OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

[Jukin]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

...oh...I call on stocknowledge to get off his "Hillary for President" world tour for 5 minutes and let us know about his history...

Hillary? I thought stock was still out stumping for Edwards? You know the news travels slow in Thailand (not to mention that he's trying to recruit Thai citizens to vote for Edwards! )

[stocknowledge]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Thanks, Biggie. I still love you, even if you have joined the Nazi party.

Edwards??? Nah, I'm a big Nader fan. In fact, I'm the chairman of the Communists, Atheists, and Gay Rights
Activists for Nader Group (CAGRANG). We're sponsored by the Young Republicans Group. We don't advocate anything
- we just try to siphon votes away from the Democrats whereever we can.

Anyway, long before I became a political activist, I was a wee lad who attended Catholic school in North Philly -
Saint Stephens on Broad Street, to be exact. I only lived in Philly for three years, but somehow the love of the
Philadelphia Eagles was imprinted on my soul. A love for the Philadelphia Phillies never took root - probably
because they were never any good. But, I do remember going to several games at Connie Mack, and seeing the old
Dodgers with Roy Campanella and Don Newcomb (my first pro game), the Braves with Joe Adcock, Hank Aaron, and Warren
Spahn, and the Cardinals with Stan Musial. The Phillies with Stan Lopata and Rip Ripulski just didn't have any
attraction (although Richie Ashburn and Robin Roberts were great players).

After moving to upstate New York (Poughkeepsie), I became a devout Red Sox fan, because I developed a deep hatred of
the New York Yankees. If you hated the Yankees, you quite simply became a Red Sox fan, because there was always a
deep rivalry between the two teams. I also hated the New York Giants, which reinforced my love for the Philadelphia
Eagles. During the days of my youth (early 1960's), there were not as many games televised as there are today. I
normally only got to see the Eagles during the games in which they played the Giants, but somehow I continued to
follow them. They were always my favorite team, and Tommy McDonald was my favorite player.

I was continually in trouble when I was a kid. I did many crazy things - broke windows with rocks, painted the
public swimming pool forest green, and stole everything I could lay my hands on. I also have the distinction of
being one of the first kids in Poughkeepsie to be arrested for possession of Marijuana. Despite these many run-ins
with the law, I did manage to attend community college. However, I stopped going to classes in my second year, and
ended up enlisting in the U.S. Air Force as a way to avoid being drafted into the Army. Joining the Air Force ended up
being the key to my salvation.

While serving in the Air Force, I managed to finally get my head screwed on correctly. I served two tours in Vietnam
(Cam Rahn Bay and Tan Son Nhut). While in Vietnam, I fell in love with Asia and Asian women, and during my duty
in Saigon, I fell in love with a Vietnamese woman. We were married for 14 years, and had one son (Justin).

After my discharge from the military, I resumed my college studies. I graduated from Syracuse University in 1977, and
became became a fierce fan of the Orangemen (Yes, I said "ORANGEMEN!"). I then attended graduate school at
Georgetown University, but never became a big fan of the Hoyas - probably because they were the hated rivals of SU.

After graduate school, I went to work for the federal government. While working at the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, I became interested in computers. My career as a computer specialist advanced through positions with
the Securities Exchange Commission and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. After serving as a manager on
several large computer system projects, I became disenchanted with technical management. I subsequently returned
to being purely technical and learned Oracle database administration.

I retired from the federal governement in 1999, and went to work for Oracle Corporation as a senior systems engineer.
After working for six years with Oracle, I re-retired and decided to move (at least part-time) to Thailand. These plans were
partly scuttled, when I met my current girlfriend, Ann (who some of you have met). I have recently returned to work as a
computer consultant for a small technical firm that does systems maintenance work for the National Geographic Society
in downtown Washington, DC. After Ann's daughter finishes high school, we will probably move to Thailand for at least six
months of the year. I love Thailand - particularly during the winter months.

Thanks to Eagles2000, who I met on the old, old board (philly.com), I became an Eagles season ticket holder. I don't
actually make it to many of the regular season games since I live in Alexandria VA, but I attend every playoff game
(Recently, there have not been many!).

