Pure Persistence: Boston Marathon Race Recap

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

-Calvin Coolidge, 30^th President of the United States

I am writing this blog post aboard Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited from Worcester, Mass. back to my adopted home of Chicago. In doing so, I feel a little bit like Peter King, the longtime Monday Morning Quarterback columnist for Sports Illustrated who frequently writes his copy aboard Sunday night Acela trains and seems to take pleasure in telling his readership all about it. This is probably the closest I will ever come to actually being Peter King. Once upon a time, I thought I could be Peter King, or Peter Gammons, or another similarly prominent sportswriter. Prior to that, I thought I could be a national sportscaster like Bob Costas or Al Michaels. And, years prior to that, I thought that one day I could be like Jim Rice and play left field for the Red Sox.

I was wrong on all three counts. In a parallel universe, in a different lifetime, with different circumstances and/or breaks, perhaps I could have become a Gammons or a Costas. Somewhere in there I do still believe I possessed the talent to do either, but maybe I never did. It’s hard to say, and much like the old Tootsie Pop conundrum, the world may never know. My dreams of playing for the Red Sox were strictly that: dreams. I most definitely never possessed the talent to be a professional athlete.

TALENT WILL NOT.

Yet, there is at least one corner of athletics where those among us without the God-given talent to achieve at the highest levels can, for brief (or not so brief, if you have a slow pace) moments, lace ’em up and occupy the same playing surface of legends. That corner is distance running. The Boston Marathon is its Super Bowl. For the second straight year, I was fortunate enough to score a bib for a cancer charity, lace up my own Sauconys and take my place at the same starting line in Hopkinton as the world’s elites.

This one wasn’t really supposed to happen. Last year, I ran for Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Though I would have loved to sign up again for 2017, I didn’t believe my fundraising well was deep enough to reach the required charity minimum for Boston two years in a row, so I planned on sitting this one out. Then, at the start of February, I received a surprise call from Drenda Vijuk. Drenda, whom I met through running races with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training program in Chicago, was scheduled to run Boston this year with Team In Training, but had to drop out due to other commitments. Knowing me as a friend and cancer survivor with Boston roots, Drenda asked if I would be willing to come off the bench and take her spot on the team. I accepted, and the race was on. Ten weeks to whip myself into marathon shape, come home, and run Boston again.

The Calvin Coolidge quote at the top of this piece was a favorite of Drenda’s husband Joe, who personified it throughout his life, not least by surviving multiple bouts with cancer. Joe is no longer with us, but I decided that I wanted to dedicate my 2017 Boston Marathon to Joe’s memory, and so I ran with his name and the first sentence of the Coolidge quote on my shirt.

Two days after I received the call from Drenda, my beloved New England Patriots played in the Super Bowl, and if you are remotely into sports you know how that turned out. Trailing 28-3 to Atlanta, Tom Brady and the Pats stormed back to mount the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, winning 34-28 on James White’s touchdown in overtime.

Knowing I needed to increase my mileage quickly in order to run the marathon, I began pounding out near-daily 5ks on the treadmills in my office building’s gym over my lunch hour. The Monday following the Super Bowl, while on the treadmill, I had a post-Super Bowl panel discussion on ESPN. Some reporter – I can’t remember who – at one point made an off-handed comment in the midst of discussing the Patriots QB’s longevity that “Tom Brady doesn’t drink beer.”

When I heard that comment, I thought, “hey, why don’t I stop drinking beer until the marathon?” Now, I don’t drink very much to begin with under normal circumstances – maybe a beer with dinner a couple of times a week – but I saw no downside to cutting out alcohol entirely for a while, and it isn’t a big enough part of my life so that this was at all difficult. In the process, I also cut out just about all sweets and excess sugars and substantially increased my water intake.

Partially thanks to closely watching my diet, partially thanks to diligent training, and partially thanks to the wisdom gained through running 11 previous marathons, I felt an almost eerie sense of calm leading up to Monday’s race. I slept great the night before the race. I approached the starting line with almost zero butterflies. I was entirely injury-free. There was no reason to expect anything other than a strong race.

The Boston Team In Training coaches repeatedly stressed the importance of going out slowly, and I had already learned the hard way from my experience in 2016 how correct they were. If you search on this blog for my recap from last year’s race, you’ll find more details, but the early miles of the Boston course basically start off like a roller coaster. I took the downhills hard, and they sapped most of the juice out of my legs early.

I was determined to avoid a repeat performance in 2017, and especially when the weather turned out hotter than forecast (it was in the 70’s throughout) I made the conscious decision to start out extra slow. Checking my stopwatch, after I saw that I’d cleared the first three miles at a 10-ish minute pace, even though I was feeling strong I intentionally dialed it back.

Sports fanatic that I am, I am incapable of participating in an event like this without having various sports analogies and figures roll through my head at different junctures. As I enter Natick around Mile 8, I can’t help but think of local legend Doug Flutie and his “Miracle in Miami” pass to Gerard Phelan. Shortly thereafter I heard the voice of Joe Castiglione on a radio on the sidewalk, and asked the man with the radio the score of the Patriots’ Day Red Sox game.

“4-2!”

“4-2, Red Sox?”

“Yep.”

Above all during this portion of the race, I thought of Patriots coach Bill Belichick. A brilliant tactician and game theorist, Belichick employs principles which I have, over the years, tried to incorporate into my own life (and no, this is not an exaggeration). Belichick’s strategies often seem counter-intuitive, but they are always made with a long-term vision in mind. He also is unsentimental, and will adjust on the fly to his current circumstances, as opposed to adhering to what he originally believed the circumstances of a game or a season would be. Perhaps most importantly, Belichick always devises a game plan which neutralizes the opposition’s greatest asset. In other words, if the opponent features a stud running back, Belichick will develop a defensive scheme to contain that running back. If the opponent prevails, it will be on the strength of a secondary option.

I began to see my own game plan for this race as a pseudo-Belichickian strategy. Run too slow, almost painfully slow, on the early hills so that they would not destroy my leg muscles. After the race’s midway point, the course becomes mostly flat or downhill save for three big hills in Newton. By the time I hit Newton in 2016, I had no energy left in my legs. Not this time. I would hit the race’s midway point, gain adrenaline from the Wellesley College “scream tunnel,” and turn on the jets for the back half of the course. I was banking leg energy and would close with negative splits. Call it a “Bank it and Crank It” game plan.

