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Parable In An Olympic Pool - #8137 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Friday, November 7, 2008
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It’s amazing how much I have in common with America’s record-breaking, Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps. See, he said his life is basically, “I eat, I sleep and I swim.” I’m pretty good at two of those three, but don’t look for me in the Olympics. While we were all fascinated with history being made in that Olympic pool, I learned that the pool may actually have been part of the records that were made there.
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Increasing Your Bench Press - #8136 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Thursday, November 6, 2008
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If you’ve got a young football player at your house, well then, your fall’s a lot like ours used to be; pretty much revolves around practice and games. Our guys played for a very demanding coach, but a winning coach. One place the coach wanted to see if you were serious about getting a starting position was in the weight room. My son would come home announcing how much more he’d been able to bench press that day. Listen, the coach expected to see you there, pushing yourself to bigger and better things. Actually, he was doing them a favor. He pushed them to the kind of strength and endurance that it turned out would make them conference champions.
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Forgetting Who You Are- #8135 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Wednesday, November 5, 2008
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I called my little granddaughter. I said, “How’s my princess today?” She said, “I’m not a princess.” I said, “Really? What happened?” She said, “I’m not wearing my princess dress.” Well, I had to assure her it doesn’t matter how she looks, she’s always my princess. I make sure that I never forget that there’s someone who feels like that about me. Oh, I’m not a princess, but always His prince.
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The Truth About the Election - #8134 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Tuesday, November 4, 2008
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Well I voted, hope you did. Some of us are going to be happy about the outcomes. Some of are going to be unhappy. Some are going to go, “Oh well.” Some are going to go, “Oh no, the end of the world!” Let’s put this in context. I heard of a world leader who described how he became one of the world’s great diplomats. When he was a boy in a classroom, the teacher put a black dot on a big white board and he said, “What do ya’ll see?” and they said, “Well, we see a black dot.” And he said, “That’s funny, I see a little black dot on a big white board.” You know what? This is a good day to look at the bigger board behind the dot. As big as the election may seem, it’s a dot on a much bigger canvas.
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Undecided Voters - #8133 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Monday, November 3, 2008
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Hard to believe what must be the longest presidential election season in American history is almost over. You’re going to miss all those nasty ads, I’ll bet, huh? Well, soon we can get back to beer commercials. Well, as usual, a lot of close races are probably going to be decided by those sought-after ‘undecided voters.’ Of course, they can’t stay undecided any longer. The day’s almost here when it’s going to be too late to decide.
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Halloween-Deadly Masquerade - #8132 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Friday, October 31, 2008
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Last Halloween night, I walked into this convenient store and I saw a sign outside that said, “Leave your mask outside.” I took that very personally, but actually, it’s a good idea.
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Halloween-Real Monsters - #8131 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Thursday, October 30, 2008
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So I’m just a little trick-or-treater guy rolling around our Chicago neighborhood dressed up as Peter Pan; maybe that’s why I never grew up. Well, I don’t think I scared anybody, but some of those guys made me wonder if the candy was worth it. I mean, a lot of scary monsters were out there that night. Now I’ve learned since then that those monsters weren’t real. I’ve also learned that there are some monsters that you really should be afraid of.
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Halloween-He's No Joker! - #8130 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008
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Oh, I know I’m going to see them again this Halloween. You know, those little kids running around in the red suits with the pitchforks; of course, if they only knew or if their parents knew who they’re pretending to be. See the devil loves for us to think of him like that, as this, you know, pitchfork boy.
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A Life They'll Never Forget - #8129 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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All those NFL players this season are dreaming about the Lombardi Trophy. That’s what they get if they win the Super Bowl. Of course, it’s named after Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach. You know, as he lay dying of cancer in a New York hospital, one of his former players, Willie Davis, came all the way across the country to see him just for a few minutes, and when he came out of the hospital and met the reporters they said, “Willie, why did you come all this way just to see the coach for a few minutes?” And he pointed up to the coach’s window and he said, “Because that man made me feel important.”
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A Hurt Too Big to Handle - #8128 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Monday, October 27, 2008
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A parent’s worst nightmare: Your teenage son accidentally runs over your five-year-old daughter. Now that’s what happened to Christian artist, Steven Curtis Chapman and his family not long ago. My heart sank, probably like yours did, when I heard about it. But then, there was the interview the Chapman family had with Larry King a few weeks later.
