A little life motivation never hur

For our collaborative package with the broadcast students, my group is doing a profile on Steve Granata, a motivational speaker. Granata uses the sport of basketball to teach elementary school children about some of life's most important lessons.

I saw Granata's show Wednesday afternoon at an elementary school in Elgin, IL. Showing off Harlem Globe Trotter-esque tricks, liking spinning the ball on his finger, Granata explains his dream of doing such tricks and how he got to where he is today.

Granata has been doing his Totally Courageous Basketball Experience full time for nine years, doign over 200 shows a year at elementary and middle schools. A couple of times he says he has dropped the ball and hit some of the kids, but that doesn't stop him from doing it.

Using basketball as a metaphor, Granata presents his three life rules: give your best, never give up and believe in yourself. Simple things to teach children, but better things to remind adults about. These are three concepts we're all taught when we're very young, but I think sometimes along the way we lose sight of it in the rat race. I think any of my classmates can say they have failed on one or all three of these rules at some point.

Lesson learned from my trip to Elgin: remember these three rules for this class, and everything else I'm doing, and maybe things won't be as stressful.

Where will all the people go?

This was to be the main question surrounding Chicago's bid for the 2016 summer Olympics. It was the biggest concern for International Olympic Committee members because of Chicago's somewhat faltering mass transit system. And when I say somewhat faltering, I'm being extremely nice.

Anyone riding one of the seven train lines or dozes of buses during any of the rush hour periods will tell you it is not a pleasant experience. Factor in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Olympic athletes, staff and fans, and you've got one hot mess. The Chicago Tribune reported today that no major upgrades will be necessary should the city win the bid this October.

But another issue I think the city will have to address is where will the residents of the city be moved to when the building of the Olympic stadium begins. A colleague of mine did a story about the stadiums for class last year and actually informed one of the Chicago Park District pool managers that his pool would be the location for the Olympic swimming facilities. A Chicago Sun-Times article stated the swimming facility would originally be in Washington Park and has now been moved to Douglas Park. Most of the venues, with the exception of tennis, will be constructed on the city's south side, known for its poverty and violence. I hope the city's intentions of placing the venues here will be honorable and the sites would be used for after school programs and such after the games end.

It could potentially be a repeat of what the city had to develop while tearing down the high rise housing projects. Where to put a significant amount of people for both short and long periods of time is never an easy task. Always a political hot potato question, I don't know if the city has thought about this.

Baseball still great...

Even as some would say baseball will not recover from Alex Rodriguez's positive steroid test from a few years back, I still say baseball is great. And must I remind everyone A-Rod is not the first league star to test positive (remember Barry Bonds or that one guy named Mark McGwire?) Some of my earliest memories involve baseball, specifically my beloved St. Louis Cardinals. My grandfather was a die hard Cardinals fan and when the game came on TV, nothing else mattered. Well maybe the ice cream breaks during commercials but that's about it. He hated the TV announcers, calling Mike Shannon "Mush Mouth." So most of the time the TV was muted and Jack Buck blasted out of the radio beside him. One year for Father's Day, my sister and I gave him an umpire doll with Velco arms, legs and head as a means of venting his frustration at officials.

My mom sat four rows from the very top of old Busch Stadium (pause for moment of silence) when she was eight months pregnant with me. At a game at the tender age of three, I stood up on my dad's lap and yelled, "Kill the umpire!" This in turn prompted Dad to say I had been watching too many games with Grandpa. Now my family keeps the Cardinal fan tradition alive with an annual game in a party suite at new Busch.

The point I am trying to make is most baseball fans have been following the game for so long to be completely turned off by something like A-Rod's admission. There is so much more to the game, too much history, to say baseball is in serious trouble. If I would guess, baseball could be in more trouble with the economic situation than this drug test issue...only time will tell.

Week 2

Looking at the Guide to the South Course story, I can definitely see how much reporting went into it and how much reporting my group will have to do for our project. Our group has switched to a story about James Augustine from the 2005-2006 University of Illinois team that made it to the NCAA championship that year. Augustine was drafted by the Orlando Magic, but has not received much playing time. He is considering moving to Spain to get the playing time he wants. We will need to gather information from family, Augustine himself, teammates past and present, and coaches. Our group has already put feelers out for interview opportunities and copies of footage. We have a lot of work to do but are very excited this new story idea came up!