Game Day: Tuesday, June 30th

It's the last day in June.  I'm excited for a new month.  One month closer to September and the Fall season.  My favorite time of year.

I got in for laundry this morning and am happy to have clean clothes once again.  I'd like to thank my Mother for helping me out this past year.  It has been a difficult year and without her help it would have been an even more difficult year so big thanks to my Mom.  

In some way, she is the only sponsor of MLB Pickstreak.  I refrain from Google Ads and I probably could earn $20 a month on Google Ads and believe it or not, $20 a month is significant to me.  

I don't include Google Ads because they are a nuisance.  I don't like all the ads on the internet.  I'm sick of all the ads. For that reason, I don't participate. 

I was going to do "Buy Me a Coffee" and I signed up but I didn't like that site much.  

I posted a link to my Cash.App last season (nobody donated) and that is the only way I intend on monetizing my work this season.  I'll post a link at the All-Star break and at the end of the season and if any of my readers contribute a donation, know this, I stretch a buck like nobody else.  

Most days are good.  In '26, to date, I have spent somewhere around $50.00 total.  I have grifted somewhere around $200.00, most of that is propane for my camp stove and coffee from Aldi.   I get food from the free pantry and the dumpsters.  I find beer or a vodka seltzer on occassion in the dumpster behind the liquor store.  

I camp on an undeveloped commercial property.  It's about 20 acres.  It's wild back here.  Snakes, spiders, I saw a turkey earlier this year. It is very nice, it's like living in the wild prarie albeit with a Walmart two blocks away.  

I have a nice camp.  I have food to eat, plenty of water and coffee, wet wipes and hand sanitzer for hygeine.  I have a small propane stove to cook my meals and my tent, well, it has seen better days.  I have been in this tent since January of '25.  It has survived two long, cold Illinois winters.  The joints of my poles are broken and rigged up with duct tape.  More duct tape patches the holes in the bug net.  

This winter will be my sixth winter outdoors in Illinois and 2026 is my 11th year living as a vagabond and a tramp.  It all began in Chicago, IL, the winter of 2014.  I tried to move out to California that next year and couldn't make any progress.  I had my dog with me and had to take care of her.  I didn't know it or realize it but when I lost her in 2016 I was in some way already deeply entrenched into the California tramp life.  I've been an Illinois home bum and a Tampa / California tramp for 11 years now.

A tramp is a vagabond.  A tramp is in no way a whore.  The term tramp refers to one that is always on the move, mostly on foot.  A drifter.  A home bum is a homeless person who lives in one place.  A Dirty Kid is one who rides the frieght trains.  You can be of any age and be a member of the Dirty Kids. I haven't joined any of the gangs or associations on the street.  I currently have no association with any gangs, organizations, governments, religions or cults to my knowledge other than the citizenship I was granted when I was born in the great state of Illinois.  

When I was younger, I joined and was initiated and confirmed into a fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha, but I am not a willing or active associate in any way and what that fraternity is all about, I do not know.  In many ways I disdain my entire collegiate experience and all of the people whom I have known in those days and all of the people who led me down that path.  I am proud of my accomplishment as an Alumni of Bradley University I just prefer not to associate with the other Alumnus, mostly because of the Greek fraternities.  I look back on my college life as a lost opportunity and it's fraternity that I regret most.  The "Who You Know" club as opposed to the "What You Know" club.  I always wanted to be part of the "What You Know" club.  

Would it have been any different had I taken my fathers' advice and went to JJC?  Likely, in some way.  If I could do it all over I'd enter the workforce out of high school and study at junior college. I'd spend 10 years working full-time while attending college part-time.  I'd go for a masters degree and would have 10 years of work experience at the age of 28 with no debt.  I'd have went for a PHD in my forties and have pursued a position as a college professor.  It didn't go that way and that route was likely fraught with all kinds of hell too.  Hindsight isn't necessarily 20/20.  

Through it all, I trust that I am on the right path and my efforts are put forth trying to make the best of every day while staying true to myself, my beliefs and my faith.  I trust that I'll get to a good place and have a good death in the end. 

