By Lloyd Graff

As we head into Thanksgiving, I am using the blog to express a few of the many many things and people I am thankful for today.

I am thankful for breath. Every day I thank God for the ability to breathe deeply. As someone who spent 13 straight days on a ventilator in a hospital, I take note of my ability to breathe each day.

A deep breath is also my way of taking pause amidst turmoil to get my bearings. It is a way to find some peace and prepare for sleep.

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I am thankful for my family. My wife Risa is the love of my life after 46 years of marriage. To feel joy when I greet her in the evening and touch her hand in the morning, who could ask for more.

My three children have happy and successful lives and good health. They connect with me often and seem to enjoy being with me as adults.

My four grandchildren seem healthy and happy. And the three older girls like baseball.

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I live in the United States, which is like winning the lottery to most of the six billion people on the planet. The country is an always evolving experiment with a million competing interests, but it has afforded me opportunity and freedom that I treasure, particularly knowing the history of my family coming from Russia 100 years ago.

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I am grateful for the handful of pills I take every morning and night. Aspirin, Omega 3, lisonopril for blood pressure control, statin for cholesterol, ACE Inhibitor for my heart, serotonin regulator for moods, and omeprazole for stomach acid. It is a panoply of the medicines that have taken billions of dollars to perfect. They help me live a normal life in my seventies after nearly dying eight years ago.

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I am grateful for my mind. I get to create and connect with people. I understand nuance, I can play Words With Friends, and even understand some baseball analytics. I still relish the competition in business. So far dementia is just a word for me.

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I have my appetite. I love a well-baked chocolate chip cookie and poppy seed salad dressing. I enjoy the smell of Arbequina olive oil and I can distinguish it from Colavita. A Honeycrisp apple delights me, as does ice cold lemonade. The smell of a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving with homemade whipped cream. Wow.

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I am grateful you have read this blog to the end. I get to do this.

By Lloyd Graff

The musings of a wandering used machinery dealer.

Donald Trump, real estate mogul, is killing the housing market in his first week as president-elect.  Mortgage rates have bounced up to over 4%.  The refi market is nauseous and near vomiting.  People are dithering whether to rush in now to buy, refi or wait for the unexpected knee jerk reaction to jerk back.  Fortunately, November and December are not big home buying months, but if the Fed raises interest rates in December everybody will be paying more for money, including the car sellers and buyers.

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Interest rates may be rising but pro-football ratings are plummeting.  There are lots of reasons being floated, like Colin Kaepernick’s politically incorrect kneeling, matchups like Jacksonville versus Tennessee so unappealing and 70 minutes a game of commercial spieling.  Throw in referees throwing 23 flags in a game, injury lists a yard long, an exciting election and a fantastic baseball season and you have NFL ratings in the toilet.  The League is actually refunding money to TV advertisers.  I did see a great Sunday night game, New England against Seattle, but frankly the NFL is a boring time suck.

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Wow, Donald Trump’s first week as president-elect has been totally fascinating.  There was the Trump-Obama 90-minute lovers’ tryst, Leslie Stahl’s terrific interview on 60 Minutes, the hiring of Steve Bannon for the West Wing, and the emergence of his 35-year-old Orthodox Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as the new President’s true Number Two.

Kushner’s background mimics Donald’s in many ways and may explain why they are so simpatico.

Kushner’s grandparents on his father’s side were Holocaust survivors.  He may look like a choir boy with a yarmulke, but he grew up in both wealth and turmoil like Trump.  His father is a rich real estate developer in New Jersey.  Donald’s dad Fred owned apartment buildings in Queens.  Both men wanted to be in the New York elite which meant buying expensive properties in Manhattan.

Jared was a mediocre student at a Jewish high school he attended, as was Donald at the rugged military academy he attended.  Jared got into Harvard after his father gave $2.5 million to the college.  Donald somehow got into Penn.

Jared devoted most of his time at Harvard to investing in local apartment buildings and watching the cash flows.  Then he got into NYU Law School after Pop gave the school $3 million.

Jared’s dad, Charles, plays in the big leagues, and he plays rough.  He ran afoul of Chris Christie in New Jersey when Christie was State’s Attorney.  He was indicted for corruption, jury tampering and dirty tricks like setting up his brother-in-law with a prostitute he hired during a sibling fight with his sister.  His father plea bargained his sentence to one year of jail in Alabama where he could keep kosher.

Jared took over the family business while his father was in prison at age 25.  He bought his way into Manhattan real estate’s inner circle by buying a prestigious building for $1.2 billion, almost all borrowed.  Interest was $6.2 million a month which really hurt in the dark days of 2008 and 2009.  He also bought the New York Observer, a New York newspaper focusing on business and business gossip.  It was another way to raise his status.