Approaching Wellesley, I was almost giddy. Many runners were passing me as I progressed slowly, but I moved along with a big smile on my face. At a couple of moments I even giggled under my breath to myself. My legs felt so fresh, almost as if I had barely run 5k instead of a half-marathon. Anyone tracking me on the marathon app would assume I was struggling, but I would soon take off and surprise them all. “Bank It and Crank It” was going to work. I had the energy to take off at any moment; all I had to do was pick my spot.

Shortly after Wellesley College, my friend and fellow Hodgkin’s Disease survivor Calli – whom I wrote about in my pre-race blog post – caught up with me. I asked how she was feeling and she responded that she felt no pain, injury free. Such great news after she had battled injury in the final weeks of training. She asked me the same and I responded that though I was going slow at the moment it was “all strategery.” I explained that I was going to lay in the weeds for a small bit longer and then take off. She took off ahead and said I’d probably catch up to her soon.

“Soon” would be a three hours later after the finish, the next time Calli would see me. On a hot day, celebrating her 10-year cure-versary, she ran stronger than I think anyone anticipated, including herself. She should be extremely proud.

I bided my time for another half-mile or so, proceeded up a small incline around Wellesley Hills, and decided, “this is it.” It was go time. I smiled and giggled to myself once more, and cranked up the pace to somewhere in the 9:30-10:00 range, which for me is a comfortable 10k or half marathon.

It felt superb. Where other runners had been mostly passing me for the past handful of miles, now I began cruising past all of them. I was 14 miles into my race, yet with virtually fresh legs. The final 12 miles of a marathon would never be easy, but the fastest close of my life seemed not merely attainable, but almost a certainty, until…

GENIUS WILL NOT; UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB

…it all fell apart at once.

At Mile 15, the heat began to get to me. I felt it swirling up from my neck and around my head. And, seconds later, the unmistakable feeling of nausea entered the pit of my stomach. I had two choices: Slow down, or throw up. I chose to slow my pace. The legs had what I needed, but my insides did not.

A mile or so later, one of my other Team In Training teammates, Talya, caught up to me and said hello. I told her about my queasiness, and she told me she was suffering from the exact same thing. A lot of people were; it was the heat. Leave it to someone who works within the medical profession to be prepared. Talya was carrying antacid tablets with her and offered me one. I took it and thank her and chewed it, and could barely muster the saliva to choke it down. I was losing fluids from the heat and my mouth was simply too dry.

I resolved to get water from the next aid station, and did, but even swallowing the water was no easy task due to my burgeoning nausea. The Tums tablet did seem to have a nominally positive effect, but it wasn’t enough. As I entered the Newton Hills, with each incline and decline I felt my insides tossed and had to walk. At one point, I felt poorly enough that I had to take a seat on the curb for a minute. About to start heaving, when I reached the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Chestnut Street midway through Newton, I had no choice but to stumble over to a medical aid tent, sit in a chair, and sip water while waiting for my stomach to settle.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

This aid tent was just about one-half mile from where my brother Ben was stationed with a camera, steps from our onetime childhood home. I texted him to let him know the situation, but to hang tight, I was going to try and continue. About 10 minutes later, I sent a second text: “Feeling a bit better… I think I am going to give it a go.”

I took off from the aid tent, slowly increasing my walk to a run. I did this a couple of times in fits and starts as my ailing stomach would tolerate. I was running when I saw Ben, stopped by him for a few seconds and explained the situation. My stomach was causing significant issues on this day, but I would not stop. I was going to finish this.

The stomach issues never really subsided. They didn’t get worse again, but neither did they improve. I could run slowly on the straightaways, but every time I hit even a small hill my insides would shake up. In my head, I began thinking of Joe Vijuk, and saying phrases to myself in my head:

Joe Vijuk escaped war-torn, Communist Eastern Europe as a child with his family on a boat.

Joe Vijuk endured to play professional football, was a teammate of Joe Theismann, and reached the CFL’s Grey Cup.

Joe Vijuk went into business, succeeded, and donated lots of his money to charitable causes, including much in the fight against cancer.

Joe Vijuk fought cancer multiple times.

Joe Vijuk lost the use of his legs.

Joe Vijuk suffered through far more severe physical pain than I, in my own half-year bout with cancer, ever knew.

Joe Vijuk might well be watching me today.

Joe Vijuk was not a runner, but if he had been, and he was having the same race I am today, he would certainly finish. And he would do so with a big smile on his face.

I dedicated my race to Joe. I will finish it for him. 

Joe Vijuk lost the use of his legs. I have plenty of stored power left in mine. 

I will never, never quit a race I am running for a cancer charity. I will finish this marathon.

I will finish this marathon with a smile on my face.

And so, as Calvin Coolidge suggested, I pressed on. It was not pretty, it was not comfortable, but it was joyous. As our Chicago Team In Training head coach Marie always counsels, “take what the day gives you.”

This day gave me an upset stomach and a shattered race strategy. This day gave me a crappy, slow marathon time. This day also gave me a second opportunity to run the world’s greatest marathon in front of the world’s greatest spectators in the world’s greatest sports city, my hometown. And I was going to gladly take it all.

I passed a Patriots fan on the right-hand side of Commonwealth Avenue. He encouraged me. I shouted back at him, “The Pats trailed 28-3 in the Super Bowl in the third quarter, right? Well, watch this. I am going to win the Boston Marathon!” The guy loved it and cheered louder.

I passed the good-natured, inebriated students of Boston College and soaked in their encouragement. Turning the corner onto Chestnut Hill Avenue, I saw my younger brother Jeremiah and his wife Joanne, expecting their first baby next month. As I ran up to them I told Joanne, “I feel your nausea!” I told them, too, that it was slow going but I would finish.

Turning up Beacon Street through Brookline, the cheers grew louder, the spectators simply willing all the struggling runners on to reach the finish line. I hit Mile Marker 23, which is at the corner of Beacon and Winthrop Streets, just two blocks downhill from another one of my childhood homes. Calli – as well as several of the other Team In Training runners – had written the name of a cancer survivor or patient on her arm for each mile. Mile 23 was my mile. Remembering even that gave me energy.

I began to call back to the spectators throughout Brookline. “Thank you, Brookline!” “Thank you, Coolidge Corner!” The encouragement from the sidewalks and Green Line tracks only grew louder the closer I came to Boston. The loudest cheers I heard in this neighborhood were not for me, but deservedly for a wounded serviceman struggling up Beacon Street with an American flag in his left hand and a prosthetic right leg. As I passed him, I turned to him and said, “you are doing a great job, and thank you.”

The joy grew deeper the closer I drew to the finish. From the top floor of an apartment building, some alcohol-fueled spectators called out to me. “Pass that guy!!,” they said, directing me towards a struggling runner about 25 feet in the distance. I felt extremely conflicted in this moment, but I could not resist the opportunity to please a cohort of drunken Boston sports fans.