Today, I have no friends and no family.  My mother is the only person whom I communicate with in anyway.  I am happy about it.  The saying goes, "Who needs enemies when you have friends like mine."  That is truth.  Family is family.  I look forward to drinking at each one of their funerals.  I likely won't be invited but hopefully can attend in spirit.

I do want to make a couple points clear.  In 11 years on the street, I have only once purchased narcotic drugs.  That was a small bag of methamphetamine. I bought a $10 bag off a lady named Denise in Central Park, Pasadena, CA.  

It was two days before the Super Bowl.  I had plans to meet my father that weekend.  I lost all my belongings, all my clothes and walked fifteen miles from Santa Monica to Westchester with no shoes and a blanket wrapped around my waist.  I connected with my father in the parking lot of McDonalds on Sepulveda Avenue.  He looked good and I was happy for him.  I watched the Superbowl at the Motel 6 by the airport.  I drank whiskey and cold beer.  Pendleton and Budweiser.

I don't use narcotic drugs and I don't smoke marijuana. I dont take pharmaceutical drugs either and I haven't for nearly 15 years.  I am not an alcoholic. 

I do enjoy a cold beer and a good drink on occassion.  

I saw my father seven times in the four years I spent in California.  I can recollect the details of each visit and for the most part, the dates of each visit. 

In 2015, he picked me up from San Luis Obispo and put me on a bus to Oakland.  It was around March and it was the first time I visited Los Banos, CA.  That's where my father is from.  The second time I visited him was with my dog Molly in February or March of 2016.  I rented a car from Alamo in San Diego and drove all the way to Los Banos.  I drove back a day later.  I sped the entire way to beat the 6:00 PM deadline.  It was a Sunday.  I turned the car in at Alamo and didn't pay them.  Frank Ocean was playing at a music festival.  I could hear the concert from a distance.  It was Frank Ocean, I had liked that record at the time. 

The third time I saw my father was later that summer in 2016.  My dog and I hiked the Hecker Pass from Watsonville to Gilroy.  There is a nice tulip field right at the base of the pass as you enter the town of Gilroy, CA. I took the CalTrain from Gilroy to San Jose a couple of days later and I lost my dog in San Francisco in October of 2016.  I went back to Illinois in December.

In 2017, around the fourth of July, I returned to California and tried to make it without the dog to take care of.  I spent most of my time walking around LA.  I applied at Subway.  They didn't call me for an interview.  I saw my father for the fourth time that winter.  That was the Superbowl visit.  I went home that spring.  It was April of 2018.  My mother had said she needed my help.  She kicked me out of her house a month or two later and I spent the entire summer riding a Huffy around the city of Chicago.  It was a great summer. 

I returned to LA that winter.  My brother bought me a bus ticket.  I bummed around the entire time.  I was enjoying my days, tramping around with my California stipend and my food stamps.  I never had to steal back then and I didn't.  I got $212.00 a month for food and $221.00 in cash for being mentally challenged.  At DPSS, they read me a series of questions, I answered them truthfully and I qualified as a mental case.  It was enough and I was happy.  I got the cash and didn't have to participate in the program.  If I needed extra money, I recycled cans and bottles.

I saw my father for the fifth time that spring.  It was 2019.  We went to the Dodgers game at Chavez Ravine.  Dodgers and Diamondbacks.  D'Backs 3 - Dodgers 1.  I had a Dodger Dog and I had given up eating meat but it was a special day and I was happy to try the Dodger Dog.  I had always liked hot dogs.  

I took a trip to the Bay Area a few months later and took the train from San Jose into Gilroy.  I tried to reach my father by telephone to ask if he had wanted to visit.  He wouldn't answer my calls.  I don't know why to this day.  The cops put a call into him on a "Welfare Check" and he answered the phone when the police called.  He drove into Gilroy a few hours later that day.  He didn't seem all that happy to see me.  He gave me a can of change, a handful of generic cigarettes (Seneca) and a few dollars.  That was the sixth time I visited my father in California.  I tramped around the Bay Area for a week or two.  I avoided San Francisco.  The last time I was in San Francisco was in October of 2016.  I didn't like that city.  The human shit on the sidewalks and the drug use out in the open was disgusting. There was never any shit on the sidewalk in LA.  If you avoid Venice Beach at night, you can for the most part avoid the junkies.  I made my way back to LA.  I liked being in LA.  