I am a very loyal fan of the teams that I have followed throughout my life - The Eagles, Red Sox, and Syracuse Orangemen.
Thus far, Syracuse and the Sox have rewarded me for my devotion. I continue to wait for the Eagles to repay me for my many
years of suffering (47 to be exact). Hopefully, 2008 will be the year!!

I now pass the baton on to my good friend, Eagles2000...If he is not present (Haven't seen much of him recently!), then I'll
pass it to my fellow Orangeman, Leonard Tose...

[MDFAN]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Wow Stock.... that's even longer then the version I knew about.......

We will track down Eagles 2000 for ya.....................

[stocknowledge]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Wow Stock.... that's even longer then the version I knew about.......

We will track down Eagles 2000 for ya.....................

Guess you didn't know about my activities with CAGRANG!!!

[MDFAN]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Wow Stock.... that's even longer then the version I knew about.......

We will track down Eagles 2000 for ya.....................

Guess you didn't know about my activities with CAGRANG!!!

Well I knew about the first G part but.................................

[stocknowledge]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Wow Stock.... that's even longer then the version I knew about.......

We will track down Eagles 2000 for ya.....................

Guess you didn't know about my activities with CAGRANG!!!

Well I knew about the first G part but.................................

I try to help you guys whenever I can!

[eagles2000]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

I was born in 1955 in Northeast Philly. Went to Notheast HS, graduated 1972, Penn State for accounting, graduated 1976 and Drexel for an MS in Taxation, graduated in 1980. Married Sherry in 1979, moved to NYC right afterwards and have lived in the area ever since. I have two kids Aaron and Rachel. Bought a house in Ventnor in 2001 and now spend summers and other parts of the year there. I have mostly worked in international tax my entire career and my favorite client was the NHL for 3years, when I worked for KPMG. However when Bettman came in, he wanted his old firm from the NBA and fired us. I have stoped following hockey since, although I still go to 1-2 games a year (used to be around 20)

Even with that, football was always #1 (hockey was 1A from 70-97) and I've been an Eagles fan since my first game in 63 (a 24-21 win over Dallas). I worked for Nilon Bros. selling cokes at the Birds games for 2 years in the 70's and then started with season tickets in 92. I also started doing road trips and have seen at least 2 road games every year since 94. My goal is to get to every NFL stadium and have about 10 to go. (It would be less, but they keep building new ones.)

I retired in 2004, but started working part time in 2006 and am back to full time now and really enjoy it. However this has cut into my board time, although I still lurk to see what you guys have to say, occasinally chipping in. I started back in the philly.com days in the late 90's (97 I believe), and have followed up although I was more active in the past.

My son got married last month to a lovely girl, Melissa, who is an ex-Hooters waitress, so he is very happy. She had been a Dallas fan, but upon meeting my son, is now fully converted to the Birds and can't believe the years of her life she wasted rooting for those low lifes. (She actually lived in Texas for a number of years, so it is almost explainable, but not quite). My daugter Rachel is now engaged, so it is only a matter of time until both are giving me Eagle grandchildren. Rachel is still a bigger Philies fan, but that works too. Finally I have my dog Rocky, who is one of my great joys in life, but he is now 10 and slowing up.

My favorite players over the years:
Eagles: Tim Brown, Tim Rossovitch, Keith Krefle, and virtually every one from 86 on
Phillies: Johnny Callison, Steve Carleton, Curt Schilling and Ryan Howard
76'ers: Barkely is probably my all time favorite.
Canadiens: Dryden, Lafluer, Savard, Roy ( I have always liked them better than the Flyers, although I root for the Flyers when they don't play Montreal) At least I had a championship in 93 to celebrate.

Althogh I don't chat as much lately, I still treasure the keystrokes over the years and the conversations I have had with many of you guys. The meetings have been great and hopefully we can work something like that out this summer.

I don't know if he participates here, but if so I would love to hear from Chip

[MDFAN]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

M- Pass on my best to Rachel, she is a sweetie.

Chip is a member but I haven't seen him post much in awhile... I'll try and track him down.....

[leifdawg]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Chip will just go on a rant about the Steelers and then tell us if out-of-market fans will be able to see the upcoming Eagles game. :P

[Jukin]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Chip will just go on a rant about the Steelers and then tell us if out-of-market fans will be able to see the upcoming Eagles game. :P

True leif!! He'll also give us the history of the stadiums and the road construction project that were needed over the years to clear out drunk fans quickly. Man I miss him! We got to get him to post over here more often!!