“You want me to pass him??”

“YEAH!!,” they responded.

Hoping the struggling runner would forgive me, I kicked it into gear with my still-able legs and passed him. The drunken fans in the apartment went bonkers. This must be what it felt like when Scott Zolak led the Patriots to their only two wins in 1992.

A more wholesome kind of inspiration came at Mile 25 as I entered Kenmore Square. There is a woman named Sandy Dubuc, who lost her son Matty to leukemia some years back, and who is heavily involved with the Dana-Farber team for which I ran in 2016. Her older son Chris, now a student at Penn State, ran Boston last year for Dana-Farber and posted an outstanding time. The Dubucs stand at Mile 25 each year, and Sandy offers a hug to each of the Dana-Farber runners. Last year, I wasn’t expecting to see them, but she recognized me immediately and called out my full name: “Matt Brown!!!” I knew who she was and acknowledged her, but was a bit too far away and didn’t stop for a hug.

This year, I looked specifically for the Dubucs, as I wasn’t sure I’d be recognized wearing TNT purple instead of DFMC orange. Yet, amazingly, Sandy again saw me first and recognized me instantly. The Dana-Farber team has upwards of 500 runners. I have no idea how she does this.

“I had to call out your full name last year!”

“Not this time.”

She, her husband, and Chris all were there. She gave me a hug, asked about my race. We thanked each other, not teammates in uniform this year but teammates in defeating cancer. I continued on for the final mile.

Before getting to the finish, I would be remiss if I did not backtrack one-half mile and note that those aforementioned TNT Boston coaches, Caitlyn and Kevin, were both out on the course shortly before Kenmore Square to greet runners, accompany them for a stretch, and make sure they are all safely reaching the finish line. Both in Boston and Chicago, these charity program coaches do great work, and must be in excellent condition in their own right. Simply running back and forth throughout the day, they log an imposing amount of miles and receive no medal for their efforts. Their job is simply to make sure their runners finish, and do so healthily. I found both Caitlyn and Kevin to be relentlessly upbeat, friendly, and excellent overall. Even though I was only back home for a long weekend, they certainly made this adopted Chicagoan feel right back at home.

And yes, home. The home stretch. Under one last underpass. Right on Hereford. Left on Boylston. And East on Boylston Street for four final alphabetically-reversed blocks (Gloucester, Fairfield, Exeter, Dartmouth, everybody talk about Pop Muzik) which feel like a dozen blocks after you’ve already traversed 26 miles in the heat. The cheers kick in as you turn onto Hereford, and it is truly energizing. Then you turn the last corner (where I saw Ben cheering with his camera again). This is the point where I get other sports legends in my mind: the actual legends of Boston Marathons past. Meb Keflezighi bringing home the title for the USA post-bombing in 2014. Uta Pippig fighting stomach issues and winning in 1996. Ibrahim Hussein sprinting past my all-time personal favorite, Juma Ikangaa, to nip him by one second at the tape in ’88.

If you grew up watching this great race, as I did, you think of all these runners as you turn onto Boylston and tread the same ground. I, and most of the other runners on this course, do not have the talent to ever dream about competing with marathon champions. I could quit my job, devote myself to marathon training year-round, take up a diet of organic kale, beet smoothies, supplements, and free-range ostrich, and the best I could ever hope for under ideal circumstances would be to achieve a 3:30 marathon one day…. maybe.

Yet, it is possible to gain a spot on the same course. It is possible for us mere mortals to gain entry into the realm of sport immortals. In the case of myself and other runners doing it for cancer charities, we are doing it to help our fellow mere mortals live longer, more productive lives. I don’t know whether that makes us worthy of sharing the same stage as the elites, but it should make us worthy of something.

As I titled my previous blog post prior to this race, any day you can run a marathon is a great day. This was not my fastest day, and few great days include a queasy stomach, but this was indeed a great, great day. Talent had no role in it, nor did intellect, nor did education. This was all guts (figuratively, not literally, because those guts were screaming) and, yes, persistence.

Next marathon is in Chicago this October, when persistence will be the order of the day yet again no matter what the day should bring.

Thank you to the LLS, the Boston coaches and teammates, the security and volunteers, and all the running community and city of Boston for a terrific race.

And thanks to Joe Vijuk for inspiring me to keep pushing.

That is all.

Anyday You Run a Marathon is a Great Day

Nine years and two months ago, I sat in a doctor’s office as an oncology nurse presented me a set of four cards. Each card represented one of the four drugs I would soon be administered on a biweekly basis, my chemotherapy regimen for Hodgkin’s Disease. Approaching a decade later, I cannot recall off the top of my head the full names of the drugs represented by the acronym ABVD, but whatever… we may as well call them Atrocious, Blech, Vomitrocious, and Dastardly, because that’s what these drugs are. If you’re not familiar with chemotherapy, the concept in a nutshell is, “we are going to poison you, not quite enough so that it physically kills you, but just enough so that it kills the cancer dwelling inside you.

Keeping in mind that these drugs are really just fine-tuned varieties of poison, the side effects listed on the cards the nurse read to me and gave me make more sense: Severe nausea. Sore throat. Fever. Muscle pain. Bone pain. Extreme tiredness and lethargy. Headaches. Feelings of disorientation and/or confusion. Constipation. And the dreaded “metallic taste.”

As the nurse ran through all of these “probable to occur” side effects, I listened and indicated I fully understood them. She gave me the cards to take home. Later, at home by myself, I read through them again and I laughed at them.

An explanation is probably necessary. There is no denying that the side effects of chemo are no picnic. Some of them, chiefly among them the “metallic taste” – a sensation which can best be described as the taste of an emptied, open can of tuna fish rising into your mouth continuously from the back of your throat – take away any desire you may have had to have a picnic.

I knew these side effects sounded bad. Yet, at the same time, I also knew that bad as they may be, there was no way they could hold a candle to what I’d experienced with Hodgkin’s Disease. Twenty-five pounds of muscle loss in two months. Tiredness. Confusion. Memory loss. Slowed speech. Lack of appetite. Soaking night sweats every two hours. And none of these things were happening to a body on the mend, but one headed towards death if nothing was done to reverse the process. And so, in comparison, the side effects of chemo just sounded funny to me. It was the only way I could get better, so who cares about a little inconvenience? Bring it.

On Monday, I will take to my hometown course to run the Boston Marathon for the second straight year. It will be the 12th marathon I have finished, all of them occurring post-cancer. Six of those 12 will have been run to support cancer charities, including this Boston Marathon for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and its Team In Training program.

