[abell1198]

My story begins in 1970. To some, that makes me old. To others, I'm a young man. It's really all a matter of perspective. My parents had only been dating a short time in a small college in northern Arkansas when.....surprise!!! Hi! Yeah, I came along. Well, fast forward and the parents have gone their separate ways. I'm growing up in a number of small southwestern Missouri towns with my mom, sister, and brother. I always loved baseball. Played little league like many kids. Played about every position, but finally settled into the position of catcher. I threw a lot of would-be base stealers out. I even threw a guy out with a man on third one time. Of course, my teammate couldn't get the ball back to me in time and a run scored. Oh well.

Unfortunately, my baseball playing days came to an end when I moved to a small town with no baseball beyond elementary school. Heartbroken? You bet. Devastated? Absolutely. But, life went on, although my love of the sport remained. My hometown, which I moved to in 1984, would eventually get high school baseball in my senior year of 1989, but by that time, I just stuck with what I knew, which was running track. No regrets, though. I made it to the state finals and had a great time doing it.

Now, I grew up in the Top Gun era, where everyone wanted to be a pilot thanks to Tom Cruise. I even tried to get into the Air Force Academy. I passed the physical fitness test in Tulsa with flying colors and got sent to Whiteman Air Force Base to get a medical physical. If you're not familiar with the base, it's in north central Missouri and is home to the stealth bomber. Anyway, back then, you had to have uncorrected 20/20 vision in order to be a pilot. I'll never forget that eye exam. Guy tells me I am -0.25 nearsighted and I can't be a pilot. Now, I've always (fortunately or unfortunately) been a person who tends to speak his mind. So I said to him, "Well, I guess we're done here." The man said, "Well, you can still be a navigator." My response? "Who wants to be a navigator?" And I walked out. Probably not one of my better decisions.

So, in the fall of '89, I headed off to college at the University of Missouri, with not a clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. For a brief moment, though, I thought about being a coach. I had always respected my football coach, who also happened to be my track coach as well. And I didn't even mind the coach who ended up managing the baseball team. So, why didn't I go into coaching? Stupid reason, really. I didn't think my parents would approve of that profession choice, which I know now was a ridiculous reason. They would have supported me no matter what. Well, by the time I graduated college in December of 1993, I was no closer to a career, although I was leaning toward my eventual career in law enforcement. And no, they weren’t crazy about that decision either.

But that career is now over. I have retired from it after 20 years and moved on. Now, an interesting thing happens to you with a career change. You start looking back and re-evaluating your life decisions. I think that's what a mid-life crisis is. Questioning all of your decisions which brought you on the path you're on. The great thing that Marcus and company have done with OOTP is giving you the ability to go back in time. Not only that, but you can input yourself into the replay and see what your life might have been like. So, that's where My Life Rewritten begins. I'm going to go back in time in OOTP and become a high school baseball coach.