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F250

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F250 last won the day on March 6 2021

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  1. You were having these thoughts 50 years ago? How fucking old are you?
  2. One of my sons had a talent for dropping toys and other items in the toilet and then flushing it. They would always get stuck which required removing the toilet. I would make him help me remove the toilet, pullout whatever the hell he clogged it with and put back the toilet. When he was 12/13 he somehow managed to drop a deodorant stick in the bowl and clogged the toilet. I told him that he has seen it done so many times he can fix it himself. He actually did A few years later, he replaced four toilets, multiple bathroom sink faucets, bathtub and shower heads/faucets all on his own. He turned into a very useful handyman. Hell, he replaced the A/C compressor for my F250 last September.
  3. That pile of matchsticks at the end of the video.
  4. My kid's followed the play sports by their season pattern. You don't need to play a sport year round to improve. Physical and athletic development will address that overtime. This is really important for kids because if they continue beyond middle school, sports turn into a major grind. My son's were dual sport athletes in high school, baseball and football. My oldest somehow managed to run track too in high school. Usually, Christmas break was the only time off during the year. Time management was probably the biggest life skill they developed from all of that effort.
  5. I'm talking about leagues that only pull in lower income families. The leagues with mixed demographics are not in the same boat as the ones where everyone is poor. Regarding youth baseball, it isn't a secret that thanks to travel ball it’s become a sport for the upper-middle class. It's a big problem for the sport that the MLB has made an effort to address because they will lose future fans.
  6. I suspect that kids don't care for playing a sport for fun when they already participate in the organized version. The only sport that my kids would play on their own was basketball. Coincidentally, they only played a few seasons of organized basketball as kids. Ideally, kids should play sports on their own away from the adults but I think organized sports creates burnout, especially for those that play a single sport year round.
  7. I think football is the only sport that doesn't require much investment from the family since it is subsidized by the state more than any other sport. It's usually the only non-cut sport in school. It is one of the only sports you can join without knowing how to play and usually has the largest coaching staff in the school. I can't think of any other sport that produces more professionals that played for public institutions throughout their entire amateur career.
  8. Of course recreational youth sport leagues still exist but they are losing numbers across the board as private sports organizations continue to grow. A consequence to the privatization of sports is that the barrier to entry prices out a big segment of the population. Participation in youth sports is actually high and growing for children from families that earn $100k and above but below that income the participation starts to drop off a lot. There are recreational leagues that do well but they are usually not located in lower income areas. Little League has been trying to stop the bleeding for years. It was about 10 years ago that they modified their rules to allow players to participate in travel and Little League at the same time and reduced the amount of required LL game participation and still qualify for All Stars. Families that have the resources to do both do not live in low income areas. This benefited the leagues in higher income areas. Next year, Little League will begin removing their geographical boundary requirements and allow kids 7 and under to register with any LL league but will be locked in to that league for the remainder of their LL career. This will likely only benefit the higher income leagues and drain the already struggling leagues. There are a lot more problems other than financial ones but money is definitely one of the biggest problems that is keeping kids from participating in team sports.
  9. I have had this exchange with my son.
  10. I watched an episode of Caroline in the City on TV Land. My first thought was Lea Thompson looks cute and I used to have the hots for Amy Pietz. Then I thought, "why do they look so much younger than me, they were older babes"? So I looked up the show date and it was almost 30 years ago. My brain as the calculations of my age then and now start running in my head.
  11. Team sports is an interesting topic to me. Something I noticed when my kids were young was a growing division between young people regarding fitness and athletics. When I was growing up, a lot of kids participated in sports. Some kids were terrible and some really good with most being somewhere in between. Despite the disparity in ability everyone played together in recreational leagues which is now a dying concept. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground anymore where all kids play together. It's common to hear people complain about participation ribbons which existed in our day. But a bigger problem in my opinion is the professionalization of youth sports. It creates price barriers to sports, it's unnecessarily hyper- competitive, requires spartan like training and is a major time sink. Sandlot style sports don't exist because kids are so deeply involved in adult lead organized sports. Recreational leagues are dying out because of the mass migration to club sports. As a result a lot of kids no longer participate in team sports.
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