Hear Ronnie Woo Your Favorite Cub Team

Hear Ronnie "Woo" Your Your Favorite Cub Team

"Joy is not in things, it is in us." - Richard Wagner

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X "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"

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BASEBALL AND WOO PHILOSOPHY

THE SACRIFICE
Baseball teaches that there will be days when the best that you can do is to move the runner along, to sacrifice yourself. Days when the best you can do is help the other guy and what happens to him is way more important than what happens to you. There aren't many things in our lives that teach us that. Every place in our life, our society, our culture, most of the people we're around, most of the institutions we're around in our culture in this day and time, do not talk about sacrifice. They talk about getting yours, getting ahead, getting your numbers, pulling ahead of the other guy, keeping ups with the other guy. Life is no good unless some of us are laying down our lives for others, according to the gospel. Baseball doesn't always work out unless some of us are willing to sacrifice bunt to move the runner along. That's baseball. It's very akin to the same thing.
- Robert Benson

My grandma told me that sometimes you have to sacrifice for others like Jesus. I knew what she meant because it was just like that in baseball.
- Ronnie Wickers

THE GAME
A baseball game is very often a series of routine plays and near misses and sacrifice and hits that almost went over the fence. Life is exactly that way too. In fact, such near misses, such sacrifices, such missed opportunities are part and parcel of life itself. Baseball keeps reminding us that that's okay. That's the way life is. Don't be concerned. You haven't loused it up. This is the way the game is played. They're not alone when they strike out three or four times a day, and what you've to remember is, I was in the game. I played hard. I stood at the plate. I took my swing. I did the best I could.
- Robert Benson

You never know what's going to happen in life just like a baseball game. I take it one day at a time. It's like baseball. Every game is a surprise and every day is a surprise.
- Ronnie Wickers

THE HOME RUN
Baseball can teach you that there are days when, in fact, you will be the one who hits the ball out of the park. Days when you will be the star. You're the guy who drove in the winning run. You're the guy who came sliding across the plate in the bottom of the ninth to win the game for the home team. That's also part of being in the game every day. The possibility that you can be the one who delivers for the rest of the guys. The hardest thing to remember is you don't want to not be paying attention when that happens, because those days are few and far between for most of us.
- Robert Benson

Living in the past and looking back is like a home run -it's gone.
- Ronnie Wickers

THE 7TH INNING STRETCH: TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME
Baseball also teaches that there will be days when your hearts will be broken, when there'll be little joy in Mudville or anyplace else that you happen to live. Days when the home team is going to come up empty and there's nothing you can do about it. And those are the days, according to baseball, that you stand up and sing anyways. Whether you win or lose, you stand up and sing because very often, standing up and singing in the seventh inning of a day when there's little joy is the only thing that you can do.
- Robert Benson

My grandma said that baseball is a game where you can go out and cheer, enjoy people and be yourself. You can be a cheerleader and you can be a fan. With baseball you can do those sorts of things. My dream was to be the mascot for the Chicago Cubs. I thought that if I'd go down to the ball park and come to games, in time, someone would recognize me for it. That's my real goal, I would like to become a mascot for the Chicago Cubs, but I also like to sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame. You never know in life. Nothing is impossible. If you pray to Jesus, if you believe you will be fine. If you think about it and always think good thoughts it will happen. Jesus has never let me down.
- Ronnie Wickers

BOX SCORES AND BASEBALL
It occurs to me from time to time, I wish I could look up my own box score for my own life each day in the paper and see; you know what, the ball came my way a couple of times and I actually handled it without an error and I sacrificed a runner along and every once in a while I got a hit and maybe even drove in a run. I don't know exactly how you do it, but I'm not sure it would be a bad idea if we couldn't look at our own box scores each day in the paper. I think we would end up saying to ourselves we're a lot better people than we actually think we are, most of the time. Many of us would dread looking at our life in the box stores, and the truth is most of us would discover we're probably batting about 300 and if not gold-glovers, we're doing pretty well.
- Robert Benson

Baseball brings people together and is a game where we can all get along. When I would go to Wrigley with my grandma to see Jackie Robinson play in the 40's, we would see some black folks, white folks, Spanish, Italians and all different nationalities. It brings people together. She was trying to show me that we can all get along and that baseball brings people together. She told me to get myself a hobby because a hobby is something you like to do well. So I chose baseball because you can always count on it and it's always been around and you can always come back to it. You can meet a lot of people and that's good for your mind.
- Ronnie Wickers

THAT'S BASEBALL
If you hang around ball players and ball parks and baseball at all, about 97 times a day, 97 times a game, you'll hear somebody in the seat next to you or behind you or three rows down go, "Well, that's baseball." What they're saying is, "That's life!" That's the way the game. sometimes you hit it, sometime you don't. Sometimes you get picked off, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you're able to throw the guy out. Sometimes you're not. Who knows why these things happen? Its just baseball. Life is exactly the same way. Any time I hear somebody say, "That's baseball", in my head I'm going, "Yeah. That's life."
- Robert Benson

The most difficult part of being homeless was living under Wacker Drive in the winter. It was cold down there and you would wrap up with newspaper and cardboard so you wouldn't freeze. Sometime I would get frostbite on my hands, but I just prayed that that I would come out and go to Clark street. You never know what's going to happen in life, just like baseball. So it's important to know that you can take cardboard and newspaper and put it around your head and body to protect youself.
- Ronnie Wickers

ON WRIGLEY FIELD AND THE WOO
For me, and it especially happens at Wrigley Field; for me, every time I go into a ballpark, we, we like to sit between home and first -- no more than eight or ten rows back if we can somehow wrangle our way into it. When you go into a ballpark at that level, and especially Wrigley Field and you come up those steps and you drop down, and suddenly the field is right there in front of you and you can almost reach out and touch it -- the scale of the field is such. You can smell the dirt. You can smell the grass. They're watering down the stuff. The guys are tapping, the chalk is coming out. You can smell the chalk.
- Robert Benson

People don't' understand what Wrigley field means to me. I can't explain it. When I make that noise, I'm rejoicing, it's a happiness. It's just a rejoicing, just like you're in heaven and it just comes out and you really want people to know that you're happy.
- Ronnie Wickers