#dream of mickey mantle is literally everything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tendertouch · 4 years

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@ikea-boy (thank u ily and i loved reading ur answers too) 🤍🤍 tagged me for some questions but the thread’s pretty long so i’m dettaching <|:)

qoute or lyric you heard/read that changed you: that is so hard. everything changes me man. probably though, from what i can think of, the lyric “if you don’t have it then you’ll never give it, and i don’t blame you for the way you’re living” from the lumineer’s donna. I sometimes put it on just for that line. And I think everyone needs someone to tell them that too.

a song with a moment that makes you put both headphones in: ok this could be the beginning chimes of somebody else, but it’s most likely 1:58 of bleachers’s dream of mickey mantle (which i highly recommend you check for reference). the entire song is building up to this moment, the layering of “rolling thunder cursed my bedroom” and the quickening drums are both a heartache. can’t imagine riding the highway without it.

favorite/coolest thing you own: old receipt, yellowed by now, from two years ago when a cute cashier rung me up at chick-fil-a (his name was chandler and i think about that night every time i go)((also debating heavily whether i should release this information to the public))

do you remember your dreams like memories? do you mix up the two?: i can only remember dreams if they’re odd/unsettling. i remember nightmares vividly but they never mix with my memories. if anything i mistake my actual memories for dreams.

favorite season: spring

least favorite holiday: fuck columbus day ((thanksgiving also seems unecessary tho))

time you always see on the clock: i always happen to either look at the clock or my check my phone at 9:11/ 9:10

movie that’s most emotional for you: perks of being a wallflower (in that scene where charlie calls his sister from their empty house), or la la land (where mia sees sebastian in his new club years later and they show you what their life could have been together)

what do you think about often: i’m not really sure if i think about anything consistently enough but i’ll edit this if i find something

what is one of your favorite things: three things sorry. tilting your head back when you’re on a swing and getting instantly dizzy, the literal last thirty seconds of COIN’s crash my car, and straight faced people with soft sides.

tysm hope this isn’t overboard!! & i’ll tag some new people @folklore101 @cursedmybedroom @mariferish @boyishs @monetnwilde

here are my ten questions for u!

📍what’s something that’s only happened once in your life?

📍a piece of mainstream media you shamelessly enjoy

📍what is something you never got to say in the moment but should’ve?

📍if you could choose how you die and where you go after what would it look like?

📍something you would never do

📍what do you think about often?

📍something that gets on your nerves

📍worst nightmare you’ve had vs. best dream (i already asked this but it’s a good question)

📍how do you arrange your clothes? (by color? by type?)

📍three of your most favorite words

#tags #tag #ikea-boy

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your-dietician · 3 years

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College World Series 2021 - Elliott Avent and NC State were built for this moment

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-basketball/college-world-series-2021-elliott-avent-and-nc-state-were-built-for-this-moment/

College World Series 2021 - Elliott Avent and NC State were built for this moment

North Carolina State University has long been home to one of the planet’s most revered biological science programs, where for decades scientists specializing in genomics have worked tirelessly to crack the code of DNA. Every phase of their work is a step toward building better living beings, an evolution that might one day result in the perfect person or animal to exist and excel in an environment that they were quite literally created for, raised to both love it and thrive within it.

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But if they are looking for the perfect subject to study, the consummate example of that “he was built for this” ideal they all strive for, they only need to take a stroll across campus over to Doak Field to watch Elliott Avent coach the NC State Wolfpack baseball team.

Only, they can’t do that this week. The Pack aren’t in Raleigh.

They are 1,200 miles away, one of the last four teams remaining in the College World Series and only one win away from playing for a national championship. This scrappy, fearless, giant-slaying NC State squad has become the toast of college baseball, the chosen adopted home team of Omaha, the party crashers who are on their sport’s biggest stage for only the third time ever. Led there by a man who has been groomed for and has dreamed of this moment his entire 65-year life.

