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Soccer has to be one of the original sports games every played by people. I can just imagine cave dwellers kicking around the old soccer ball. Or maybe it was a soccer rock? A soccer coconut perhaps? It’s got to be one of the simplest form of sports play imaginable. I mean, really, I kick the ball this way and you try to kick the ball that way. Whether the ball (coconut?) goes more this way or more that way determines the winner. While it may be easy for me to imagine soccer being kicked around by a bunch of caveman sports enthusiasts, the earliest official record of soccer by played was in China about 3000 years ago. Wow, that’s like 750 World Cups, if anyone was keeping track.

Ultimate Soccer Header

Soccer is also kind of bizarre, in that it’s one of the few sports I can think of where you use your head for more than just strategizing. You actually can use your head to make contact with the ball. Imagine trying that in football (American) or hockey for that matter. Nothing link deflecting a slap shot with the forehead for a game winning goal. Stitches don’t hurt that much. Those soccer guys are kinda funny that way. But the ultimate head shot in soccer was a little more bizarre. Gruesome actually. Apparently in more medieval times, the head of a defeated Dannish prince was used as the ball by early day soccer hooligans in the east of England. Yuck. Think I’d be shopping for some new soccer shoes after that match. It’s a wonder soccer ever caught on with the Danes after a defeat like that one.

Soccer Wars

As with many games these days, soccer had it’s origins on the battlefield. Rival towns would play soccer against each other, with little or no rules, and massive sized teams. Violent, bloody games, with hundreds of people kicking, punching, tripping in an attempt to win the soccer match. Sounds kind of like today, except today, that sounds like a more apt description of the fans instead of the players. You think it’s tough being a soccer referee today, imagine a few hundred years ago. At least today, they keep the fans and referees separated. As time went on, and the local authorities realized that banning soccer wasn’t going to work, more civilized soccer fans brought rules and order to the game of soccer. Not everyone agreed, and there were some splinter groups that went off and formed derivatives of the game. Rugby was one.

Soccer As Civilized Play

So today we have the modern game of soccer that we even allow our children to play. A far reach from the early beginnings of the sport. Perhaps an analogy can be drawn between soccer and many new forms of expression. In the beginning, things can be a bloody mess, but a few thousand years of civility and anything can be reduced to child’s play.

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Doctors are sworn into their profession by the Hippocratic oath.

Yet there has been medical remedy available to improve eyesight of baseball players for several years and no medical journal has provided a hint for it’s use. Hitting a baseball without good eyesight and eye/hand coordination is virtually impossible at the major league or professional playing level.

I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. I may be mistaken and may be misdirected but I still offer the challenge.

There may be drugs available in the marketplace which society deems inappropriate for use and are called illegal. I will go along with doing away with illicit drugs that are physically and mentally habit inducing compounds that totally breakdown the normal life giving functions.

Illegal use of illegal drugs and a detriment to our society should be avoided. Laws governing such illicit sales or use should be enforced and not with only lip service. The eradication of illicit drug use needs the full measure of the law on the case.

Now I’m going back to baseball. There has never been a baseball player to lace on a set of baseball cleats who did not try to improve his playing and performance level. If all players simply played the game at a natural level there would be no need to practice. Just go play, you improve and it’s not fair to little Johnny, whose mother only lets him come out to play on Wednesday.

I’ll bet you the hole of an uneaten doughnut the writer of In The Shadows probably had a cup of coffee late at night while writing his book. Coffee probably had some caffeine in it and was a stay awake inducer. Folks I am simply giving you some food for thought. That hole in the doughnut probably is tasteless.

One thing is for cotton picking sure, or is almost sure. All doctors who have ever taken the Hippocratic oath will not say body performance enhancing steroids is good for better eyesight.

Barry Bonds is the only man in modern day baseball still actively playing who has a ghost of a chance of overtaking six (6) of eight (8) all time hitting records of baseball. I fell off the turnip truck coming into town. Accordingly, I know that the only thing contributing to that achievement is some steroid.

Major Wiley B. Channell USMC (retired) still talking baseball at http://www.baseballfarming.com for those who like baseball.

I am defending nothing but right is right and wrong is wrong to discern the difference sometimes requires courage to speak.

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Baseball three strikes and you are out. Yes and no and maybe. We have been told this three strikes and you are out. The use of this phrase has been used to be descriptive on many aspects of life.

A myth sometimes is nothing more than a myth and then again it can have some truth or some half truth with some varying circumstances. In baseball playing, if the third strike is not swung at and the umpire declares it a strike, then you are out. The hitter might feel differently and think it was not in the strike zone.

Question it if you will, but in this case the umpire called strike three and you are out. That’s the truth. We might even say that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Now for the half-truth of this three strikes and you are out.

On the third strike, if you swing and miss you are out. Not so fast hot shot. If the catcher takes his eye off the ball and it skips out of that mitt then the batter is only half out. Pray tell what makes the other half?

When the catcher failed to catch the ball then the hitter has new life and he can run. Reaching first base before the catcher can retrieve the ball and throw to first ahead of the runner makes the runner safe due to a passed ball. Now the hitter has gained new life and is a bonafide base runner. But you said half out.

Yes, the half out is that he has a chance at new life and is half out because the odds of him beating the catchers retrieval and subsequent throw on to the first baseman for the out is just that. He was only half out.

Baseball playing, has a play that will allow a man to gain new life after the three strikes and you are out.This is true, half true or to beat the throw is valid proof of it’s not necessarily so.

This concept and point of rule is why coaches try their very best to have baseball players never give up. Keep trying. Stay alert. Never say calf rope for it’s never over till the fat lady sings the last note.

Now harken and take heart. Somtimes, if life-struggles to get ahead or to gain an advantage, you may think three strikes and you are out. Fail once, don’t give up. Fail twice, bounce back. Fail until you feel it’s impossible to attain victory but try again. This is the stuff of champions. This three strikes and you are out is simply so much hokey pokey.

Determine to be a winner and by cracky you will win. One strike, never look back. Two strikes, pick up speed. Three strikes, pull at the bootstraps, salute whoever is in charge, and step off smartly. Instead of putting credence in the old three strikes and you are out, use this one, when the going gets tough the tough get going. See you at the finish line Champ.

You deserve the winners laurel.

Batter Up—Let’s Play Ball…

Major Wiley B. Channell USMC (retired) making baseball more enjoyable for all and trying to encourage winners at http://www.baseballfarming.com

No Winner ever quit. And no quitter ever wins. Get tired, get beat around and struggle to keep on keeping on but you can do it.

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