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In the book, Thinking in Time, Richard Neustadt and Ernest May proclaim a historic context is imperative for decision-making away from ideals. Use your history, think of background and context, advise clearing the obstacles and setting flow to cure the impatience of blocking action in the face of challenge. Looking at issue history allows the establishment of flexible criteria to define the desired future.
At Redstone Arsenal, Freddie and I agreed the fundamentals of baseball and Golf can make its historic light shine through the right and wrong life decisions in equal footing. Our military experience in a trade where you learn to master a number of decisional categories was no different than swinging, hitting, fielding, putting, base running and the world of defensive strategy. It's like getting good at Golf. Time tells whether you avoided bad habits that multiply your frustration at the green or anywhere else. Such mistakes would be part of the sour times you wished never happened if we took up on the sport like it should be...learning it and loving it from the start. Then, you won't have to wrap your driver around your caddie's neck.
To cite an example, today I would not have to wear a rigid knee brace if I had planned for an event in an Army intramural softball game. The whole thing was like making love in a hurry to make a TA-50 inspection formation. Now, lets be clear that fast love sometimes is also a decisive challenge...even for the sake of combat readiness. In my historic and anticipatory trends of playing shorstop in sandy fields, my roots trace back to the river banks of Rio Cayaguas and Rio Grande de Loiza. I arrived to the Corozal Field, behind the PX about two or three innings late...and if I can recall the exquisite but short details of a gorgeous afternoon, playing shortstop in the Canal Zone was at least one of my two delights. Our MEDDAC team played USACC, and with a runner on second, I saw a hard rolling heading to second base, and in fact, it browsed the corner of the base. I froze my instincts to tidly tadle my cuckoo onto the play. Despite my excellence in the sand I could never field to my left as good as I moved to the hole, you can name it grass, clay or cement to be extreme. As the ball had crossed the bag I changed my mind...no diving, no desire to make things happen...no desire to prevent a run. Indesicion stuck my left spike in the sand and the momentum took me down resulting in a severe sprain of my lateral-collateral ligament, slowing my game considerably, and thereafter allowing me to sport a 30-percent permanent pain in the ass.
Thinking in Time suggests identifying concerns tracing their histories, and testing presumptions under the surface; but consider these concerns differ from person to person. After all, Golf lends itself to swing-stick-roll-hole, and planning strategy is the key to success in it. Become successful at putting a ball in a hole with the least shots and you've taken sure-footed steps into Concern; making the present condition different from the past one. Freddie was keen to point out he knew one Boricua Sergeant whom I will always associate with the nickname of Papo Wopel! Call it the right story or the challenge, Papo Wopel was a concerned person for others but not to himself. If he ever saw another Boricua soldier in trouble, in Germany, as I recall Freddie's tale, Papo would just go there and knock someone out. Now, the Alcalde of Seattle can make this call, unless he has sand in the eyes. Do you think a Sergeant in the Unites States Army would have gone farther in his career and life with this type of choices to tackle instant sensible decisions? I think not, but still, Predator always seems to show up from nowhere!
The application of Papo Wopel's case expands on the importance of thinking in time to plot direction and route before taking off. That's why more than once I fantasized in being Miguel Cotto. To get lost in the desert, again...and wisely chose not to be the champ. Instead, I took off the other way...not running but hiding from unnecessary sour times by clearing my fields of fire, right along my central tick of time, compass and all!
The Papo Wopel story can be appreciated as the decisions you wished never had made. The signals Papo sent were the essence of Concern dressed in battle uniform. However, in not taking care of himself, he downplayed the customary dependence on results of training, traditions, routines, and incentives the Army offers. It's all about personal history made up of details not interesting to many. To the fan of big events, statutes and other organizational pieces with moving parts tend to shape his decision-making abilities. It's like logic placement, models of cause and effect, effective guesswork, different facts and different interests and the thirty other ways to cook a C-Rations can of peanut butter. In other words...a good choice is similar to having a nice wide screen, the Yankees, being able to issue a Capicu, and sharing a touch of Mama Juana with Tiger Woods and Plato.
The familiarity of thinking in time means having natural ability for choices; an attempt to know and predict what's next. If Furcal takes too-wide a lead, his team will also be somehow, concerned seeing Tony relying signals to Yadier. Rest aside that calling a play during the wrong time, natural ability can anticipate if he will steal or not. Neustadt and May named anticipation a matter of innately sensitive fingertips aided by experience. Whoa! Let your fingers sense what's coming. Concern comes from the impediments embedded in impressions of the past right in the center of the immediate situation. And so...what is LaRussa trying to tell Yadier? Definitely not calling for artillery with his GPS cell phone! Do you think his signals only relate to stealing, pitching, about the batter in the box? We don't know but I think there is more! It's definitely clear that La Russa carries in his head the memory; the experience of Furcal's speed and successful rate of steals; a model of recurring patterns, further called impressions from the past. Likewise, the amazing PapoWopelazo was quilted, woven, bred, and worn-out from experience driven into an immediate situation! A catastrophic one...honey!
The immediate situation! Its mere hypothesis is that it contains known, unclear and presumed elements. To state the puzzle is almost to solve it. In the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight we witnessed that knowledge conveys wisdom and ignorance courts trouble. A bit more inspection of the events and details is achieved by thinking in a stream of time that boxing in Las Vegas is not like boxing in the Bronx. The punch stats seemed generated by a computer, and rightfully so, but they were innately feel-fingered by a human before exposing them to the audience. And in Las Vegas? Give me a break! Why is this so revealing? The known, unclear and presumed elements answer it! The Known merges with areas of ignorance and deeply-rooted operating styles to demonstrate that failures can be dramatic and illuminating, while success adds to understanding, specially when the economic incentive and personal power are huge.
Whether the latest and famous boxing Promoter zigged or zagged to please the audience, everyone knows his environment aided him in cleaning his clock. With a little tutoring and a little effort one can sabotage his or her centerpiece to benefit the bookies. Whether this statement is true or fiction, possibility takes center stage. When we use the history of Las Vegas in a reasonably standard way, then we learn to know why Miguel Cotto loves to fight in the Bronx. Some of us were born to think mathematically, others to think historically. My unique instinct is that skipping background and context not only allows Predator to appear again, but his watch also acts in a strange way. Next time we enjoy a brew at Madison, Alabama, and your plasma proves Rafael Furcal was able to steal on Tony and Yadier, or you are at the Redstone Fairways and hear a series of humming sounds that resemble the arming of a nuclear device, just clear your obstacles and flow yourself out of dodge. Encountering a Predator-like figure is not always a pleasant criteria to define a successful future.
Freddie...you still can't turn the double play! But sure hell we both were winners...now, then, and beyond!
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Open to the UNIVERSE in 2005 and beyond
Cuidese...que de los buenos quedamos pocos...
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Torpedero de Batey Boricua
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