and schooling he gets here is far superior to that that would have been available to him in Illinois. God had a plan for us and we are ever so grateful for what He worked in our lives. In the end, the storm was the only thing that was going to make us see it, so we are now thankful even for that and how God took good care of us whilst it was raging.
We may be "laters" in the land of Sooners, but we are here, getting red dirty daily doing all that God has called us to here. God is good, all the time.
Amen
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Relaunching the PHC
It's been a few years.
Moved my family out of the heart of the Prairie State and resettled in the red dirt of Oklahoma and am all the happier for it.
Thought it might be time to revisit this venture and reignite some of what used to go on on here. It's long overdue.
Looking forward to posting on a regular basis again, about my faith, fatherhood, family, film, foolishness, food, and what ever feathers my fancy.
See you soon and God Bless.
TRudat
Moved my family out of the heart of the Prairie State and resettled in the red dirt of Oklahoma and am all the happier for it.
Thought it might be time to revisit this venture and reignite some of what used to go on on here. It's long overdue.
Looking forward to posting on a regular basis again, about my faith, fatherhood, family, film, foolishness, food, and what ever feathers my fancy.
See you soon and God Bless.
TRudat
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