The last time I saw my father was in Bakersfield, CA for Christmas that year.  I was in Santa Clarita, I had taken a bus from the shopping center in Beverly Hills.  The bus picked up right outside of Gelsons and was only a few dollars up to Santa Clarita.  I had made plans to visit my father for the holiday.  Santa Clarita took an hour off his drive.  

We had plans to meet but I lost track of the date and missed him entirely.  I saw him the following day.  He was shaken up by what was an honest mistake.  I didn't intend on putting him through any troubles, that day or any other day of his life. I didn't get to visit with him for that long.  We went to a shithole bar near his hotel and had a beer.  I thought I'd take a drive north so that I could visit with him a little while longer.  I thought about going back up to the Bay Area but I had him drop me in Bakersfield, CA.  He paid for a couple nights at the Motel 6, bought me a prepaid phone and some other items from Walmart and gave me $200 for Christmas.  I remember as he was leaving, he turned around and looked at me in a strange way.  Like it was the last time he was ever going to see me.  He was happy and I was too.  It was the last time I saw my father.  

In 11 years homeless I have spent less than three months in the company of others.  The qualification for that statement is an afternoon and an overnite.  

Shauna I met in San Clemente.  Anthony, Dee, Jack, Will, Kwami and Gary were my acquaintances in Westchester Park.  Lisa I met in Venice Beach.  Nacho was a West LA bum.  Josh and his dog Diamond I knew from Santa Monica.  Meth-Head Greg, Tammy, Walker and Guitar Mike I knew from Morro Bay.  Guitar Mike is a famous bum in Morro Bay who is always playing electric guitar in the streets.   I nearly spent the night with a fag named Dennis in Morro Bay but I was quick to pack up when he started showing his true colors.   Doris Cari I met in San Francisco.  She had two children with her, Aiden and Ares.  I didn't like the woman, she was bitchy and annoying, but I had just lost my dog and she was helping me with the shelters and homeless services.  Her and her kids got into a shelter a month later and I made my way back to LA.  I didn't like it in San Francisco.  

I did have an addiction to pornogrpahy and Adderall in my late twenties and early thirties.  This was well before my days on the street.

Ironically, when I was using adderrall, smoking marijuana and jerking off to pornography every night, I was also doing very well with employment and with income.  I haven't had much career success but I have had good jobs in Finance and Information Technology (Internet).  Adderall, I had started using in college.  I had good health insurance and went to a psychiatrist, Sandeep Aggarwal.  He would write me scripts for speed.  He was a licensed drug dealer and a junkie himself.  

Pornography was accessible and addicting.  I was truly addicted for many years.  I never sought or had a prediliction for pornographic material that incorporated homos or children in any way.  I did watch a woman suck off a horse and I did watch a woman get railed by a German Sheppard.  I saw some transexuals too, in an attempt to understand what they put me through in this life. 

I don't care to talk much more about it.  

I gave it all up cold turkey.  Adderall, pornography, marijuana and I haven't went back to any of it for 10+ years.  That is the honest truth.  I gave employment up too.  That is a tramp joke.  

I used to play a lot of poker.  I have played hands with all of the Full Tilt Poker stars.  Howard Lederer, Phil Ivy, Eric Seidel, Eric Lindgren.  I used to play $5 / $10 heads-up with Andy Bloch and he was one of the best heads-up players on that site.  I never played with Tom Dwan.  He showed up at the end.  I was only on the site in the early days.  Hostel was my handle.  It was a take on the word "Hostile" and the horror film "Hostel" which I would consider outside of the scope of acceptability in regards to my film preferences.  I don't like ultraviolence.  I liked playing poker but I was a losing poker player.  I lost a lot of money in those days.

I don't care to divulge any more details about my past digressions, not that I am ashamed to write about them or am holding back, what I have put forth is the entirety of it. To go on further is nothing more than a spectacle.  I've laid myself bare for my audience. It is my truth.  

In 11 years of homelessness, I have pan-handled for less than $100 dollars total.  I dumpster dive and I shoplift, that is how I survive.  I wash my clothes in a bucket when the weather is nice.  I don't use drugs.  I go without tobacco and beer most days. 