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When You Can Dare to Risk - #8127 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Friday, October 24, 2008
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I finally found an Olympic athlete I think I can relate to; that little Shawn Johnson. You know, she was the gymnastics champion, she’s sixteen, she weighs ninety pounds, and does those amazing gymnastics things. That’s not what we have in common; it’s the coach thing.
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The Homeless Feeling - #8126 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Thursday, October 23, 2008
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Now there’s not too many homeless people who end up on primetime television, but this one did. He was in Denver when the police found him, and the thing about him was he had amnesia, couldn’t tell them anything about his background or his identity. So they finally, in desperation, put him on television and he said this: “Can somebody please tell me who I am and who I belong to?” Well, somebody called—someone who knew him—and she helped him find his way home.
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Money Quakes - #8125 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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Now I’ve never been in a real earthquake, but I’ve heard people say that after a major quake nothing is where it’s always been before. Now can you say, “Money quake?” See, it’s like there’s been a 7.0 quake that’s hit our financial world and nothing is where it’s always been. Major players are just like gone over night. Credit has frozen up in a lot of areas and mortgages are hard to get and even harder to keep. National leaders are using words like dire and disaster. I’ve got friends in the financial world and it’s obvious that nobody knows for sure where this is all going.
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Hurricane Hope - #8124 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
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Well, we just happened to be in the path of Hurricane Ike’s aftermath, and maybe you were too; a lot of people were. I tell you what, he had our attention. Actually, he didn’t end up effecting us as much as we thought, but what hit Galveston launched what they called the largest search and rescue effort in Texas history. They rescued hundreds of people. Now it struck me how often after a disaster you hear those two words together: search and rescue. See, you can’t rescue if you don’t go looking for the people whose lives depend on that rescue. They’re not going to come to you.
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October Moon - #8123 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Monday, October 20, 2008
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I know the moon is always the same size, but it sure seems like it gets bigger this time of year. They call it the harvest moon and on some of those full moon nights, it can look absolutely huge as it rises in the eastern sky near our place. Of course, there’s a dirty little secret about the moon: it’s actually just a dead piece of rock.
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Leaving a Mark - #8122 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Friday, October 17, 2008
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Remember that famous Andy Warhol quote, “Everybody gets their fifteen minutes of fame?” Well, two guys in San Francisco must have been pretty desperate for a little notoriety. They flipped through the record book searching for something they could be the best at, and they found it. They shook hands for nine and a half hours, and they broke the record. Okay, this is where you’re supposed to wildly applaud.
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Undervalued - #8121 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
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John Odom has given the name ‘Batman’ a whole new meaning. He’s a minor league pitcher drafted by a Canadian team who couldn’t get him across the border. They tried to unload him for whatever they could get in return and they finally made a deal with a U.S. team for ten bats. John Odom went for the equivalent of $600. It’s got to be embarrassing.
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Major League Mistakes - #8120 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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When you help win a World Series, your name will probably never be forgotten or when you help lose one. That’s what happened to poor Bill Buckner. In the 1986 World Series he was playing first base for the Red Sox. He had a good career, but all most people remember is the play he missed; the ball that went right through his legs. The play that many said cost the Red Sox the championship. Man!
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Antidote For Scary Nights - #8119 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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Our granddaughter usually sleeps peacefully through the night until recently, and then she just kept waking up crying, I think because she was scared. Well her Mommy put a carving of Jesus on one side of the room and a picture of Jesus on the other side and right in front of our granddaughter a picture of Jesus holding a little girl that looks a lot like her. Well she slept the whole night and she woke up, pointed to the picture, and her first words the next morning were: “Jesus holding me.”
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Wounded But Still Fighting - #8118 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Monday, October 13, 2008
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Captain Ivan Castro is a part of those elite U.S. soldiers know as the Special Forces, but even there he’s one of a kind. He’s the only blind officer serving in the Special Forces. He had paratrooped into a battle in Iraq when a mortal round landed just five feet away from him and the explosion took his sight, but even with his sight gone he refuses to give up. He’s remained in the Special Forces not as a charity case, but as an active executive officer at Special Forces Headquarters. He says, “I want to work every day and have a mission.” Man, I love that!