NC State baseball coach Elliott Avent has guided the Wolfpack to within three wins of a College World Series national championship. Ethan Hyman/The News & Observer via AP

“I love North Carolina State University so much, it’s hard for me to describe it to people,” Avent said Thursday afternoon, on the eve of his team’s semifinal matchup with Vanderbilt (2 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN App). “This trip to Omaha, it has made a lot of people who love the Wolfpack very happy. And I love the Wolfpack, so yeah, I’m pretty happy, too.”

The words are spoken with the unmistakable lilt of a boy raised in rural North Carolina, in farm country an hour northeast of Raleigh.

The Avents of Aventon lived just off Avent Road. To be clear, Aventon isn’t a town. It’s not even a village. It’s a crossroads at best, found along the banks of a good fishing creek called, well, Fishing Creek. Little Elliott Avent never wanted to be a farmer or work in textiles, the most common career paths for most eastern North Carolina kids, especially those who dreamed of attending State. Instead, he fell in love with baseball. From the first time he gripped a hardball, handed to him by his father, Jack, he became obsessed with it. Baseball is all he thought about, from his local youth league all the way up to Mickey Mantle’s New York Yankees.

He arrived at NC State as a freshman in 1974, just in time to celebrate the Pack’s legendary NCAA basketball national title, when David Thompson & Co. took down UCLA in the Final Four. The baseball team also won an ACC baseball championship that spring, and when NCSU’s Ronnie Evans hit a three-run walk-off homer to clinch that title, Thompson leapt from the grandstands and ran alongside Evans as he came down the third-base line.

Avent played for Sam Esposito, who coached NC State baseball for 21 years, won 513 games and put dozens of players into professional baseball, but incredibly, got only one team to the College World Series, reaching the semifinals in 1968. Even longtime Esposito assistant Ray Tanner, who went on to coach South Carolina to a pair of College World Series titles, couldn’t get the Pack to Omaha in nine years of trying.

“That’s just a testament to how hard it is to get to Omaha and always has been,” Avent explained, who in 1975 played on the last NC State team to win both the ACC regular-season and tournament titles.

“We are sitting here in a state like North Carolina that produces so much baseball talent. We have won a lot of games, and we have put a lot of guys in the big leagues, All-Stars. But getting to the College World Series is incredibly hard. To me, that just makes you appreciate it that much more. It’s why I wouldn’t even allow myself to be here unless I had earned it.”

Avent’s first head-coaching gig was at New Mexico State, an eight-year tenure beginning in 1989, where he led the Aggies to a record of 225-213, but zero NCAA postseason appearances. During his time out west, he coached against, befriended and studied western college baseball legends, such as Jerry Kindall at Arizona, Gene Stephenson at Wichita State, Long Beach State’s Dave Snow and the greatest of them all, Augie Garrido at Cal State Fullerton.

During that time, he did make a trip to the College World Series, just not with the Aggies. He went to Omaha to participate in a coaching clinic, because “I had no money and they were going to pay me a little bit and they also got me tickets to the Series.”

Avent went to Rosenblatt Stadium. He walked the streets of Omaha. He soaked up every single bit of the CWS atmosphere. He was flabbergasted. And that’s when he promised himself he would never do that again.

“It was magical. It really was,” he recalled. “But I said I would never come back until I got a team here, playing in the College World Series.”

Avent vowed he would go back to Omaha only if he led a team to the College World Series. AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz

At the end of the 1996 season, Tanner left for South Carolina. Avent’s phone rang. North Carolina State was calling him home.

The very first season, he made the NCAA tournament, a blue-collar team led by a gritty two-way player in pitcher/first baseman Chris Combs. A quarter-century later, he his teams have been to the postseason 18 times in 25 seasons, 24 if you throw out the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season. The Pack was 14-3 on March 13, 2020, when the season was canceled.