He met, wooed and married Ivanka Trump who converted to Judaism, and he also courted her father, Donald, who surely saw a lot of himself in Jared.

So now Jared and his strange bedfellow Steve Bannon appear to be the two men closest to Donald Trump.  Jared seems to be the key man in the transition team, and he just purged Chris Christie, the man who had put his dad in an Alabama prison.  I think Donald really gets his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and vice versa.

Question: Who was the worst American President of all time?

By Noah Graff

A person can be blessed with immense natural talents, but achieving greatness takes both stubbornness and faith.

I just finished reading QB, the new biography of Steve Young, the Hall Of Fame quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Young’s story is inspirational because he had to struggle for so many years of his football career trapped as a backup quarterback while believing he had the talent to be a star if he could just get the opportunity to have the starting job.

In his senior year of high school Steve Young had straight A’s, was the captain of the football, basketball and baseball teams and went to prom with a girl who eventually would be crowned Miss America. He grew up in a loving middle class Mormon family in Connecticut with encouraging parents who never sought to breed an athletic phenom. At first glance it would seem like things came easy to Steve. He was blessed with natural talent and the drive to workout more than anyone else on his teams, but he had to overcome doubters on his high school, college and professional teams to get starting jobs. After being brought to the San Francisco 49ers with the promise he would start the 1987 season, he had to endure four years of backing up Joe Montana before he was officially considered the team’s undisputed starting quarterback.

In high school Young was a poor passer because he had never been taught to throw a football correctly, but he was a fast and fearless runner. When the starting quarterback was injured Young came in and started winning games by running half the plays himself. He played more or less as a quarterback and running back simultaneously. In two seasons he ran the ball 267 times for 1,928 yards, but completed only 41% of his passes, throwing for 1,220 yards.

Many colleges that employed a running quarterback offense recruited him. He accepted a scholarship to attend the University of North Carolina where as a freshman he would begin as second on the team’s depth chart at quarterback. At the last minute he backed out because he had an undiagnosed anxiety condition that made him scared to sleep away from home. At the last minute he decided instead to go to Brigham Young University because in Salt Lake City he had family and the Mormon community as a support system. However by choosing to go to BYU he had no guarantee of playing quarterback. He was relegated to the practice squad on a team that utilized a drop back throwing offense. At the time Steve Young arrived at BYU in 1980, Jim McMahon was the starter and one of the best quarterbacks in college football. In the first few days of camp the BYU coaches laughed at Young’s throwing incompetence and told him right away that he would never start at quarterback at BYU because he was left-handed. Their skepticism motivated Young to prove them wrong. Young says “he was attracted to the impossible.” Everyday he stayed after practice and studied Jim McMahon, watching him work out. He studied all his techniques and finally learned how to throw a football correctly. Young describes the release of the ball as similar to throwing a screwball pitch, pushing the ball out of the hand instead of spinning the ball out of the hand as he had previously done.

Despite excelling on BYU’s JV team, at the end of Young’s Freshman year the quarterback coach told him that he wanted to him to play defensive back rather than quarterback because he happened to be the fastest guy on the team, and also because he was left-handed. Young was so frustrated that he came close to leaving school to go on a Mormon mission, but he knew emotionally he would not be able to handle being so far away from his family. He asked for advice from a Mormon priest who convinced him that his path was to play football at BYU.

In the the spring Young reluctantly began learning to play defensive back, but a few days after being back in school the quarterback coach who had doubted him was hired as the Head Coach of San Diego State. Young suddenly believed he had a chance again to play quarterback. He spent months practicing his throwing in the field house perfecting his technique. One day the new quarterback coach noticed him throwing and suggested to the head coach to take a look at him. After seeing Young’s skills, the head coach decided to give him a chance again at quarterback. Because of Young’s improved skills and some chance occurrences, within weeks he went from 8th to 2nd on the quarterback depth chart. Then Jim McMahon got hurt and Young got his chance to start a few games. He played great, wowing the fans and coaches. After his second game starting it leaked to the press that Steve Young was the Great, Great, Great Grandson of THE Brigham Young, the founder of the Mormon Church, and he was interviewed on Good Morning America. There are actually a lot of grand children of Brigham Young, a result of his 52 children.

After Jim McMahon graduated Young became a star in his Junior and Senior years at BYU, putting up staggering numbers in passing and rushing. He finished his college career with 592 pass completions for 7,733 yards and 56 touchdowns, along with rushing for 1,048 yards and 18 touchdowns on the ground. In 1984 people believed Young was destined for greatness in professional football. Instead of going to the NFL he was lured to play in the new pro football league, the United States Football League, where he signed an unprecedented 10-year $40 million contract to play for the Los Angeles Express. Donald Trump an owner of another team in the league, the New Jersey Generals, had been one of several folks who had encouraged Young to join the league. In truth, most of the $40 million would be paid to him as an annuity over 40 years, but fans constantly harassed him, questioning how any athlete could be worth such money.