[CHIP72]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

I guess if TWO elder statesmen from way back in the phillynews.com message board days ask me to post a biography, I'm required to oblige! Unfortunately for Jukin, there will be no transportation system-building talk here (except as it relates to my biography) and unfortunately for Steelers-haters everywhere, there will be Squealers-bashing here for leifdawg's behalf either.

The CHIP72 story starts in 1972 (what, you thought the 72 was for Tra Thomas? Dave Alexander? Carlton Fisk??? I hate the Red Sox too!) when I was born. I grew up in the Lehigh Valley, north of Bethlehem, and my very earliest sports rooting interests were for the Los Angeles Dodgers (my mother's team growing up - she actually started following them when they were in Brooklyn) and against the New York Yankees (my father's team growing up and to some degree throughout his life); I remember crying after the 1977 and 1978 World Series when the Yankees beat the Dodgers both years. Actually, my father and the members of his family that were sports fans (grandfather and one of my dad's 3 brothers) were always Yankees and (football) Giants fans, like many other people in the 1950's in northeastern PA, but by the time I came along my father had become a fairly casual sports fan (and he had rooted for the Phillies as his National League team), so he didn't strongly influence my rooting interests. I saw my first MLB games in 1979 when I was 6 years old; they were a Phillies game (August) and a Yankees game (September). The Phillies game was one of the last things I ever did with my maternal grandfather; he had a fatal heartattack the day after he, my father, and I went to that Phillies game. Through one of my uncles, my father and I went to a number of Sunday Phillies games in the early 1980's; I definitely saw the Phillies in person a lot more than any other pro sports team growing up, especially in my elementary school years. I saw my first NBA game in February 1982 (Sixers over Bulls) but didn't see my first NFL game until November 1989 (Eagles beat the Vikings 10-9). (I've never really cared much for hockey, in large part because for a long time I didn't understand it - my father never followed the sport either - but I saw my first NHL game in early 1983; the Flyers lost to Chicago.) After graduating from high school in spring 1991, I went to college in central PA (Juniata College) from fall 1991 to spring 1995 and got my bachelor's in psychology. After doing some work in that field and realizing I didn't like working with juvenile delinquents, I went back to graduate school in western PA (IUP) from fall 1997 to fall 1999 and got my master's in geography. In June 2000, I moved to the Harrisburg area, taking a job in regional transportation planning. That's about to end though, because in about 1 1/2 weeks I'm moving to the Washington, DC area to start a new job with the Federal Highway Administration, doing more specialized transportation planning/analysis.

Regarding teams in general, I've followed the Phillies 1981-83 and about 1990-present, after my initial dalliance with the Dodgers. I became aware of the Phillies in 1979 and 1980, but didn't really start paying closer attention to baseball until 1981. My favorite player was Pete Rose (with Steve Carlton ranking second), so after the Phils traded Charlie Hustle prior to the 1984 season, I swore off the Phillies and rooted against them for a few years. That actually wasn't so hard to do, because they had so many robot players on their mid and late 1980's teams. I started coming back to the Phillies in 1990, maybe 1989; I think Mike Schmidt's memorable retirement press conference was the first step back, and when the Phils acquired guys like John Kruk and Roger McDowell and generally became a more interesting and likeable team, I started rooting for them again. I've rooted for them ever since, though my interest level went up in 1998 when I was going to graduate school in western PA and needed something to remind me of where I was from. I listened to many of their games on the radio in 1998 and 1999. During the time I've lived in Harrisburg, I've attended an average of about 4-5 Phillies games a year. My current favorite Phillies are Chase Utley and Ryan Howard (the latter of whom I saw play a number of times in the minors). I've also attended a handful of games every year involving other nearby MLB teams (Orioles, Nationals, Yankees, Mets, and Pirates), particularly the Orioles and Nationals, plus I've seen a few other games out west and one game in Cleveland. Finally, I became interested in minor league baseball in 2000 due to the presence of the Harrisburg Senators, and especially since 2002 I've attended a lot of minor league games all over the Mid-Atlantic for close to 20 different teams.

