Craig Tyson Adams

  Well, it seems like everything today is a crisis. We can interpret every insignificant blip of action as a matter of life and death. Something that could be construed as a slight against someone personally can be blown out of proportion. It seems like we used to be tougher . People were a bit more understanding that accidents could happen. There was a common understanding that not everything could be adequate, much less perfect. There were going to be flaws. Human beings can, and will, make mistakes. That was recognized and understood. Things weren’t always going to go smoothly. Today is a different story.  Instant gratification is the rule by which this society seems to operate. Technology has made expectations immediate. If something doesn’t work or if behavior doesn’t match demand, then many gnashing of teeth occurs. It’s like when you order something from a fast-food restaurant and then get the order wrong. How hard can it be? It’s damn near automated. Even when you go inside a

  When Shohei Ohtani selected the Los Angeles Angels offer, it was like the baseball gods had finally smiled on the team. They finally won a championship in 2002 and they lucked into drafting the great Mike Trout in 2009, but signing Ohtani was a genuine gift. When he took off as a player last year they believed that he and Trout would form a nucleus that would send the Angels to the promised land. This season started out promisingly enough. But then there was a 14 game losing streak that cost manager Joe Maddon his job. Maddon was a coach for the Angels when they won the World Series. He was the manager of the Chicago Cubs when they ended a 108 year drought and became champions. The Angels went into a tailspin that they have shown no signs of coming out of. They were just swept by their cross-town rivals, the Dodgers. But to call it a rivalry is a misnomer. The Dodgers rudely treat the Angels like underlings. The Dodgers don’t know the rivalry exists. The time has come to face facts.

  When the Los Angeles Lakers acquired Russell Westbrook a year ago, I was hoping for the best. Westbrook is a singular talent. He’s a type that excels at aspects of offence all himself. A player that handles the ball up and down the court. Westbrook averages what the league statisticians call a triple-double. He averages double figures in points, assists and rebounds. The dominant player that can be a one-man team. If he was in show business, he’d be the writer, director and star of his own production. The Lakers won a championship in 2020. They were beating the eventual Western Conference champion Phoenix Suns in the playoffs when disaster struck. Their superstar duo, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, went down injured and they lost the series and their season was over. James isn’t getting any younger, so the Lakers went out and got another future hall-of-famer to give James a break. The three NBA greats got together and agreed to change their way of playing to fit into a system that

My feet are cold. I tried to pull them back under the covers. But, no matter how much I try, I can’t get them covered. This is weird. The sun is up and glaring through the windows, so I throw the sheets back and twist myself to put my feet on the floor. As my eyes adjust, my knees are eye level. “What the hell is going on?” I stand up and look down. The bed looks like a postage stamp. My dog usually gets up at the same time. He’s awake, but instead of smiling and wagging his tail, he cocked his ears up and he’s looking at me sideways like the RCA dog. Still disoriented, I head to the bathroom and forget to duck until the last second. Did the house shrink? I enter the bathroom and look in the mirror. “Holy shit! I’m Kevin Durant !” I stand up straight to look at myself in the mirror. I’m so tall all I can see is my torso. I put my arms out and flex and realize I am now an adonis! Cool! What to do? Imagining the possibilities is sensory overload. First things first. I have to find someth

Rickey Henderson is the greatest base stealing artist of all-time. Nobody is close and nobody will ever challenge Rickey. When it comes to baseball, Rickey is like Madonna or Elvis or Ali. He’s known by one name. Rickey’s last name is superfluous. Just Google the name Rickey. It will auto fill his last name automatically. There is no more meaningful justification today than that. In baseball, the most meaningful act is to score runs.  Rickey has accomplished the baseball equivalent of the prime directive more than any player in history. It’s another of Rickey’s records that will be unchallenged. Rickey is Major League Baseball’s greatest leadoff hitter. It’s a position that is traditionally meant for a speedster with a premier ability to get on base. Rickey had an eye for the strike zone like an owl has an eye for prey. In 24 seasons, Rickey got on-base over 40% of the time. Rickey wasn’t just a base stealer and on-base machine. Rickey hit almost 300 home runs in Rickey’s career. 81

Mike Davis took ball four from Dennis Eckersley and made his way to first. Eck got the first two batters out easily. Walking Davis was an uncharacteristic move, but they were teammates the year before with the Athletics and Davis had a good year with 24 home runs. Tony La Russa, the manager of the A’s, decided whoever the Los Angeles Dodgers had on the bench was less dangerous. I was in the cheap seats. The upper of the upper deck on the third base side. We jammed the place. We were all standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder. It seemed like we were all breathing together synchronistically. When Davis walked, we all knew he was the potential tying run and we simultaneously let out a roar. Now the question was, who was going to pinch hit? Mike Davis had pinch hit for the light hitting shortstop, Alfredo Griffin, in the 8th hole. The pitcher’s number 9 slot in the batting order was due next. Kirk Gibson was the Dodgers’ most valuable player in 1988. He had come over to the club that

It's obvious that some problems in this country need an innovative American solution. These problems have existed for decades and have only reached stalemate whenever the question comes to our domestic federal leadership.  The leadership in the individual states has their own answers. But none of them can find any consistency. No common ground, as it were.  The two main issues at the moment are what to do with a fetus and what to do about guns. At first glance, the two subjects appear to be completely separate. That is what the standard thought is. To tackle these two seemingly different issues, a new train of thought needs to be considered. Something truly out of the box, as it were.  There is a belief that some people have that a fetus is a person. A living being that should be afforded all rights and privileges of a living, breathing American granted by our United States Constitution.  One amendment, the 2nd amendment, protects the rights of all Americans to bear arms, meaning