The winning was great. The postseason appearances, including three super regionals between 2003 and 2012, were even better. But what the Pack faithful loved most about Avent was that he spoke their red and white language.

“Elliott has always been one of us,” longtime sports information director Bruce Winkworth said of his co-worker and best friend in 2013. “If he isn’t at his job, he is in the stands watching one of our other teams, going crazy just like he and his classmates did in the 1970s. He is a Wolfpack sports fan. That’s why it seems like all of his best friends are either former NC State athletes or coaches.”

Avent always got — and still gets — emotional when he talks about David Thompson in ’74 and Jimmy Valvano in ’83.

He lives to beat UNC. He walked in the door at his new job immediately battling with the Tar Heels for recruits from Charlotte and Greensboro and especially Down East. He put Russell Wilson in the infield and Carlos Rodon on the mound. When he finally got NC State back to Omaha in 2013, the reaction was everything he could have hoped for and more.

He saw it in the eyes of a hungry fan base. He saw it in the eyes of David Thompson and his classmates from back in the day. But he especially saw it in the eyes of his father.

“It showed everyone that we belonged in Omaha,” he said. “We got over that hump, finally, and right then and there, people realized it wasn’t impossible. And just like when I went for the first time, when you get a taste of being there, all it does it make you want to do everything you can to get back.”

Now, they are. He is. Even if it isn’t alongside so many he has loved so much. Winkworth died in May 2019. That fall, former NC State men’s soccer coach George Tarantini passed away from a massive heart attack. In September 2020, Combs died four years after being diagnosed with ALS. In January 2021, just before the start of baseball season, Avent’s father died.

NC State is one win away from advancing to the College World Series finals. AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz

Perhaps that’s why the Pack began this season in so deep of a hole, a 1-8 start to ACC conference play, which was particularly stunning after their incredible beginning to the season one year earlier. But perhaps that is also why they have rallied from there to where they are now. This team and its fans rallied around their coach all spring and have continued to do so into summer.

They never believed they wouldn’t go into Louisiana and upset La. Tech in the regionals, or go into Fayetteville, Arkansas, and after losing their first super regional game 21-2 come back to knock off the top-ranked Razorbacks, or to defeat Pac-12 Pitcher of the Year Brendan Beck and Vandy All-American Jack Leiter in Omaha. They certainly believe they can defeat the other half of the Commodores’ 1-2 punch, 2019 College World Series hero Kumar Rocker, on Friday.

They carry themselves like a team that was designed for this moment, all playing for the university they love. In other words, they were built for this. Just like their coach.

“I can’t tell you what will happen Friday or this weekend, or hopefully if we are still playing next week,” Avent said, a smile cutting across his face that he certainly couldn’t have seen coming when he was so enveloped in grief just five months ago. “But I can tell you that we are going to enjoy it. Everyone who loves NC State is going to enjoy it. We have and we will keep on keeping on.”

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miheartsays · 6 years

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June 17, 2018

A Letter to Jack Antonoff:

I want to start by saying thank you. Thank you because you brought a flicker of light into my life when everything else was dark. When I was slowly drifting away. Your music made me feel alive. After months of not feeling anything at all, It made me feel something. It made me feel like I had a reason to live and although it didnt last a long time, I was still immensely grateful because it was like a signal to hold on. I never really used to believe that music could save lives considering that I was brought up to believe that only God could do that but, I now believe that God brings things into your life that help you, that makes things easier for you, that save you. Your music was one of those things. It literally saved me and I know you probably hear this a lot and I used to find it really corny when people would say this to their favourite artists but its actually a real thing. When I heard the climax in “Dream of Mickey Mantle”, I am not kidding you when I say that I felt the sound seep into my veins. It was like the fuel I didnt know I needed. It was incredible. So thank you. Thank you for being so flipping talented and giving me the hope that I so badly needed.