My awareness of pro football occurred a little later than with baseball. The first pro football game I consciously remember was the Eagles' Super Bowl XV loss in January 1981. I started seriously following the Eagles and the NFL in the 1981 season, and have done so ever since (though my general level of interest in the Eagles, the NFL, and sports in general has gone down the last 5-6 years as I've gotten older). The Eagles are the one team that I have consistently rooted for during my entire sports fan "career" and have generally always been my favorite team in any sport (especially from 1981 to the early/mid-2000's). My early favorite Eagles players were Harold Carmichael and Wilbert Montgomery, and over the years favorite players have included Wes Hopkins, Reggie White, Seth Joyner, Clyde Simmons, Fred Barnett, Andy Harmon, Duce Staley, Brian Dawkins, Jeremiah Trotter, Brian Westbrook, Shawn Andrews, and Trent Cole, among others.

When I was a kid, pro basketball ranked up there with football and baseball in terms of interest; pro hoops was probably my second favorite sport from 1984 through the mid-1990's. I remember writing about the Sixers/Lakers championship finals series in spring 1982 when I was in 3rd grade (the Sixers lost that year but won the title the next year). The Sixers were my favorite team growing up (and have generally always been my favorite team or at worst second, behind a couple different teams at different times, like the Miami Heat in the early 1990's); the immortal Julius Erving was my favorite player initially, and when he retired he was replaced Charles Barkley. I generally lost in the NBA after about 1998, and my interest level really dropped off after 2002 or 2003. I still casually follow what's going on with the NBA and Sixers though.

In college football, I followed Penn State pretty seriously from the early 1980's until about 1991; I started developing more of a love-hate relationship with PSU football when I went to college 30 minutes away from State College and couldn't get away from the Nittany Lions talk/hype. The 1982 and especially 1986 national championships were sports highlights for me. Since my interest in Penn State began to wane, I've taken more of an interest in Temple, but because of the Owls' perpetual struggles it is hard to get excited about them a lot of the time. In general though, I'm a casual college football fan, in part because of the lack of a playoff system.

With college basketball, I became aware of the sport in 1982 when I remember watching the NCAA Tournament for the first time (that was the year North Carolina edged Georgetown in the championship game). I became a fan of both Villanova and Temple in the mid-1980's and the Wildcats' 1985 championship was a thrill. For a period of time in the late 1980's/early 1990's Seton Hall became my favorite team (while I still rooted for Temple and Villanova), but within a year or two of reading an article about the breakup of the Philadelphia Big Five in fall 1991 I quickly became a fan of all the other Philadelphia teams (LaSalle, Penn, St. Joe's, Drexel), as well as the two Lehigh Valley D-I teams (Lafayette and Lehigh). St. Joe's became my favorite Big Five team by the mid-1990's with Penn second. I still root for those 8 Philly/LV teams today and follow them fairly closely. (I haven't rooted for Seton Hall since the mid-1990's.)

Finally, I can't overlook the USFL. I was a big Philadelphia Stars fan the 2 years they played in Philadelphia (1983 and 1984). The Stars' 1984 USFL championship meant as much to me as the Sixers' title the year before, and their move to College Park (Baltimore), while not devastating, was pretty disappointing.

There's the not-so-short history. I'll let Jukin, leifdawg, or MDFAN call out the next person for me. Just don't rough up each other too much for the honor, okay?

[Vote for Kalas]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

Not to mention the game schedules for all 32 teams for the next 10 years in formatted excel tables...

I miss Chip too, wish he posted more. Nice, my post got him back!

Thanks for sharing all the life stories and pics guys...it has been a pleasure to read.

[stocknowledge]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

VFK, why don't you add your two cents to this thread?

[MDFAN]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

VFK, why don't you add your two cents to this thread?

Ok let's make it official--- VFK you are on the clock!

[Green With Envy]

Re: OT:All Right I'm Calling you all out, one by one 1st MD!

I was born in 1955 in Northeast Philly. Went to Notheast HS, graduated 1972,

Let's see, I graduated Olney in 1971 (didn't we alway beat up you guys at football games?). Lot's of my friends and relatives went to Northeast between 1970 - 1974. A lot of my neighborhood moved out of Logan to Oxford Circle in the late '60's