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Trip Planning - #8117 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Friday, October 10, 2008
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When you travel a lot like we do, you get to do a lot of trip planning and you got a lot of help from the internet with the maps and the detailed itineraries. Of course, I’m a brochure freak that helps show you the place you might want to stop, and then some people have GPS—that computerized guide that literally show and tells you where you are and how to get to your destination. I’ve even got a book that shows us all the motels and restaurants—even the Wal-Marts. Listen, trip planning makes for happy trips.
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A Team Without a Huddle - #8116 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Thursday, October 9, 2008
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When you’re watching a football game, those huddles between plays probably aren’t going to make it into the highlight film, I know. And even though they’re boring to us, the huddle is pretty important to the outcome of the game. Plays are called there, assignments get clarified, last minute changes are made. Now imagine an entire football game where the team had no huddles. I think we’re talking chaos on the gridiron here.
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Undefeated - But Untested - #8115 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Wednesday, October 8, 2008
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I met this guy at a college I was speaking at last fall; he was wearing a football shirt from the school. It said, “Undefeated since 1953.” Now listen, I was impressed. I said, “How could that be?” He said, “Well we haven’t had a team since 1953", which makes it a lot easier to be undefeated of course and totally meaningless.
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More Than a Holiday - #8114 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Tuesday, October 7, 2008
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When our kids went to school in the Northeast, this was always a time to look forward to. It was a Jewish holiday, but everybody got out of school. It’s Yom Kippur, but it’s much more than holiday or even a holy day. It is actually a picture of the greatest act of love in human history by the One whose life mattered more than any other.
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Cold Nights and Rich Colors - #8113 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Monday, October 6, 2008
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I love this time of the year with the temperatures and the apple cider and the colors. We were in the Northeast for a long time and we saw God show off in a fantastic display of changing colors. I used to tell our kids that the angels painted the trees over night. Surprising they believe anything I say. Well if your fall comes late though, it’s probably because there haven’t been enough of those cold nights. That’s when the temperature kills the chlorophyll that makes the leaves green and starts the colors coming. No cold nights, no rich colors.
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One Little Hole in the Levee - #8112 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Friday, October 3, 2008
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It was hundreds of townspeople and volunteers and National Guardsmen verses the mighty Mississippi. They worked so hard to build this earthen levee to keep the flood out of Winfield, Missouri. It wasn’t the river that beat them though, it was a muskrat. Yeah. He burrowed a hole through the levee and that allowed water to penetrate that flood wall and in came a flood. One woman said, “With all the guns in this county, couldn’t we kill a muskrat?”
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Changing Seasons - #8111 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Thursday, October 2, 2008
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I’m a four seasons kind of guy, you know. So I’m happy this time of year. I love it when summer turns to fall and fall turns to winter, winter turns to spring. Because each season has some great and a few not so great things about it and the seasons are changing again.
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The Value of a Virgin - #8110 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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If you’re a baseball card collector like my son has been, you’re hoping the stars on your cards become the stars in the playoffs and the World Series because that card will suddenly become more valuable, but that’s not what really makes a card valuable. Take the card of Honus Wagner, for example, one of the early baseball sluggers. It sold recently for a half million dollars—a piece of cardboard—but see there’s only a few of them. That’s true of any collectible. The less there are, the more valuable they are.
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Seeing Jesus - #8109 |
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A Life That Matters -
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Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, Bill Gaither’s Homecoming videos have become a phenomenon in the Christian music world. A few years ago, Bill assembled some of the greats of Gospel music for a reunion gathering, and it just touched a nerve and it’s gone on to inspire millions of people. One of them is on some channel almost every weekend. Now one of the most respected singers is part of the Gaither quartet. His name is Guy Penrod. He’s a big, tall guy with striking shoulder-length dark hair and a long coat. Our son and daughter-in-law and our two-year-old granddaughter were watching it the other night and Guy stepped up to sing and our little granddaughter just went, “See Jesus.” She got me again.
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Get In The Game - #8108 |
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Monday, September 29, 2008
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Well, it’s football season and it brings back some great memories of speaking for a lot of NFL football chapels. Being with the players several hours before the game gave me a whole different perspective on the game; I saw how intense this was for them. I mean, their bodies on the line that day, their incomes on the line, their futures on the line and then I went to the game. I was surrounded by some obnoxious, loudmouth fans. You know them, experts on every play, so fickle when a player messed up. I thought how easy it is to be a fan. All the heroes are on the field paying the price, not in the stands. I wanted to yell at this one guy, “Why don’t you get out of the stands and get in the game.”
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