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itsjaybullme · 6 years

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The Trials of Sergio

Per Bernal

DATELINE: SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2017, WESTCHESTER COUNTY CENTER, WHITE PLAINS, NY

It was 10:20 p.m. as Jon Delarosa and Sergio Oliva Jr. stood waiting as the last two men standing—one of them would be declared winner of the 2017 New York Pro. It was Delarosa’s fifth attempt at the event and Oliva’s first. In fact it was the latter’s pro debut, a status earned when he took the super-heavyweight and overall titles at the 2015 NPC Nationals. Because of the inheritance of one of the most famous and lauded names in bodybuilding (his father, Sergio Senior, was three-time Mr. Olympia, 1967–69, and a leading icon of the sport), his debut was under extreme observation. It was like watching Mickey Mantle Jr. getting into the major leagues. Could the kid handle the burden of one of the most famous names in bodybuilding?

In his stentorian “Live from Burbank” TV announcer voice, emcee Bob Cicherillo rasped out the name “Jon Delarosa!” The runner-up slumped forward in disappointment, the winner sank to his knees and held his head in his hands, his body shaking with emotion.

It should have been one of the happiest moments of Oliva’s life; a dream fulfilled, critics answered. Instead it was the culmination of the most miserable and desperate period of his life. Absorbing the win caused a sense of relief to slowly, slowly envelop him. He digested his present position. At that moment of victory, he had hardly any money to his name. A long-standing sponsor had terminated his contract earlier in the year, and then a prospective new sponsor who seemed ready to make a deal pulled out eight weeks before his Big Apple assignment.

Courtesy of Sergio Oliva Jr.

A synchronized double biceps with wife Brooke.

That lack of income led to the domino effect of the power and services in his Venice, Southern California, apartment being switched off, and the reality was he was so broke he didn’t have a return flight ticket home to California. It gets worse. He married his Australian wife, Brooke, in December 2016, and a few weeks into his prep, she had to return Down Under for a family emergency. Once there she ran into an immigration dispute in which there was a snafu in approving her visa to the U.S., so she couldn’t return. And it gets even worse: Arriving in New York for the contest a few days before zero hour, Sergio contracted an infection and could literally not get out of a chair for two days. In apportioning nicknames, don’t call him “Lucky.” The bottom line was some relief came with the knowledge that the $12,000 first-place check would fill some of his needs.

The aforementioned is one of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard about battling contest prep hurdles, and Sergio, who is so refreshingly honest, opened up in a drama-laden interview in which he spoke his mind and revealed just what the hell was going on.

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Per Bernal

THE BIG LEAP

“Winning the New York Pro was a quantum leap in my career. It was the major step in a journey I had started back in 2003 when, as an 18-year-old, I weighed 140 pounds at 6' and decided to take up bodybuilding. I won the Nationals weighing 240 pounds, so here I am in New York 18 months later, 20 pounds heavier and the leanest I’ve ever been.

“It took me 14 years to get here, and it’s been a helluva journey with plenty of self-inflicted bumps. Mentally, I’ve always been unsure, sort of like the same little kid I had started out as. I was so nervous. I couldn’t get a pump, could barely eat, and was scared to talk to anyone backstage. I even left the hotel without my posing trunks and had my friends run back to get them since the competitors were already doing their routines onstage. It was simply a train-wreck ride toward victory.”

Per Bernal

VALIDATION

“I feel this was validation to everyone else that I had not only arrived but that I’m also here to do more than place at shows and be an average pro bodybuilder or someone who is feeding off the notion that I’m only just my dad’s son. I’m here to not only win pro shows but also to win an Olympia one day. While this win was validation to people in general, it is validation as well that I was right to be confident in myself. And in a topsy-turvy way it proved I had the guts to progress, during the worst contest prep of my life, when everything was falling apart.

