What makes me tick...

Let me first say that I have been wanting to do this for some time. I am not the most 'techie' guy in the world, thus it took Chris Blair to get this going. For those that have not spent a lot of time with Chris and I, we are like the odd couple of broadcasting, which makes it work as well as I think it does. Chris is the polished, talented cousin that everyone knew was destined for big things. I am like the drunk uncle the little kids go up to to see if he'll get angry and curse.

So I have decided to write this first blog to let you know some things about me. And why I am the way I am.

First, YES, I will defend my teams to the death. Not to the point of absurdity, though that has happened twice. Mike Vick during my sports talk radio days and a football coach I once worked with. We will leave it at that. I regret both.

I wasn't always like that. Sec. 124, row 5, seat 15. That was my seat for Falcons games with one Russ Brown. (You may know him as Producer Russ with the Bill Shanks Show. We have been best friends since we were kids.) So Russ and I are sitting there after another loss and one of the coaches is running off the field and I tear into him. I mean as nasty as nasty gets. I wanted him and the rest of those bums out.

Later, when I got into the newspaper business, I ran into this coach out at a high school football game. We sit and chat and I ask him about his time in Atlanta. He looks at me and says, "wish we could have done better. It was rough on all of us. My family, staff. Not a hole lotta sleep back then."

You see, I thought that this guy was dive bombing my Falcons into the mountain on purpose. I had told him so, looked into his eyes years before, and told him as much.

That conversation stuck with me. He felt miserable talking about it. But not about the booing. He hated the failure. And I am thinking, what was the booing supposed to help.

The answer is that it doesn't help a thing. I am not saying that you shouldn't let your voice be heard. You should. I do all the time and more times than I should. But never again in public. Never again in front of my team. To be frank, I have learned that absence is a lot louder than a noise a cow would make.

I say all this because I have always gotten the feeling that people think I am too naive or am chugging the Kool Aide. The reality is that I AM. I mean when the Braves give up a lead in the 8th or the Falcons defense can't stop the Saints up the middle with an over-the-hill Antoine Whatshisname in the backfield or the Hawks are, well, being the Hawks or the Eagles hit a slow spell, I choose to focus on the positive. I am a big believer in positive thinking. Right now I am listening to Braves down 3-0 to the Marlins. I am not going to start cussing about the deficit. I am the type that slaps the desk in front of me and rallys.

I am not dumb. If we lose, I am not happy. I am not always happy with the coaches. We can discuss X&Os afterward. But right now....

Whoa, look a there. Homerun Kelly Johnson. 3-1.

Ahh. The power of positive blogging.

Also, I love life. Love it. I get to watch sports and run my mouth for a living. But I also get to meet some great people who I know are as happy to be at the ballpark as I am. I can tell within a handshake those that are as genuinely excited as I am. I am very black and white. You know what I am thinking because I come right out with it. There is no "I wonder what he is thinking or I wonder if there is more to Ryan?" There isn't, trust me. If I am fired up - true about 99 percent of the time - its obvious. If you are getting a bad vibe, well, you are getting a bad vibe.

I do two things. Work (if you can call what I do work) and spend time with my beautiful wife, Jodie and my dog, Gus. That's all I have time for. I love doing both and that's enough for me to do.

I can also go on and on, and why I will stop here for now. From time to time, I will get on here and post after ballgames and let you know what I thought about the performance, etc. Most times, as stated earlier, you will have to understand, I will be more fired up about the positives than I will be down about the negatives. Not that I will not talk about the negatives. And not because I have been told not to talk about the negatives. But because that's just how I roll. But I will also throw out my best predictions, which makes for the best blogging. Unsubstantiated rumors. Good stuff.

That last line about how I roll made me sound hip, I think.