IT’S THE TRUTH: THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED THE GOSPEL

This is simply the best and most important writing I have ever done. Please feel free to share.

Sometimes the hardest people to talk to about the Lord Jesus Christ are family and close friends. The following is my testimony. These are my beliefs. My prayer is that you, too, share them or will adopt them. Your salvation is extremely important to me.

There is only one God. He created the earth. He created the heavens, the stars, the sun, the moon, the seas, the animals and birds and fish. He created man in His own image. He created woman to be with man. He was a friend to His creations, Adam and Eve. He was pleased by them, and they enjoyed being around God. Until the temptation.

When sin came into the world as a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience, there was nothing we could do to make things right with God. Even now, no matter how good we are, no matter how many great things we may do for others, we can simply never make up for the original sin of Adam and Eve. We inherited that sin just as surely as we inherit our genes from our parents. All people have sinned and need forgiveness. All except Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus is God's own son who was born to Mary, a virgin. Jesus was willing to die a terrible death on the cross for our sins. When Jesus chose to follow the will of His father, He paid the price of sin for us. God forgives us all our sins in the past, present and future, IF we proclaim that we accept Jesus Christ as our savior. That is what is meant by God's grace. It is His gift to us. It gives us a spiritual nature and a new desire to obey God. In fact, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside us to direct our paths.

How do we accept the greatest gift ever given? It is simple. By faith. If we believe by faith that Jesus Christ was God's own son and that He lived on earth, voluntarily died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and rose from the dead, then all we have to do is pray to God that we believe and are willing to trust Jesus. We are then saved. This is the magnificence of God's grace. We will follow Jesus on earth and have eternal life in heaven with God and Jesus. We are assured of eternal life because God always keeps His promises.

Please call upon the Lord today and join me in the family of God. It's the single most important decision you will ever make.

SO WHEN IT'S COMING DOWN?

I've heard or read nothing recently about the stadium and the demolition ball. Also, I think the name of the new stadium is The New Busch Stadium and I know the Anheuser guys purchased naming rights, but again, I'm not sure of the name.

I was glad to see the Cardinals signed Suppan for another season. I thought he was soft before he came to the Cardinals, but hey Duncan/Tony have a good one in him now. He's no nonsense, he's no limelights, he's just effective.

I saw where a Mizzou legislator wants to tax umpires for their earnings while performing their duties in the state. Evidently, players have to do that. At least in Missouri. It seems crazy to me.

But it did get me thinking. Not that this is original at all. My proposal is do away with instant replay in football. For football and baseball (include pro basketball if you like, although I'd never include anything in college as long as the ncaa has any control in their present state of/ or lack of mind) have an umpire or referee or two in a video room having full access to the same thing that fans can see on tv. Let them be the deciding factor in close calls.

Of course, there could be problems with this proposal, but the most important thing is to get the call right. The second thing is to do it in a timely manner. And this should be much quicker than the NFL review policy. The conferring of umpires (pretty rare) takes too much time, too. It would have to be propitiously done, but I think it would make for a better game.

Sidebar: If I were an umpire, I'd never give adam everett another close call. I know, in baseball you do what you can get away with. But he tried to sell a play that wasn't that close to an umpire who was screened out of the play. By the way, why didn't gibson ( I called him Lewis, I believe in another blog) confer with the first base ump on that one? Of course, everett got the call, but that was a little too much acting for me. Yet in another sport, a 16-year old girl gets disqualified from a tournament a day later because a sportswriter thinks (correctly so) that she moved her ball closer to the hole after it became unplayable. It merely cost her $53,000+. Poor Michelle, how will she ever make it up? I know. But it just seems that it's ok to do whatever in one sport and in another, some guy in his Lazy Boy can call in to get a penalty called on a golfer. Or worse a sportswriter can . From sleazy Sports Illustrated. Why is SI sleazy? Read the Suns' article in last week's edition. Note what an assistant coach calls a 7'1" player. In print. Don't get me started.

THEY AIN'T THE SAME

No 62 wins this year in the regular season. No dunks. Not one that I saw. And I felt like an Easterner or Midwestener having to watch a game that started at 8:30 MY time. And tomorrow's game at LA is the same.

Of course last night's game vs the Mavs went into double OT, but when my normal (OPT) bed time is 9:30, that's stretching this old cat. OPT is what Courtney called it when she would visit us when she was in college--that is, we were on Old People's Time.

Back to the Suns. Why team management decided not to re-sign Joe Johnson, why to trade Q Richardson, why to sign Amare to a 40 mil contract when they knew he had a bad wheel are all mysteries to me. Granted, they didn't know the scope (pun) of the injury, but he had been favoring it in summer practices before the contract.

