First I must start this entry talking about the Cub game tonight.  They had Jody Davis sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” for the 7th inning stretch tonight.  He is hands down my all time favorite Cub player.  It was one of the biggest mark out moments of my life when I got to meet him at the Cubs Convention a few years ago with Ian, Brent and Chris.  I had my picture taken with him and got an autographed 8 X 10 to go with my autographed baseball.  I guess he was my favorite because he was the catcher and that is what I mostly played in little league and for the fact that I loved how Harry Caray would sing “Jody Jody Davis…King of the Wild Frontier” every time he came up to bat.  Jody did commentary in the booth for the bottom of the 7th and was hilarious.  Ryan Theriot is wearing Jody’s old number (7) and got a hit.  He fell rounding first and Jody said “that number for the Cubs isn’t used to moving that fast so it tried to slow him down by making him fall.  He then made a comment talking about the Cubs new SS being on the disabled list with a strained hamstring.  “How do you get those?  I never moved fast enough to pull my hamstring.”    It makes up for watching the Cubs lose yet again.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about wrestling.  Seeing the pictures that Maniwa sent me brought back a lot of old emotions especially since most of them involved Candido.  A lot of the joy and fun of being on the road and performing was lost when Chris died.  I won’t use that as an excuse but it is true.  I was rapidly approaching burn out after several years and that helped accelerate the process.  Throw in the personal stuff later in the year and well being at wrestling represented everything that was bringing misery into my life.  The two months off was a Godsend and quite frankly I could have used a couple more.  However, I can start to see why the Hogans, Flairs and others can never walk away and stay away.  Once it gets into your blood, it never leaves.  It is an incurable disease.  As the 10 year anniversary approaches for IWA and my ninth anniversary, I start thinking about more ways to get back into action.  Most of them would never ever work because it would turn very ugly very quickly.  It would sell tickets galore though just for the anticipation of the train wreck.  Damn being a businessman.  It adds so many degrees of difficulty to things by making you look at things from a different point of view.    The hardest part though is how long will it take for another burnout to occur?  How long before the bad returns?  You don’t remember that stuff when you are away from it…but it hasn’t gone away just because I have.  I have several ideas to make the anniversary shows special that I will probably start working on soon.  I don’t want to wait til the last minute.

I never got any 8 X 10s or tshirts or best of tapes put together to sell at the gimmick table during my run but my little brother Maniwa did make a custom figure of me.  I will include a photo of it along with a photo of me from my Morris Redskins days.  That is the way that they always stay on my dresser.  Fannin Family me and Redskin me…two of my favorite mes over the years.

image gone 🙁

I miss my Redskin days as well.  I was All-State…Left Out back in those days.  I would only see the field for the last minute and a half of the game but I didn’t mind.  I was a part of something great and I had my chance to succeed and I came up short.  I remember trying to practice my senior year a few months after my mom died.  I went to Coach Darlington and told him that I was going to quit because my heart just wasn’t in it.  He looked at me in disbelief and said basically “son, you love this team more than anyone…you come here every day and play your heart out on that field and don’t even get to play much in the games…you’ll regret it the rest of your life if you quit now so take a few days to think about it.”  I came back and played some inspired football and got a chance to be the starting left guard but I missed a block and blew my chance in practice.  Coach was right though, I would have regretted it forever if I quit.  Every year I wish I could still be out there with that Redskins jersey on and playing for the town’s pride.  I can’t wait for Friday for another season to begin.  I keep kidding Ian and saying that I’m going to be putting James Christopher on a greyhound bus every week to come up here and play for the Redskins…well I’m only half kidding because if I could get away with it, I would.  While I was never really any good at football or the wrestling team, I was damn good that senior year on the speech team.  I won a couple of firsts, a couple of seconds and a couple of thirds and won an award at the after season banquet for being the “Out of the Blue” surprise of the team.  I have a box of the trophies and the plaque somewhere up in the attic.  Who would have guessed that my best work in extracurricular activites would come from talking instead of athletics?  Definitely not anyone that has seen any of my IWA work 🙂

Well I guess that about does it for this update.  Hopefully I can eventually get some sleep.