Tonight, the Team In Training Boston Marathon team held a start-of-the-weekend Meet and Greet event. Coming from out of town as I did, the one person at this event whom I’d met prior to tonight was my friend Calli, who ran for the charity in Chicago prior to moving to Boston a couple of years ago. Calli and I are both Hodgkin’s survivors, indicated by the fact that we each have the same fading scars from a lymph node biopsy on the right sides of our respective necks. I suppose she is my scar sister and I am her biopsy brother.

Calli’s training season has been complicated by injury, though she will run and finish the race Monday. I asked her tonight how she is feeling about the race, and she said that while she knows it will not be her fastest race, she remembers watching me run the same race last year. She and other friends were stationed in Newton just before Heartbreak Hill. She said tonight that last year when I reached Newton I looked like I was really struggling (and she’s totally right, I was struggling and I ran like hot garbage that day), but she also remembers how happy I was after the race despite the struggle, and how I would call it my favorite race i had ever run. She expects the same for herself on Monday. It will be a battle, but the support and joy of running Boston will carry her through. It will be a great day.

I do not expect to run like hot garbage on Monday. I have done all the “right things” in training the past couple of months. I am feeling and running as well as i have felt and run in probably close to three years. Not to be overlooked, I now know what to expect on the Boston course and not to go out too fast on the downhills of the early miles because they will beat your legs to a pulp before you reach Natick.

Yet, you never know what a given day will bring. It’s conceivable I could cramp up at some point. The weather might play a role. Something entirely unexpected could go wrong at any time. I might, by luck of the draw, happen to draw a day where I am simply not feeling it and I do race like hot garbage. It happens. And, well , bring it.

No matter what happens, Monday will indeed be a great day. When you have driven down a highway and suddenly forgotten your entire drive, when you have sat in bed at night by yourself choking back tears praying just to please feel normal and healthy again one day, when you have been in the vise grip of the most feared disease of our time, and then through the miracles of modern medicine and the grace of God you have made a full recovery to become not merely normal again but stronger and healthier than you were before? After that happens, every day that comes afterwards is a good day.

And any day when you can take your place on the starting line of a marathon, soak in the support of the crowds, and battle through all 26.2 miles of fatigue and pain to reach the finish line? Whatever the day brings, all of it – much like those dreaded chemo drugs – is much less painful than cancer. And any day where you can be part of a marathon is, indeed, a great, great day.

See you at the finish line on Monday, no matter how long it takes. I don’t plan to keep you waiting too long, though.

 

The Wonder of Sports

When I began writing this piece 17 days ago on the first Thursday of March Madness, I had correctly predicted 10 of 12 NCAA basketball tournament games correctly, including both upsets. That’s an 83.3% success rate, which makes me sound pretty insightful and prescient if you don’t know any better. But my six-year-old daughter filled out her bracket with zero knowledge of basketball, only knowing that the teams with lower numbers next to them are better than the high-numbered teams but they don’t always win, and picking teams based on nicknames, and her record was also 10-2. And, what would someone’s record have been who selected all favorites? You guessed it, also 10-2. In other words, giving yourself too much credit for predicting most college basketball tournament games correctly on Day 1 is a little bit like a generally young and healthy person waking up in the morning and saying, “hey, I don’t have a cold today. I must be taking great care of myself. Go me!” While you didn’t do anything obviously wrong, it’s most accurate to say you just sort of glided into the most probable outcome which happened to be generally positive.

Sports have been an enormous influence on the trajectory of my entire life. If you total up the number of sporting events I have watched in my four decades on this planet, it is almost certainly in the five figures. Though several of my teachers during my childhood did not understand my love of sports and attempted to either belittle it or steer me away from it, I have worked in the sports industry ever since I graduated college. That’s going on 17 years. During that time I have researched sports statistics and history, written about and analyzed sports, and worked with customers in the sports media. On a few different occasions, I have even invented new statistics. None ever particularly saw a wide light of day, but the formulas worked. With all of that experience, you would assume I am an expert, that I can predict the outcomes of games and the success and failure of players and teams with much greater accuracy than the layperson. And, to a certain extent, you would be correct. I tend to win the fantasy football championships of between 15% and 20% of the leagues which I enter, which is about twice the expected rate of success in a 12-person league. I have won multiple March Madness office pools, which carry still smaller odds of success. If you were to ask me to break down an upcoming baseball or football or basketball game and predict the outcome, in most cases I could deliver you an in-depth, reasoned analysis and a good healthy stab at the outcome. Yet, despite all the years of experience and the tens of thousands of hours observing these wonderful games, that’s all it would be. A good healthy stab. It might be right. It probably has a slightly higher chance of proving accurate than the guess of Joe Blow on the street. But, you know what? Joe Blow will still outpredict me a large percentage of the time. And, you might be surprised to read this, but this very unpredictability is what makes sports irresistible.

When I first began working in sports in the summer of 2000, nobody had ever heard of baseball metrics like WAR or xERA or FIP or BABIP, which are now commonplace. For that matter, in the summer of 2000, you rarely even heard the term “metric” when it came to sports. Today, we are living in a different world. The company I work for tracks each team’s win probability continuously with each play of each game, and monitors and records every small movement of every player on an NBA basketball court. These innovations, too, are becoming commonplace.

Yet, despite all of those technological advances and statistical innovations, when it comes to predicting who will win one given game on one given day, we are scarcely any more accurate than an ink-stained sportswriter of the 1960’s who based everything on the eye test and only knew the handful of statistics that got printed in the 1960’s newspapers. And, this is just how it should be, just how it always will be. Because the beauty of sport, the true appeal of sport, does not lie in the ability to predict it. It lies in the fact that you cannot predict it, at least not consistently.

Now, some people are reading this right now and thinking, “Matt, you’re ridiculously wrong. Data shows that the sacrifice bunt is poor strategy. Teams should go for it more on 4th down. There’s no such thing as a clutch player. Etc, etc, etc….” And, in a way those people are correct, but they are correct in aggregate. Individual games are not played in aggregate. They are played one at a time. So, while the sacrifice bunt may cost teams runs over the long haul, that doesn’t mean it will cost the team runs in a given situation on a given day. And even if I may win my fantasy football league twice as often as the average person, there’s nonetheless a non-insignificant chance I will finish dead last this year.