I didn't have a phone for over two years because I couldn't raise $50 to buy a cheap prepaid internet phone.  I stole an AM/FM radio from Walmart and was content.  I'd do puzzles in the newspapers and listen to baseball games on the radio.  I'd check my email at the hotels and the library but that's the only time I was ever on the internet.  I finally stole a phone from Kroger in Tennessee.  I walked nearly the entire way, from Tampa to Nashville.   

I have lived outside, excluding the eight months that I spent in jail and a few months at my mothers, everyday from sun up to sun down for 11 consecutive years.  In 11 years on the street, I have never carried a weapon of any sort.  The golf club is for golf.  The multitool is for opening cans, cutting potatoes and for holding my coffee pot over the open flame of my camp stove.  

What's wrong with me?  Faith in something else.  Refusal to adhere to a spirit and a consciousness that wants to lord over me and steer my ship.  Faith in the unknown.  Faith in myself.  Refusal to accept a life that I don't want to live.  Belief that I'm on the right track.  

I am not guilty of any crimes or treasonous acts.  I am not running from any truths.  I am running from a world and a life that doesn't make any sense to me.  A consciousness and a spirit that wants to make me out to be something that I am not.  

Maybe I'm running from death?  Maybe this is what death is and for 11 years I have refused to die?  Maybe it is some sort of cosmic reformation?  I don't accept your reform or your role.  The same people who reform you are the very people who sent you down the wrong road to begin with and now they want you to rest in their peace and live in their heart.  

They break your heart and then they buy your heart.

I don't accept your certificate of acceptibility and will never be part of your faith, your churches, your religions and in many ways that is what my struggle and my fight is all about.  I believe in a god that would have never let me go astray to fall victim to your reformation in the first place.  I didn't believe in this god in the past.  I do now.  Hopefully it makes a difference.  

I don't believe the outcome of my life will be in order with the intentions of your "intelligent process" and that is not to say that I am once again "breaking bad" so to speak.  It is to say that I refuse to be funneled into a life or into a death that is not of my own heart.

I was born with a good heart and I intend to keep it with me despite all the evils in this world.  

It's all very complex.  What is good and what is evil?  I don't know the answer to this but know this, I never accepted the darkside or any notion that I was better off with evil.  I never worshipped no devil or asked for any sort of favor.  I never embraced the darkness like Aaron Rodgers.  I never believed that to be the way.  I don't want evil in my heart.  I don't accept that I am evil in any way and I don't embrace the darkside or the darkness.  I fight for my heart and my soul.  For my peace and my truth.  

I am human.  I am not delusional and I don't look at myself as being any better than anybody else.  I am not a god and I don't serve no god, no devil or no lord.  I don't serve mankind and I don't serve the beast.  I do my best to be helpful when I can be.  I believe in a god who cares for me and is making a way for me to live well and prosper without any sort of guilt, or any servitude, or any responsibility other than taking care of myself and doing the best I can to be kind to all living beings.  

People make their choices on what notions to accept about this life and in what to have faith in and I am no different.  I chose my faith and my way and it is my every intention to stay on my path.  

The spirit and intelligence that I battle everyday is attacking me as I write this post.  The sound of the sirens blinds my eyes and as he puts his ignorance in my mind and weakens my spirit. 

He sends his disgust my way.  Attacking my heart and my truth.  Turning my faith and my love against me.  As if anything that comes from him is good in anyway.  As if he is in any way allowed to possess my heart.

I write this blog because it is, in all honesty, a way to work everyday and to stay on the right path. I have always enjoyed working.  I think I am good at the writing and the stats and I enjoy baseball so this is what I do.  

My goal is to finish this season and to see where I stand in October.  I'm not too worried about it all.  Mostly hoping to enjoy the summer and to stay out of jail.

That is all for Game Day on the last day of June.  Today's post is mostly a setup for my Summer Fundraising Pledge Drive that will begin on July 13th and run through the All-Star break.  

It's nice to go stream of consciousness once in a while even if it is off-topic a bit.  

Stay tuned.  I might have a pick this afternoon and I have a two-pick winning streak on the line.