The USFL was a failure and folded two years after Young arrived. He then was forced to go to Tampa Bay, the team that drafted him in the supplemental NFL draft. After two horrible seasons he could see that the team was going nowhere so he told his agent to get him traded to a competitive team. Joe Montana had been injured the year before in San Francisco and many people were saying his career was over. The 49ers legendary coach Bill Walsh told Young that if he came to San Fransisco in 1987 he would become the new starting quarterback. The situation seemed perfect. He would get to play for the best team in the NFL under the inventor of the West Coast Offense.

But things did not go as Young had been promised. Joe Montana came back from injury in 1987 and played better than ever. Walsh tried to play both quarterbacks, an unprecedented strategy, sometimes using Young like a relief pitcher when Montana was struggling. Young also got to start for several games that Montana was injured. He usually played great when he had the opportunity to play, which made it especially tormenting for him when he was forced to sit so much. It was especially difficult for Young to watch Montana win back to back Super Bowls in 1988 and 1989. While a backup quarterback from the 1987 through 1990 seasons Young felt that he was not deserving of the money he was being paid, so he often kept his paychecks in a drawer or in the glove compartment of his car, not cashing them until the team made him.

After the 1990 season Young was a restricted free agent and seriously contemplated going to the L.A. Raiders, a talented team which had promised him the starting quarterback job. His friends, family and agent encouraged him to go to L.A., but Young wasn’t sure. He spent several weeks praying to come to a decision and he came to believe that if he stayed in San Francisco he would become the starter. If he had the chance to start for the 49ers he much preferred that to starting for any other team. In the second preseason game of the 1991 season, Montana’s elbow flared up with tendinitis. The team shut him down for the season, giving Young his first chance to be the official starting quarterback for the 49ers. Montana would never start another game for the 49ers. When he was finally healthy enough to play again in 1993 he asked to be traded to the Kansas City Chiefs to avoid another quarterback controversy.

Young thrived as the 49ers quarterback for many years, winning his own Super Bowl in the 1994-1995 season. It took a while to eventually win over many 49er fans who still wished that Montana was their quarterback, but winning championships can do that. Young only played a full season three times during is 15-year career but his 96.8 career passer rating is the fourth highest in NFL history, the highest among retired players. His 4,239 rushing years are the third highest ever for a quarterback behind only Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham.

Question: Who is your favorite quarterback of all time?

By Lloyd Graff

I have been a baseball and political junkie for the last six months, reading all the statistics and scuttlebutt I could digest. I found a common thread between the two. All the stats and inside baseball were interesting and portrayed a fairly accurate picture about what was going on, but in baseball and politics there was another crucial ingredient that had to be assessed to really get what was happening. Who had the “energy,” the passion, the enduring enthusiasm?

When I was watching all the “smart” people on TV and reading the erudite compilations of polling data as the election was coming down to the wire, my mind told me that Hillary Clinton had a lock. She had the women’s vote by 15 points, she had 80% of the Latino vote and over 90% of the African American vote. She had the Obamas pushing Black turnout. She had all the plusses that Mitt Romney had identified in 2012 that made a Republican Presidential victory virtually impossible. And, Hillary had the “jerk” factor working for her. She was running against Donald Trump, a narcissistic, crude, discarder of wives who made fun of fat women and disabled reporters. How could she lose?

But as the race wound down, my gut told me that Trump had a very good chance to win. In my job I get to talk to a wide swath of people each day from around the country. They come from different earning categories, small business people, hourly people on the shop floor, all varieties of ethnic groups. They are mostly white, tend to be over 40, and not heavy in college degrees. They were strongly for Trump. They were quite different from my friends and family and the people I encountered at the local Starbucks.

They were enthusiastic for Donald, not passively favorable for Hillary. They were sure about voting for Trump while my Hillary friends were toying with third parties, wishing that Sanders was the Democratic candidate or considering not voting at all for President.

Donald Trump made a brilliant decision early in his campaign. He would double down on his core group of supporters, disaffected white men and women, and try to expand that group rather than convert the unconvertable. He mobilized and energized his base all over the country. He played to his fans, and he built energy, enthusiasm and momentum. This is an example business people should learn from. Go after your natural constituents, don’t waste your effort on those who seem disinterested. Trump made a half-hearted effort to turn Blacks and Latinos to him, but mainly he tried to play to his chorus and build, build, build momentum.

These were the people who would forgive him for being a narcissistic, impulsive jerk. They focused on what they wanted to see in him – strength, confidence, disgust for the status quo in Washington.

