Who am I and what do I do? I could tell you the plain truth or regale you with a completely made up Baron Munchhausen style anecdote. In this instance I will follow the lead of the good Baron and say…

Born to a large family of circus acrobats I spent my youth 100 feet above ground swinging from trapezes. I first learned to walk the tight rope. Not until my twelfth birthday did I first touch solid ground.

When I was fifteen I ran away from the circus. I soon met up with a former nun and current country singer. She took me in and the two of us traveled the south performing. She would play guitar and sing while I would do country style acrobatics. Sometimes we would run low on money and we would hustle money from lonely rodeo clowns.

One time I earned us a whopping thousand dollars by betting a man that I could stare at a cow for an hour with out blinking. I won that bet and we lived good for a few weeks, but it signaled the end of my time with the nun. MORE »

In January 2003 after yet another heartbreaking Eagles defeat in the NFC Championship Game — the second year in a row and soon to be three — I tried to exorcise 31 years of Philly sports demons by writing the following article for my old website. Amongst my old friends on the east coast it was something of a catharsis for our proud, but long tortured souls.

It wasn’t until two years later that the Eagles would finally make it over that NFC Championship game hump defeating the Atlanta Falcons (and our current quarterback Michael Vick) 27-10.

In the moments following that game I went through every emotion in the playbook. Happiness, joy, shock, disbelief, ecstasy, sadness, and relief. Of course a couple of weeks later the New England Patriots spoiled all the fun and we lost Super Bowl XXXIX by three lousy points and a pile of McNabb puke.

Over the next four to five years the Eagles, Flyers, Sixers and Phillies would continue to add to my giant list of fan futility. Often times in pitiful and historically miserable fashion.

All of that would be forgotten though in the Fall of 2008 when the Fightin’ Phils delivered a World Series victory to the Championship deficient City of Brotherly Love. But before the champagne had a chance to go flat there was the time I actually witnessed firsthand the Eagles defeat to the Arizona Cardinals in the 2008 NFC Championship Game.

However those are stories for a different day. This is the tale of a young Philadelphia boy who would have done anything to see one of his teams win the big one. MORE »

My iPhone was set to go off at 3:45 AM and 4:00 AM. I didn’t want to take any chances. The race began at six and I needed to leave by five to get over to Universal Studios in plenty of time. I awoke at 3:44 AM. A minute BEFORE my alarm was set to go off. It’s weird how the body can sometimes do that. A mystery for another day.

The night before I had laid out my clothes, packed my gear and prepped my breakfast as much as I could without actually making it. I didn’t fall asleep until well after eleven and even then it took a warm bath, an entire bottle of “Two Buck Chuck” Pinot Grigio and the dulcet sounds of space drama courtesy of the Battlestar Galactica pilot.

Barely five hours of sleep. That would have to do. As I stood my left hamstring felt tight. The lingering pain of a recently aggravated injury. I had felt great for weeks and out of nowhere and towards the end of a particularly uneventful training run it was back. A setback, but I had stretched it out all week and had felt a lot better by that morning.

If a future me had magically appeared that very second with dire warnings from the future would I have listened to him? I’d like to say no. MORE »