As I return to this post to finish it 17 days later, it is the eve of baseball’s Opening Day and the Cubs and Cardinals are playing on ESPN on my TV eight feet away from me. Jon Lester is on the mound at Busch Stadium. This is a fitting backdrop for me to express my own love of sports. Like me, Jon Lester is a lymphoma survivor who emerged stronger after defeating the disease. Lester returned from his bout with lymphoma to win the clinching game of the 2007 World Series for my beloved Boston Red Sox. Less than four months following that victory, I was diagnosed. Shortly thereafter, tipped off by a couple of my colleagues at the office, Lester wrote me a short, hand-signed letter encouraging me in my own fight.

The story gets better still. In 2013, I trained to run a half marathon in St. Louis in late October. As luck and/or fate would have it, the Red Sox and Cardinals reached the World Series that fall and wound up in St. Louis at the very same time. Unabashed Boston sports fan that I am, I had no choice but to run the half marathon while wearing a Red Sox shirt and hat, and carrying a figurine of David Ortiz in my pocket (a “pocket Papi”). I got showered with good-natured boos on the course by Cardinals fans, and I egged on those fans and soaked up the boos. As many athletes in the past have attested, getting booed can be even more rewarding than getting cheered, because while cheers can be a Pavlovian response of a sort, getting booed always means that the fans care.

I do not believe I have ever run better overall than I did that October day in 2013, when I cruised through St. Louis and set a half marathon personal record that still stands. Then, the following day, my brother Ben – who had taken me to my first baseball game 30 years and one month prior at Fenway Park – caught a flight from Boston to St. Louis toting a couple of ridiculous fake beards (this was the year when the Red Sox all grew beards).

Ben and I sat down the first-base line at Busch Stadium wearing our Red Sox hats and fake beards that night and cheered ourselves hoarse as (yep) Jon Lester outdueled Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright in a 3-1 win, sending the Red Sox back to Boston with a 3-2 series lead. Two nights later, back at Fenway, the Sox wrapped up their third World Series title in 10 years.

Ben cheered me on the course last April when I ran my first Boston Marathon, and he will be there again in two weeks when I run my second. I like my chances to run stronger this year than last, but all the logic and preparation in the world only produces probability. You still need to show up and have things go your way on the course or the court or the playing field on that particular day.

The legendary Boston sportswriter Bob Ryan – like myself a lover of statistics who nonetheless acknowledges their predictive limitations –  has written several columns along similar lines in recent years. In the immediate aftermath of the Patriots’ remarkable comeback to defeat the Falcons in Super Bowl 51 earlier this year, he summed it up the greatness of sports with the following tweet:

And, yes, I do pity those who do not appreciate sports, who have not been able to see and enjoy what has enriched my life so greatly. Sports played an integral role not merely in entertaining me, but in teaching me statistics, probability, logic, physics, geography, psychology, economics… and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Sports is the ultimate in entertainment because it unfolds live, organically. For all its problems off the field – and there are many – at its best, one sporting event is still capable of invoking as wide a range of emotions and inflection points within three harmless hours as anything ever devised by mankind. Sports, when played at their highest level, can inspire like little else and, for a brief period, bring people from varied races, classes, and political persuasions all together for a singular cause. We need that today as much as ever.

Best of all, try as we might, we cannot truly predict sports. For what it’s worth, I foresee a rematch of last year’s World Series with the Indians prevailing this time and Corey Kluber taking home the MVP trophy, but what do I know?

Go Red Sox.

Hitting The Pavement, Still Asking For More

“Seeing traces of the scars that came before. Hitting the pavement, still asking for more.” -Son Volt

The quote above is a lyric from my single favorite song of all-time, “Tear Stained Eye” by Son Volt. The song is more than 20 years old now, but it has a certain timeless quality to it. A couple of weeks ago, I had that song playing in the car during my early-morning drive to catch the train to work, and it hit me that this particular lyric was an apt description of my current marathon running.

As long-time readers of this blog and friends of mine know, I took up the sport of running eight years ago to make good on a promise I had made the previous year. I made the promise – to beat cancer, keep my June wedding date, and run a marathon the following year – the day following a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Disease, partly as a motivational tool and partly because I wanted to beat the cancer really, really badly.

I did make good on each portion my promise. My wife Krissie and I got married on schedule on June 21,2008, 11 days following my final chemo treatment and three days after the side effects wore off from that final treatment. We now have a pair of healthy daughters. And, I ran and finished the Chicago Marathon, raising funds for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in the process, the following year.

Though I proved my point, I have kept running ever since. While “cancer survivor” will always be part of my identity and has impacted a lot of my outlook in ways that can sometimes be murky, it is not a part of my identity I need to actively think about on a daily basis. I go in for exams and blood draws a couple of times each year, but aside from that, I am a regular dad who happens to run. My hair is back. I am healthy and, thanks to genetics and no smoking and generally clean living, probably look a bit younger than my actual age. The only hint of my malignant past can be found on the right side of my neck. It is a scar from my lymph node biopsy of 2008, which at this point has faded enough so that it literally is more accurately a trace of the scar that came before.

Yet, hitting the pavement and still asking for more punishment, I continue to run. I aim for two marathons each year. And, in less than two months, I will run marathon No. 12. Unexpectedly and somewhat amazingly, I will be returning to my hometown course for the second consecutive year. Yes, I will really be running the Boston Marathon on April 17.

The photo above was taken last April 18 in Hopkinton, prior to the start of the race. I am in the front of that crowd of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute runners, as one of the team’s cancer survivors. We were collectively called “Living Proof.” It was truly one of the greatest days of my life and you can read all about it here. Due to the race’s stringent qualifying standards and the fact I’d expended a ton of effort fundraising for Dana-Farber, I thought at the time that Boston was going to be a one-and-done deal for me. Then, earlier this month, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I will be running the Boston Marathon wearing the purple uniform of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program, the uniform I wore for my first four Chicago Marathons. A friend of mine from Team In Training, who had been planning to run Boston but is now unable to do so due to other commitments, offered me her bib because of my survivorship and my Boston roots. All I had to do was commit to running the race and find a way to get to Boston. And so, there I will be. This time, I will be running in honor and memory of my friend’s husband, a truly remarkable man who fought cancer with valor for year. You can read more about him on my fundraising page.

I will share more details about my training, my path to Boston, and ultimately the race over the next two months. As for the unanswered question of why I continue to hit the pavement, asking for more? Quite simply, it is because I can. Because when your very existence has been threatened, and your ability to run at all has been taken away, that ability is something you never fail to appreciate once you have it again. As was the case last year, I will toe the starting line in Hopkinton with full appreciation of how special the moment is, acknowledgment of those who are unable to run, and the desire to do my small part to turn more patients into survivors.

