Tag: Baseball

Larry Schechter – The History of Fantasy Sports

In this episode of the Journey of My Mother’s Son podcast, I talk with Larry Schechter.

Larry is the author of the 2014 Amazon bestseller “Winning Fantasy Baseball.” He has been called one of the best fantasy baseball players in the world. Larry was a two-time winner of the CDM Sports national salary cap contest, defeating 7,500 teams in 2002 and 6,000 teams in 2005. He has competed in the two most prestigious expert’s leagues, winning the USA Today-sponsored LABR league three times and the Tout Wars experts league six times. One of his keys to success in fantasy baseball is attention to detail. He used that ability in researching, conducting interviews, and writing his most recent book, “The History of Fantasy Sports.”

It’s not written as a boring research paper, but rather tells the stories of the entrepreneurs who created an industry that has gone worldwide. More than 50 million men and women in the USA play fantasy sports. 200 million play fantasy Cricket in India. There’s never been a book like this and it’s getting rave reviews.

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Kelli Stewart – It’s Time to L.E.A.D.

Today, Kelli, and her husband, C.J. Stewart, oversee two business ventures that they started together. Through Diamond Directors, they train and develop some of the country’s top amateur and professional baseball athletes; Jason Heyward (Los Angeles Dodgers), Dexter Fowler (Chicago Cubs, World Series Champion), Andruw Jones (former Atlanta Brave), Peter Alonso (NY Mets), Kyle Lewis (Arizona Diamondbacks), and Andrew McCutchen (Pittsburgh Pirates) are a few notable professional clients. Through L.E.A.D., they train and develop some of Atlanta’s hidden treasures in Atlanta Public Schools. L.E.A.D. provides inner city boys with the same opportunities to excel in life through baseball as the Stewarts’ Diamond Directors clients with the focus being accessing higher education and community leadership. To date, L.E.A.D. Ambassadors have achieved a 100% high school graduation rate and a 91% college enrollment and scholarship rate (academic and athletic).

Kelli and CJ have two beautiful daughters, Mackenzi (Southern University) and Mackenna (The Lovett School).

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Dan Clouser – Making Adjustments – A Monologue

When I was coaching baseball, one of the things that I stressed to my players all of the time is that it was a game of adjustments.  You always want to have a plan, but you also need to be able to make an adjustment to that plan if need be.

The game of baseball is a reflection of life, and the lessons tat the game can teach will often carry over into life as well.

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Tracy Tanguay – Time to Rethink Youth Sports

Tracy is also passionate about changing the current culture that has developed throughout youth sports.  This is something that really resonates with me because I saw firsthand how the approach to youth sports has changed over the 30 years that I had been involved.  Sadly, that culture shift has not been for the better.  We have shifted from a team mentality to an individual focus.  Sport specialization at a young age is becoming more and more prevalent, which is leading to more injuries at younger ages.  The increase in injuries early the current MLB season could arguably be attributed to early sport specialization, too many pitches on too little rest at a younger age, and max-effort performance.

Tracy is an expert in her field, so she is speaking from a professional perspective as well as a concerned mom.  Our shared opinion is that we need to focus more on teaching the fundamentals, letting the kids have fun playing the game, and falling in love the sport as opposed to chasing weekend trophies, and a win at all cost approach.  We also agree on the fact that kids should multiple sports for as long as they possibly can.

Sports have a wonderful way of teaching us life lessons, the key is that we have let the game teach those lessons.

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Freddy X. Vásquez – Building a Team and Talking Baseball

In this episode of “The Journey of My Mother’s Son” podcast, I sit down to talk with Freddy X. Vásquez.

Freddy is the owner of FXV Digital Design, host of the Fred Talks podcast, but most importantly a great friend.

He has had me as a guest on his show twice and getting him onto my show has been a ling time coming, but we finally got it done.

Our conversation covers a broad range of topics from building out a team in business, changing and growing as a human, our mutual love of the game of baseball, and just about everything in between.

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Fred Ghilino – It’s All About Relationships

Fred is one of my former interns, as well as a former player in our organization.

Fred is now a full-time dad, husband, avid Miami Dolphins fan, semi-pro cornhole player (just kidding) and Account Director at Turchette Brand Marketing & Public Relations. Fred has been with Turchette, a leading marketing and public relations firm, for nearly a decade. Fred previously held various marketing, account management, and sales roles for Coca-Cola and Advantage Business Media.

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Russ Herbein – See You on the Other Side

I wanted to re-release these episodes in order to emphasize Russ’s legacy and selfishly as a way for me and others who loved him, to hear his voice again.

Russ was the type of person who always saw potential in people that they didn’t see in themselves.

For me personally, he convinced me to speak publicly for the first time and encouraged me to enter into leadership positions as a very young man.  Something that I really didn’t think that I was qualified for, yet he believed in me and encouraged me to take the leap.  Before I was 25 years old, I served as both a club president and Lieutenant Governor within Optimist International.  I never would have entered into those roles if it wasn’t for Russ believing in me and seeing potential that I didn’t know existed within myself.

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Allie Lacey – For the Love of the Game

Allie grew up in La Crescenta, California where she started her ball career at the age of 3. Following that passion to Crescenta Valley High playing 4 seasons of Varsity softball to Pasadena City College finishing off at Cal State Northridge where she capped off her playing career with a 2015 Big West Championship. She was also able to earn a bachelors in Physical Education. She later returned to PCC to coach fastpitch for 3 seasons before pursuing and completing her Master’s Degree in Sports Management from Louisiana State University.

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Nick Chroscinski – Applying the Games Lessons in Life

Nick is another one of my former players who Sandy and I were blessed to be able to get together with on our travels.  Now living and working in Dallas, we were able to get together with Nick in late January.  We had to reschedule our initial time to get together due to a freak ice storm in the Dallas area, but fortunately, we were able to get together with him to grab lunch a few days later.

In the past, I had made it a habit to do a podcast with the players that we got together with during our visit.  Recently, I rethought that philosophy because I felt that it took away from our time together.  As I have mentioned so many times in the past, I have really started to understand the importance of being in the moment and felt that carving out time to do a podcast during our visits was taking time away from that moment of just being present and catching up.

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Brandon Puffer – From the Bullpen to the State Pen

Brandon’s story explains how he went from reaching great heights as an MLB World Series winner to falling to the very bottom, serving 3-1/2 years in prison. He has humbly watched as everything has gotten restored in his life, and he know feels as though he is here to help others learn from his expensive lessons and show that we don’t have to let our worst mistakes define us.

After a 15-year professional baseball career, four of which were spent in the Major Leagues, Brandon had fallen to great depths and has come out on the other side with important lessons to share with those who might find themselves facing tough obstacles or set-backs in their own lives.

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Mike Latona – More Life Lessons in Action

Just like last week’s guest, Collin Fesi, we were able to reconnect with Mike in Maryland.  What a blessing that night was to not just see one of my former players, but two in the same night.  Mike and Collin played for our organization a few years apart, but it was neat to see how they connected immediately knowing that they had that Berkshire Baseball experience in common.  I hope that they stay in contact now that they know each other.

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