Ponder This

Aye, aye! It was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!... I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, The Whale; Chapter XXXVI One of the greatest tales of all-time, Moby Dick depicts many different forms of symbolism. From dark vs. light to the universe as a whole, Moby Dick can be construed almost as much as The Bible . In what way it speaks to the reader is most important, though. Although it's pretty apparent that there is quite the religious undertone, this reads entirely different to anyone who works in the media industry. Some interpretations point out that Captain Ahab, the protagonist in the story, is insistent on getting his white whale, Moby Dick. It is something that eludes him, which causes him to fixate on getting it, even though it...

I once received some sage advice from my old man: "Accept that your team will never win it all." I still remember the context in which it was said, where I was and the conversation that sparked it. We were driving home from Game 4 of the 2001 NHL Western Conference Final at Savvis Center in downtown St. Louis. The hometown Blues had just lost a heartbreaker to the Colorado Avalanche (a game that saw the Avalanche score three goals in 78 seconds and another in overtime to seal it), and the Blues were now facing a grim 3-1 series deficit with a shift back to Denver. My father and I left the arena that night in bleak fashion, realizing the mountain they would have to climb to get back into the series. My dad and I at one of the hundreds of Blues games we attended together. It was only the second time the Blues had reached the third round of the playoffs in my lifetime, with the first coming in 1986, when I was a one-year-old. If you're wondering, yes, they lost that...

Many bloggers make very educated suggestions in their blogs that coaches or managers may not have considered, since they are seeing it in a different light. A good sports blogger is someone who follows their own personal code of ethics, but also portrays the voice of the die-hard fans in an easy-to-understand written format. Being a fan and a new-school journalist is a big responsibility that the serious sports blogger understands. Many years ago, before I was granted media access by the St. Louis Blues NHL team, I wrote this portion of a large piece where I contested that nontraditional media should be considered for press-box access. I strongly believed this, as my main takeaways stressed that the people covering the team from a nontraditional source (blogs and podcasts) would tell the story that the traditional media can't. They don't have affiliations with the teams they are covering, nor do they have a producer or editor cutting down any negative comments about said team...