And why did I return to watching the NBA? Man, my choices are limited. Hockey--can't stand it. They are some great athletes, don't get me wrong. And I understand the game, basically. I've been to several games and in the best seats. Don't like it. At all. NFL in Phoenix--one game a year. When the RAMS play here. The new stadium is really going to be something. But who wants to go to a great theater and watch a bad movie? Every week. ASU athletics--football pretenders/basketball, well ASU and basketball just don't go together. Kinda like cubs and the playoffs. Arizona Fall League--cool, but it's winding down.

So I was left with the Suns in the Winter. And they blew it. Stoud's injury doesn't count against them or him, but man, that's a serious one. Even for a 22-year old. But why management broke up a great team is staggering to me. With Robert Sarver's dough it wasn't about money. Speaking of which. They have courtside, Jack Nicholson seats for $1,500 per game. And they have them for season tickets--41 games. They ring two rows of the court. For the 2005-6 season--sold out!

While the sun fades in sunny AZ, I'll try to stay up late, and hope the Sun doesn't fade out, too.

VITT AS IN GRIT (WITH APOLOGIES TO VEECK AS IN WRECK)

Are you kiddin' me? Joe Vitt. How cool is this guy? He makes the awfulest faces when being interviewed on tv. He makes the greatest comments at press conferences. When asked if he was eating right (after undergoing a minor heart procedure), he responds<"Are you? I mean from the view up here, it looks like a lot of you could ask each other the same thing>" The arrows were added because I don't think I quoted him verbatim, but you get the general idea.

How about his game plan: use Stephen Jackson. His plan for the Seattle game. Use Stephen Jackson and Bulger and Holt and hopefully Bruce and Curtis. And play smash mouth defense. And what about Special Teams? They've been showing up, blocking a field goal attempt and a punt. My goodness. Could this be the start of something
great? Well, I'm not sold on it, but I like Vitt. Yup, I even like his cornball movie scenes for inspiration. It may be pretty high school, but you get inspiration from where you draw it. Or something like that. Anyway, football is the most emotional sport, and if you can get an edge here or there, then go for it. At 4-4, the Rams have a long way to go to make this year's playoffs. But I like their chances better with Joe in control and martz out of it.

IT'S SO HARD TO SAY GOODBYE TO YESTERDAY

I haven't been to any more major league parks, but I couldn't leave without one more look at Busch. From my first game there on May 13, 1966, at a Teen Night to my last game there with Scott on June 10, 2005--Cardinals vs. Yankees. Man, did I have some times there.

My 11th greatest memory was Ozzie's home run against the Dodgers in the "Go Crazy Folks Game." I was sitting in the loge section between third base and home by the Dodgers' wives. I didn't know it was a homer until he passed 2nd base and put his fist in the air in that classic picture. My 12th favorite game was Camera Day when Scott was about eleven. We messed around in the outfield after taking a few pictures. Scott had a camera but it didn't work. I remember waving to Dave Farley who was sitting in the stands. I was thinking about like Dave Justice said to Scott once, "Here I am on this field and you're not." We didn't do much, just walk around, but it was cool. We walked to the warning track and just took it all in. My 13th was a run-the-bases day when I took Courtney and Matthew Flanagan to the game. It was also some baseball give away game, so we started throwing the baseball around in the infield. There were all kinds of people around, but we just played around them. Some guy kept bugging me thinking I was a coach because I had a Cardinal jacket on. He had his kid with him and I guess he wanted an autograph or something.

My 14th favorite was when Scott and I went to a playoff game in 1996 against the Braves. We were seated near home plate by Ed Curtis and his son Edward. The National Anthem that night was played by a military band, but it was sung loudly and very well by Edward. He was sitting next to me and initially it was a little embarrassing. But the longer it went on, the more the fans liked it--he was very good. It was kinda neat.

My fifteenth and final were all the games I went to with my high school teaching buds. There were so many incriminating stories there, and yes, even a few on me. Like the morning I got home from a game at 4 am and had to teach that day. Thank goodness for a student teacher. (And no, it was long before Molly.) Like my pal Bob Noel who went to something like 23 games in a row before he saw a Cardinal victory--I was with him for about 10 of those. One night after a game, Mr. Noel rolled over passed out drunks to see if they were one of our teachers whom we had lost on the bridge outside of Gate # 6. He didn't find him in any of the geranium beds that night, but we found him later and all made it home safely.

There are all kinds of memories just waiting to surface at the New Busch Stadium. If you're lucky enough to get a ticket for the first game, and I plan to be back in St.Lou for it, then you'll be lucky. Because there's no better place to watch baseball. And as Jack Buck used to say, "So long from the ballpark."