Over four years ago I was listening to the "Jim Rome Show" in my hometown of White Rock BC Canada, when he had a special motivational guest speaker come on named "Jim McClaren". I often thought I had a difficult life at that point until I heard his story. Jim, was an all 'American' guy in the mid eighties, playing football in college and aspiring to make it in Hollywood. He stood Six Foot Five And weighed almost 300 pounds. He had life by the tail, until he was riding his bike in New York City and a bus hit his bicycle head on and knocked him far off in the air. Jim was pronounced dead on arrival, and doctors were shocked that a while later he came back to life. His accident did not come without any permanent damage as one of his legs was amputated. He now had some serious obstacles to overcome. Since Jim was a great athlete, he started riding a bike and spending time in the pool. His new will was to test his physical limits despite his leg. For 8 years he routinely beat able bodied competitors in triathlons and other tests of physical endurance. In an Ironman contest in California during 1993 he was riding his bike in a competition when he heard screams in the distance, a van had been swerving and headed for him without any recognition he was in the direct way of Jim. Jim was flung from the van and hit and smashed into another street sign many feet from the point of impact. This time he also lived but he had to face his another fact, he was left a quadripeligic.
Jim struggled with this news and sunk into a depression that caused him to have several inner battles to which he fought, drugs, thoughts of suicide and most of all loneliness. At a turning point in his life he decided to live his life to the fullest despite all the things physically that were working against him. Jim changed his entire outlook on life and find a deep inner peace with himself and knew he was ready to live his life. Jim spends hours rehabilitating his injuries and willed his own self to walk in a pool, and regained some use in his arms. Doctors marveled at Jim's unwillingness to give up. Soon Jim realized that he had lots of advice to give to others because he had been at the 'bottom' of everything life has to offer in the negative fashion and he had risen above these to live a normal life. Normal for Jim is doing thing that others routinely take for granted. Tying up shoe laces, moving across a room, doing the dishes after a meal. Jim has touched so many people with his tale of courage just to live.
If you ask him, he will tell you that, "he has been given a gift with the life he has led, for he has seen the light in what makes him happy". He would not change any of it for anything.
Hearing this story I pulled over to the side of the road and took some personal inventory of my own life. I was nearly in tears hearing his story and inspired to achieve things in my life from that point forward. I wrote down all the goals I wanted to achieve to make me happy. One of them was to write the two novels I had always procastinated about as an adult. I did that and had them both published last year. The other goal was to see all the "Major League Baseball Stadiums" in my life. It was going to take re-tooling my schedule. I was going to have to work harder, smarter and more focused to be able to start realizing this dream. In 2005 I visited most of all the West Coast teams. Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles Angels and San Diego in a 6 day span. In 2006, I saw Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium. In 2007 I bought a car in Toronto during the 1st week of the baseball season and went to all the cities I could on the way back home. I saw Toronto, Cincinnati, and extended my vacation by two days when I was snowed out of Wrigley to see the Cubs play, watched that series in Miller Park in which the Cleveland Indians played because they were snowed out of Progressive Field. Then I saw Minnesota.
My first real ballpark chaser trip included 10 games in 9 days. I saw in order, (Toronto, New York Mets and Philadelphia in an double header) Detroit, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland, Pittsburgh for a doubleheader, Boston and New York for the conclusion of the trip. I had 11 stadiums left and began 2008 knowing I would probably see the last 11. That '11' I was going to do in a cross-country trip I planned to step into all 50 states in. The thing was those 11 were left till last for reasons. Soon I had all 30 teams I wanted to see in 40 days or close there of. That is when I finally googled for what the world record was. At that time it was listed as 30-29 although two Canadians had topped that in 2007 with 30-28. I had a decision there. I always had my trip booked around the all-star break so I had a tough decision. After fumbling with the schedule I thought I could do 30-26 or 30-27 even with the all-star break because they were many doubleheader possibilities. There was 4 doubleheaders in my (2nd attempt) in the first five days. I can always thank "Todd Jones" for blowing a 3 run lead and killing my chance for a comerica/progressive field day night doubleheader. cont'd on PART 2 blog