On Monday, I read the poll of the polls. I listened to the “experts” who just kept repeating the stats and conventional wisdom, and I knew in my gut that Trump would probably win. Hillary needed Michelle and Springsteen to muster a crowd in Philly. Trump pulled 10,000 screaming believers to a midnight rally in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Believe in the “energy.” You don’t always see it in the stats, but it makes the “difference” for winners.

Question: If you did not vote for Trump, what do you think now?

By Lloyd Graff

I received calls and emails all day congratulating me on the Cubs fantastic victory Wednesday in the World Series. Thanks, I did get the winning hit in the 10^th inning, but really, I’m just one guy and it took a whole team to pull it off.

Perhaps it isn’t so crazy to congratulate me for being a fan, an enthusiast, a progenitor of two generations of new fans, of adding to the monster TV ratings, of even buying an MLB labeled Maddon jersey, size 2XL.

I should be congratulated for cheering for terrible players like Cuno Barragan who had a lifetime batting average of .202. He had one career home run which came on his first at bat in 1961 in front of 5427 Chicago Cubs. Barragan’s other claim to fame was hiding in the Cubs’ huge manual scoreboard with a telescope and stealing signs from the opposing catcher. There was an exit sign over center field which he could light up or douse with the push of a button next to the telescope. The exit sign on red meant a fastball, unlit signaled a curve.

The Cubbies were so bad in 1962 that the owner, P.K. Wrigley, decided to institute the “College of Coaches.” The team would rotate in a new manager every few days, as the 12 designated coaches switched jobs randomly. The Cubbies went 59-103 in 1962.

But there were reasons to be a fan through the 14 straight second division finishes.

Ernie Banks came to the Cubs in 1953 from the Negro League. Ernie weighed about 170 pounds but hit 511 homers in his career. I patterned my own batting stance after Ernie’s, as did just about every other kid I played with, right elbow cocked, bat at a 90 degree angle to the ground, and then propel the bat through the zone with lightning fast wrists. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Ernie’s coordination – or wrists. All my children adopted Ernie’s stance, too.

One thing that sustained me as a Cubs fan was their great broadcasters. First there was Jack Quinlan in the ‘50s and ‘60s on radio. Quinlan could describe a game so brilliantly you could see it on the old Philco. His call of Don Cardwell’s no-hitter in 1960 was memorable.

Joe Cunningham was up for the St. Louis Cardinals with two outs in the 9^th. Here is Jack’s call.

“Cunningham’s arguing now, he’s really barkin’ at Tony Venzon the plate umpire … he’s really sore … he’s really peeved at that strike two that was called. One more pitch we’re hopin’ for. The dark one. Blow it past him Don! Here comes the biggest pitch of this ballgame. Lined to left (crowd gasps). Here’s Moryn comin’ (crowd roars). HE CAUGHT IT! He caught it. A no hitter. His teammates are pounding him to death.”

Then there was Jack Brickhouse’s “Hey Hey Holy Mackerel!” And Harry Caray. I loved Harry so much when I listened to him as a kid on KMOX in St. Louis when he was calling Cardinals games for 25 years. He called White Sox games for 11 years and then spent 16 years calling Cubs games. Listening to Harry sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame in the 7^th inning of Cubs games was one of life’s genuine pleasures for me.

When Harry died in 1998, Noah and I went to Wrigley and helped decorate his makeshift memorial with Cubs memorabilia. (See Photo)

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I received an email yesterday from my cousin Dan Pinkert, who was my Dad’s partner Aaron’s son. Danny lived next door to us and sent me this note.

Lloyd, During the World Series I remembered the day your mother took me to the first Cubs game I ever attended. I don’t remember if the Cubs won, but I do remember that we were stuck in traffic on the way home and your mother complained about the traffic because she had to go to the bathroom. I then became a Cubs fan and recall watching games a lot on the TV in your living room. It wasn’t until 8^th grade that I found out I was supposed to be a Sox fan because I lived on the south side, but by then it was too late to switch teams. So all he grief I got in high school being a Cubs fan was due to your family.

But it finally paid off!!!!

Thanks to you and your parents for raising me as a Cubs fan.

Dan

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Being a fan – well, it’s how you are raised. It’s your religion. It’s like a tattoo, you can’t ever remove it.

I’m enormously grateful I’ve lived my life as a Cubs fan. I’m happy we won the Series, yet I am sad to see the season end. But the beautiful thing is, my Cubs season never ends. We’ve got personnel decisions to make. What free agents are available?

And I’ve got four grandchildren to teach the game to. Go Cubs.

Question: Do you have any fan stories?

Steve Goodman performing “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request”
from one of the Wrigley Field rooftops.