By the way, here’s the song “Tear Stained Eye.” I’ve always loved the steel guitar and banjo in it. I took a liking to alt-country music in the late 90’s as a college student in New York City, where it seemed as if I was the only person who listened to it because I probably was. I listened to plenty of Wilco before that band was a household name and before they devolved into Dad Rock, Ryan Adams before he was a major solo artist and was still the frontman for a band named Whiskeytown, etc… basically, though I am now an uncool dad who you wouldn’t turn to for recommendations on new music, once upon a time I had taste that proved ahead of its time.

Fifty days to Boston.

Rooting for Laundry

 

Let’s play around for a minute with a little thought experiment. I will give you some brief background information about two white men, both in the 25-54 age range. Try and form sketches of these two men in your mind, and be honest to yourself about whether your feelings are positive or negative.

Person A is not merely a Starbucks Rewards member, but a Starbucks Gold Card member. He is the son of two former college professors and married a public school teacher. He went to college in Greenwich Village, earning a journalism degree. He used to drive a Subaru. Now, he rides public transportation into Chicago each morning to work at his desk job in the broadly defined tech/media industry, a job representative of the 21st Century knowledge economy. He subscribes to Atlantic Monthly. He runs for fitness, enjoys sushi, and has never held a real gun.

Person B is a not merely a Sam’s Club member, but a Sam’s Club Plus member. He is the nephew of a country music DJ and occasional rodeo participant, and the great nephew of a stock car racing pioneer. He enjoys watching NASCAR without irony. He and his wife are home-schooling their daughters. He attends a large, non-denominational church weekly. He prays and reads the Bible, of which he owns three copies in different translations. Each morning he reads the Wall Street Journal, but he doesn’t much care for PBS and has open disdain for NPR. He enjoys football without hesitation, and if he had sons instead of daughters he would encourage them to play football themselves. He enjoys Mountain Dew, domestic beer, and the music of Hank Williams Jr. and ZZ Top.

Now, I haven’t told you enough about Person A or Person B so that you could possibly know for certain all about either one. Nonetheless, chances are that, if you are completely honest with yourself, one of those descriptions was one which made you feel fairly comfortable, while the other made you react with at best a feeling of detached “otherness” and at worst a feeling of resentment or even disdain.

So, now for the reveal, which you may well have guessed by now: Both of the above descriptions are of the same person. Both Person A and Person B describe me.

You may love me or you may hate me or more likely you lie somewhere in between, but you should not form snap judgments about my character based on where I shop or the car I drive or the job I hold (within reason) or the music I prefer or, really, even who I voted for. All of these things may give you clues to my identity, but none of them on its own gives you enough information to make a definitive judgment about my character.

We are, unfortunately and sadly, living in an age where every little choice we make feels politically loaded. Why should going to Starbucks make me a Democrat and shopping at Sam’s Club label me as a Republican? Maybe Starbucks is ubiquitous and makes a decent enough cup of coffee for me to buy, and maybe Sam’s Club happens to be located closer to my home than Costco and happens to sell items in bulk that my family enjoys and help us save money. It should not have to be this way.

As we retreat into our social media comfort zones and echo chambers of our peers, we act hypocritically and betray the principles which we claim to hold. Some relish accusing anyone who disagrees with them as being motivated by “hate,” all the while making snap judgments and name-calling and being guilty of what any neutral observer would identify as much deeper intolerance and hatred than any mere policy position on its own could betray. Others spent eight years decrying a President for stretching the bounds of his constitutional authority and cynically pitting factions against each other for his own political gain, and now cheer when a President nominally on their side gets into office and begins doing the exact same thing.

This is not good. This is not healthy. We are, as Jerry Seinfeld once astutely put it in reference to professional athletes changing teams, rooting for laundry. But, it’s worse than that. While sports offers up a relatively healthy outlet for our more tribal instincts, politics and the real world are very destructive places to engage those same appetites. In the real world, we must dig in less and attempt to cooperate more. To alter the words of the Aaron Burr character in Hamilton (the best character in that play, by the way), we should talk more and smile more.

With that, let me end this on an upbeat and patriotic note. The great hope and the genius of America is that, for all its troubles, it is still ours. Want to feel better? Get out and talk to your neighbors. Volunteer for charity. Join a local organization that matches your interests. Interact with people slightly outside of your usual comfort zone (in person, not online). You may find that the people who shop or consume media or (God forbid) even vote differently than you might not be such bad people after all, and you probably have a lot more in common than you may think. Want to stick it to the powerful who are turning our society into an agitated, polarized, cesspool? Then don’t take orders from them. Get out there yourself and be kind to others. Get involved. Do your small part to make your corner of the world a friendlier place. If enough of us do the same, a lot of corners will become friendlier. After a while, those corners add up to some serious real estate.

Best of all, it can free us up to be completely tribal in an area where it’s harmless, like sports. Go Patriots.

New England 41, Atlanta 17.

 

I Vote in Peace

There’s a good chance you disagree with me about politics. If you are not a person who found this blog randomly, and you know me personally, there is about an 80-90% chance you disagree with me about politics. This is my lot in life. By accident of the locations and demographics in which I was born, raised, and work, coupled with the viewpoints I have developed through my own experiences, learning, reasoning, and innate tendencies, I have found myself politically at odds with the overwhelming majority of my family, friends, and everyday acquaintances since I began to develop my views in my teen years. This is not an easy way to be. Quite frankly, it sucks.

I rarely discuss my political views anymore in public, because the costs outweigh the benefits. This is sad. It is sad because we should all be able to have civil discussions about issues that matter, but it is also sad because in this age of animosity and polarization (egged on by our elites, by the way) and with the visibility of social media, I know that a lot of people must think all kinds of horrible things about me, simply by the virtue of which political positions and candidates I tend to support. I know this because I see the ruthless venom directed at other people with whom I agree.

Because I have spent most of my life surrounded by friends and family with whom I disagree on politics, I may have a different outlook than most. Many of these people I know believe things I am certain are horribly wrong, and support – often enthusiastically – policies and candidates which I am confident will produce disastrous results. If I did not know these people personally, I might be tempted to assume they were either malign characters or stupid. But, because I know them personally, I know that they are neither. If they are basically good and intelligent people, how can they support such horrible things?

I think we all have a tendency to fall into a bit of a trap, which is this: We tend to pick out the absolute worst possible consequence of the position with which we disagree, and then, we hypothesize that everyone who disagrees with us must be in favor of that worst possible consequence. This is a mistake.

