Dreams

Monumental

Professionalism

"We got to live out our dreams, like the people on tv..."

Alicia Keys - Unbreakable

Around the sports world, I'm known as a basketball writer...and when I was younger my mother would always pray for me, as she still does today...nevertheless I just consider myself ambitious...nothing more, nothing less.

The Real Thing

I have been afforded the opportunity to not only cover not only the Philadelphia 76ers in preseason this week, but I have also been on site for the NLCS to witness the Philadelphia Phillies walk into the history books of Major League Baseball.

Baseball is one of my real loves in sports, and to interview Joe Torre, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and several others delights my heart. I truly love my job. Last night Rollins won Game 4 with one swing in the 9th inning, as the Phils went up in the series 3-1. I've been to Citizens Bank Park numerous times, however when he smacked the ball into right field I'd never felt anything like that, as the building shook, and erupted into a lion's roar.

After the game I interviewed J-Roll, and if you were listening closely on ESPN, you could hear my question. Here is the score on our conversation:

We spoke a few weeks back, and I asked you about your role as a leadoff hitter...and you basically expressed that it's just a teams game...you're out there as a team, playing together. You always hear professional athletes talk about when they step into the moment, when they get into the zone. When you stepped up there for that at-bat...did you feel things slowing down for you?

"Yeah, things do slow down. You know, you--I don't know. You already have it planned out in your head how you want things to go. Sometimes it goes that way, sometimes it doesn't. But being confident in your ability helps a lot. You don't question what you're going to do. And like I said, after the first pitch, I was able to make an adjustment. If you go back, you see me in the box trying to get my feet in the right position. I was saying to myself, 'do I want closed [stance], and not open up? I decided to go with an open because I felt my hands get in the slot. From that point it was just a matter of getting a good pitch. If you think about it, 60 feet is a long ways to see the ball, even at 100 miles per hour, and he threw it basically where I was looking.

Really it was funny, right before he threw it, I say to myself...hit a ball in the right-center field gap. Kemp was playing me slightly to left-center. [Andre] Ethier was squeezing, and I was like 'hit the ball in the gap right over Broxton's head, and that's at least one run...and it went all the way to the fence, so we were able to get two [runs] and a victory."

Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images, Johnathan Grzybowski