Power of the i-Pad

When I got my iPad over a decade ago, I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

To be fair, the same thing has happened with me nearly every time I’ve got a new computing device. For instance, when I got my first computer in college, I thought it was amazing that a CD-ROM could be inserted and then you have a dictionary. No more looking up words in that paperback Webster’s from high school.

Times have changed.

With the iPad, I could now watch ballgames, shows, movies, etc. on a screen bigger than the 1+” x 3+” iPhone.

I loved this thing and used it all the time until I got a newer iPhone with about double the screen size of my old one. I decided the iPad was a little to big to carry around all over the place. My new phone—barely—fit in my pocket.

I still use the iPad occasionally, but it is basically a piece of crap. Screen is cracked all over the place. The backlighting shades one part of the screen and not the other. Software hasn’t updated in years. It’s a dinosaur.

But that iPad exposed me to a world of books that I may never have come across without it. Classics in the world of sports, philosophy, literature, etc. that have long been out of print. Now digitized.

Reading on the postage stamp-sized screen of the O.G. iPhone or on the retina-scorching computer monitor had been more than a bit cumbersome.

I had been doing research for a college football book—now on the backburner for the last 9 years or so since I figured out my original idea wasn’t so original—and I got to downloading several old books published in the salad days of college football, the era around when the forward pass was legalized.

And you can imagine how that went. One thing led to another and another—the Internet “wormhole” that many of us get stuck in—and I managed to download a few books on baseball around the same time. Ironically, I downloaded a couple copies of the Spalding Guides from the Nineteen-Teens that I have actual physical copies of.

Whatever the case, this dive into century-old baseball literature is where I came across the writing of John McGraw for the first time. Of course, I knew who McGraw was—manager of the Giants for 3 decades and a major name in baseball in the first half of the 20th century. A legend, really.

But I didn’t know much about his own knowledge and what he taught about the game of baseball.

I am eminently curious about the origins of baseball skills, strategy, tactics, and so forth.

I was also coaching high school baseball at the time, and we were soon going on a Spring Break road trip, so I had a lot of time to delve into the teachings of “the little Napoleon.” It was awesome.

The more I read, the more I knew I would have loved to play for this guy.

National League umpire Arlie Latham said of the Giants skipper, “McGraw eats gunpowder every morning and washes it down with warm blood.”

Carnivore diet…my kind of fella.

Reporter John B. Sheridan noted that McGraw “always acted like an angry hornet on the baseball field.” Fine by me. I love that type of manager…as long as he’s a winner.

McGraw himself described his philosophy and outlook on the game of baseball thusly:

“The only road to popularity is to win. The man who loses gracefully loses easily.

Sportsmanship and easygoing methods are all right, but it is the prospect of a hot fight that brings out the crowds. Personally, I never could see this idea of taking a defeat philosophically.

Once a team of mine is on the diamond, I want it to fight.

Namby-pamby methods don’t get much in results.”

This was a serious man.

One of the topics within the first few issues of my new project, The O’Leary Review, will be going in-depth to explore the life and teachings of John J. McGraw.

• What can we learn about baseball?
• What about crafting an approach to life in context with a sport you love?
• What in the game of baseball and the United States of America exists to make McGraw still relevant today? Or irrelevant?
• We will explore all of this and more.

Don’t worry, the project is not all about baseball. We’ll review topics from every walk of life.

It is a monthly print newsletter that deals with serious content amidst an unserious culture.

I’m excited to get this thing off the ground. No namby-pamby methods involved.

We launch later in July.

It won’t be everyone’s cuppa tea, but as Hall of Famer Ty Cobb said about baseball and tea:

“Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It’s a struggle for supremacy, survival of the fittest.”

For a sample of what we have to offer, go to

https://runatthunder.com/olearyreview/