Let’s say I support Position A. I have considered the positives and negatives thoroughly, and decided that I support A because I think it will have Positive Outcome X. For the opposite position, Position B, I at one point also considered the positives and negatives, and concluded I disagree with it because I think it will have Negative Outcome Y. Over time, because it is simpler to think in simple terms, I come to associate A with X, and B with Y, despite the fact that each position probably has some nuanced potential positives and negatives mixed together. Before long, because of this shorthand, I come to assume that any person who supports B actually wants Negative Outcome Y, which is objectively pretty horrible. Yet, in reality, most reasonable people who support B are supporting it for positive reasons, which they either see as outweighing Y or more likely than Y, and at the same time, those reasonable people are doing what I do in reverse, overlooking my Outcome X because they believe a negative consequence is more likely or outweighs it.

This is how you get factions accusing one another of bigotry and hate. Occasionally there may be elements of truth to it, but in most cases the factions simply don’t understand each other very well and are ascribing the worst possible motives to the other’s beliefs.

Taking a real-world, apolitical (mostly) example, think about a person who smokes. Now, I am a non-smoker. I have never had a cigarette in my life. Part of this is because smoking has simply never appealed to me, but the primary reason I have never even tried it is because I know smoking causes cancer. So, over the years I have come to associate smoking with cancer and I never even think of smoking. But, what if I were to approach every smoker and say, “you smoke? Wow, you must love cancer.” Now, that would be a horrible and ridiculous thing to say, but see where I am going with this? The smoker isn’t smoking because he wants cancer, any more than your typical Second Amendment advocate wants mass shootings or your typical same-sex marriage advocate wants to ban religion. We have got to stop ascribing malicious motives to the politics of our friends and neighbors.

As tomorrow is Election Day, I will close with some advice which is going to fall largely on deaf ears. Based on what I have said above, please try to be cognizant of the fact that most people who disagree with you are doing so honestly, and are motivated by noble goals as opposed to malicious ones. They may be prioritizing certain goals differently than you, but that doesn’t mean they are haters or bigots. They are also after some objectively positive outcomes; they may simply disagree with how to get there. And, this election is as important to them as it is to you, for reasons no less admirable or serious.

Because of all this, if your candidate wins tomorrow, act like you’ve been there before and don’t spike the football. Celebrate quietly and without rubbing your victory in the face of the opponent. Even as you are happy, others are grieving for the future of the nation they love. Gloating will do nothing to ingratiate you with them, and it will reflect poorly on the views you support.

If your candidate loses tomorrow, do not lash out at the victorious side, do not whine about how stupid the public is, or how this proves America is racist or doomed to some sort of faithless anarchy or beyond repair. Do not threaten to move to Canada unless you really mean it (and, if you do, we’ll miss you). Nobody likes a sore loser. Acting like a sore loser will only serve to make you a permanent loser, as nobody will want to consider the possibility that your position will have merit.

I am too cynical and weary of the world to have any confidence that the above will be taken to heart by very many people, but it is important enough to say. If we want a better future with more thoughtful and appealing candidates, we the people will need to create a more civil environment in which better candidates can thrive. And, if we continue to create a toxic environment, increasingly toxic candidates will be both what we get and what we deserve.

We are in this together. Go vote, even if I probably hope your candidate loses. This year, I kind of wish they all could lose.

 

What Are The Odds?

“What are the odds of you being right here, right now in this very place?”  -Tow truck driver, somewhere near Hinsdale, Illinois, approximately 4 AM on July 31, 2016

The photo above was taken at 1:57 this morning, slightly more than eight hours into what would be a nine-and-a-half-hour stay on the shoulder of the beginning of the off-ramp to Exit 12A of Interstate 294 in Alsip, Illinois, a southern Chicago suburb not far from Midway Airport. I made my unintended pit stop at this exit ramp on my way home from a week’s vacation in Northern Michigan. A lot of people like to vacation in Northern Michigan in the summertime. Nobody ever likes to vacation in Alsip, let alone on the Exit 12A off-ramp – a strip of tarred concrete populated by overgrown weeds, empty cans of domestic beer, myself, my dog, and my car for more than nine hours last night, and (unfortunately by around the time this photo was taken) some of my urine.

Unpleasant, utilitarian places such as this are only meant to be passed through at 60 or 70 mph, so those who wind up staying likely have some unusual circumstance. Such was the case Sunday afternoon around 5:45 PM. My Boston Terrier, Copley, and I were entering the home stretch of our 380-mile drive home. I was on target to get home before 6:30, and my thoughts were turning to what leftovers might be in the freezer for me to reheat for supper.

I drive a 2011 Subaru Forester. It has been a fantastic car, but thanks to my putting 94 miles on it each day simply by commuting to work, it has already traveled more than 160,000. As they increase in age, these Foresters have been found to burn oil. While the final verdict has yet to be determined, my own Forester seems to have chosen the end of this year’s family trip to Michigan to begin burning oil at a much-increased rate.

In a fortuitous circumstance, my wife and daughters are remaining in Michigan for another week while I return to work. Otherwise, they would have been with me during my drive home. As it was, the Forester was traveling northbound carrying only myself, Copley, and some luggage when the engine began banging loudly and alarmingly. I immediately pulled into the right lane, hoping to get off at the next exit to check things out. After about 20 seconds of this banging, however, the car was no longer able to accelerate and the oil pressure light came on. About 15 seconds later, I felt the entire engine shut down and the full suite of warning lights illuminated. I pulled off onto the shoulder and coasted as long as the car would coast, coming to a stop at the beginning of the Exit 12A off-ramp. By my estimate, the entire process of the car breaking down lasted about 90 seconds from start to finish.

In a slight panic and not remembering entirely what to do in these situations, my first instinct was to call 911. The operator asked if I had roadside assistance coverage through my insurance. “Oh yeah, I do have that!,” I remembered. “Let me call them.” And so, I called Progressive Insurance. Thus began a nine-hour odyssey of frustration.

Although I very specifically gave the first representative I spoke with at Progressive my exact location (Alsip, Illinois, Interstate 294 Northbound, pulled off on the shoulder at the start of the Exit 12A off-ramp), she inexplicably had a very difficult time identifying that location. Eventually, she transferred me to an additional representative to confirm. At the end of my conversation with the second rep, she informed me that a tow truck had already accepted the assignment and would be arriving within the hour. Okay, cool.

More than an hour passed, and I had seen no tow truck and heard nothing. I called the tow truck company which had accepted the assignment. An unhelpful man said, “oh, the Forester? That job was cancelled. You’ll have to call Progressive.” I called Progressive back, asking what the deal was here. Apparently, the towing company decided it had more important things to do than actually go tow a car and canceled on me, but never notified either Progressive or myself appropriately. End result: I waited more than an hour in which no progress was made.

At this point, Progressive assigned my case to a different towing company, which they also assured me would arrive within the hour. They did not. I called Progressive back, they checked with the towing company, and the response from the tow truck was that they would definitely be coming and were “on their way,” but it had become a busy night and it would be “2-3 more hours” until they finally arrived. After a couple of automated texts were sent to me with conflicting ETAs, and more than 2 additional hours passed (along with one of the ETAs) with no sign of a truck, I called Progressive yet again. Here is where the ordeal reached its peak of frustration.

Progressive and myself each spent the better part of a half-hour trying to contact the second no-show tow truck of the night. Finally, Progressive finally got a hold of somebody, who basically told them, “oh, yeah, we’re not doing that one anymore because it’s on a road we can’t access.” Apparently this is the world’s first towing company which refuses to tow cars off the Interstate.

Finally, with my stay at Exit 12A at the six-hour mark, Progressive decided this situation had become extreme enough to escalate my case to a supervisor named Rachel. Rachel set about trying to find any tow truck driver in the Chicago area who could possibly take me home. As it was past midnight on a Saturday night, this process took Rachel more than an hour. Eventually, she called me back and informed me that there was one driver who could do it, but he would take yet another 2-3 hours to get to me. She assured me that this particular driver was “phenomenal” and very reliable, and that if I could stay patient he would definitely be there to help. I didn’t really have much of a choice.

So, Copley and I continued to wait. I occasionally offered Copley food and water by placing his bowls outside the car on the shoulder. He didn’t feel like eating. I hadn’t eaten since lunch myself, and all I had left in the car fit for human consumption was a lukewarm bottle of Gatorade. I drank it for the hydration and the sugar. Eventually, as alluded to above, I resorted to stepping outside into the darkness and peeing it out. I had turned on my hazard lights after sunset for safety purposes, but they began to dim after a couple of hours as my car battery lost power. I also lost the ability to listen to the baseball games on the radio, and finally, the ability to charge my phone. Fatigue increasing (and heightened from having run a 10k race in Michigan Saturday morning), I reclined in the passenger seat with Copley on my lap. Glancing in the rear-view mirrors hoping no drunk drivers would careen into us and with my phone close at hand, we waited, and waited, and waited. Then, at 3:04 AM, we saw the tow truck lights approach and pull over just in front of my Forester.

I greeted the driver, but Copley did so more excitedly. Sensing this was the helper we needed, Copley enthusiastically jumped out of the car, tail wagging. The tow truck driver liked dogs, and extended his hand to pet my Boston Terrier.

And now, after all of this background detail, we finally arrive at the central point of our story, where a very bad night turns strangely good.

This driver, as it turns out, was quite the character. A smallish, graying, goateed, tattooed man of about 50 years old, his facial features somehow struck me as a composite of David Spade and Chris Rock. I realize that makes no sense whatsoever and David Spade and Chris Rock look completely unlike each other. You will just have to trust me when I tell you this guy looked like a cross between David Spade and Chris Rock.

Once he’s finished attaching the Subaru, the Spade/Rock hybrid says Copley and I can get in the truck. We begin the long drive to North Aurora, which didn’t seem so long when I was attempting it 10 hours ago.

“So, why were you waiting so long anyway?”

I give him the details of the first truck that didn’t cancel correctly, and the second truck that strung me along. He shakes his head.

“These guys…” he says. “These guys… I had nothing to do earlier this evening. I could have picked you right up. But I don’t work directly with the insurance companies. They don’t have my information to contact me unless they escalate it to a supervisor. And that’s how I’m making a lot of money doing this, from these other drivers blowing people off.”

He continues to tell me an overview of his life story, which is pretty fascinating if true. He graduated college with a finance degree, then went into the restaurant business and briefly became a millionaire, only to squander virtually all of his money in the stock market when it went south in the dot-com bust and after 9/11. He describes becoming “very nearly homeless,” but then picking himself up again. He went into construction work for a time, but when he was helping renovate homes he took note of all the business the movers got, and realized he could buy himself a truck and go into business for himself again. Now, he’s the driver picking up stranded motorists when other drivers ignore, and he’s “on my way to making my second million.”

Then, he gets philosophical. “What are the odds of you being right here, right now in this very place?”

At first, I think he’s referencing my immediate situation, that things happen, it’s not the end of the world, I’m lucky my wife and kids weren’t with me, etc…. But that’s not really what he’s talking about. He continues to touch upon what an incredible miracle it is that there is life on Earth at all, before you even reach the astronomical odds against any individual one of us being born, and all the circumstances that would need to fall into place for that to happen. “I mean, what are the odds? ,” he keeps repeating.

I frequently have thought of this as well, and the driver has come to the same conclusion as I have: Simply by our being here, there are two possibilities: Either each one of us has hit the most incredible lottery of all-time, or there is a God who created all of this. Personally, I have concluded the “God” explanation is the correct one. I get the impression the driver has either concluded the same or is heavily leaning that way. But his larger point is, either way, we should be tremendously thankful for every day we are given and take small troubles in stride, because what are the odds?

I realize that this is similar to my own thought process, which is a result of both my faith and my cancer survivorship. It’s the reason why nine hours stranded on a highway shoulder, despite being highly uncomfortable and unpleasant and tedious, didn’t drive me bonkers. I have endured and survived worse than this in the past. I will encounter worse than this in the future. And, in the end, God is in control and will come through – albeit usually not in precisely the way you’d expect. My health history and my faith both allow me to keep a level head.

The drive continues west towards North Aurora, and the driver’s conversation continues in unexpected directions. He asks me about my opinions on the election. I tread lightly at first, but soon discover that we agree on the larger point that both major candidates are terrible and reflective of a nation in decline. After finding out what I do for work (“Moneyball made you guys the cool guys now!,” he enthuses), he engages me in discussions about the future of football in light of CTE. There are other varied topics I don’t remember as clearly. Overall, it is one of the more interesting, unexpected, unusual, varied conversations I can ever remember having with a tow truck driver at 4 AM.

Finally, we reach home, detach the Subaru from the tow truck, and I thank the Spade/Rock hybrid for his help so late at night. Somewhat to my surprise, he doesn’t request payment for the extra mileage. Progressive has picked up the tab. If there is a cable TV producer who gets stranded on the roadway, please let that producer get towed by this man, because he needs to be the star of his own reality show immediately. It could be titled “What Are The Odds?”

In the absence of that chance occurrence, if you need a tow truck in Chicago, give Big Town Towing a call. I will be adding to his collection of unanimous 5-star reviews on Yelp, as a thank you for turning a disastrous evening into a strangely redemptive experience.

What are the odds?