“I had to hustle to get a flight to New York, and then Brooke having to remain in Australia just about did me in. I needed her next to me as I trained and prepared, but that wasn’t possible. That hit me hard, real hard. But even from 8,000 miles away she kept me going and on track. Then I had the infection, and I thought that torpedoed everything. When I stood alone with Jon onstage I just felt as if I had put every one of my eggs into the basket that was the New York Pro. Didn’t even have a return ticket to L.A. I thought I might have to do a Kai Greene and do some dancing in Times Square to get a ticket back home. I couldn’t have gambled any more on myself. So I’m now proud of what I achieved. All the sacrifices and trauma ended up being worth it.”

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Per Bernal

NAVIGATING THE CONTEST

“I’m quite a historian and there are just too many statistics of pros not winning their pro debut, that it’s difficult to ignore—I wanted to win, of course! Don’t get me wrong. It’s crazy I had to win to save my life and be able to afford an immigration lawyer to get my wife back. So it wasn’t until they brought us three [Morel, Delarosa, and himself] out at the end of pre-judging that I knew for sure I was in the hunt. Then at night they brought just Jon and me out for a comparison, and damn, was I ready.

“The Sergio who appeared at pre-judging and the one in the finals were two different men. I knew after pre-judging I was behind, so I wasn’t going to do the standard post-pre-judging thing: Eat a big burger and fill up on Gatorade. Instead, I didn’t eat or drink even a drop of water and had to put ChapStick on my teeth ’cause my lips kept sticking to my teeth. I could literally taste that win and knew after all I went through, I needed to prove to myself and other up-and-coming young bodybuilders that you can still compete against people with lucrative sponsors and fewer obstacles and still win. Everyone I went against had sponsors, a home, their spouses to go home to, while I didn’t have any of those things, and I couldn’t let stuff like that stop me. I just wanted to show everyone I don’t need any special treatment. Because even with my name I still had to swallow bullets like every other regular up-and-coming bodybuilder.”

Per Bernal

WHY ME?

Don’t say it too loud, but sometimes it’s hard to banish the thought that Sergio maybe thrives on punishment. Like the masochist who loves a cold shower, so he takes a warm one. Hear him.

“Maybe I rise above adversity when things get tough. Maybe my New York experience was just one giant motivator for me. I’ve always been very pessimistic. I always say things like, ‘This always happens to me,’ ‘Bad things only happen to me,’ and ‘Why me?!’ But you know, I’m starting to alter that mindset. One reason is that I had conversations with Flex Lewis, Shawn Rhoden, and Phil Heath. They all told me stories that they’d endured that were way worse than mine. It’s crazy because all three represent what I hope to be one day, so their stories got through to me big time. It was the ultimate light at the end of the tunnel for me: It woke me up. And it’s weird I now am glad all those things happened. It’s like if they didn’t, I wouldn’t have worked as hard as I did. We all lift as if it’s life or death, but this time around I literally trained and did cardio like my life and my wife’s were at stake. So now that I went through that and so many other things people will never know— I’m the most confident I’ve ever been in my life.”

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Per Bernal

NEXT STEP: COLUMBUS

“I decided to not do the 2017 Mr. Olympia. Instead, I need to get my wife back, get a sponsor, and get my personal life back together. I would rather work on resetting my future than keep dieting just to get a third callout at the Olympia. I know my place. It would be a historical first for me to step on the same stage as my father, plus it would be a first for my mom: being the only woman to have a husband and child compete on that stage. But to go in not at my best would be a slap in her face and my father’s. I got the invite to the Arnold Classic in Columbus from Arnold himself, so that is my next show. I’m going to clean my body out, let my system heal from this horribly rough prep, get my rock, Brooke, back, and have a good off-season to get even bigger, and even maybe shock myself and a few other pros in Columbus.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to keep mine and Chris Aceto’s [his contest prep coach] winning streak going. We’re two-for-two, but poor Chris needs a break from my emotional breakdowns. I wouldn’t have been even half the man/competitor I was in New York, if it weren’t for him. He’s more than a dietician to me. I have so many anxieties and issues, and he knows how to deal with me and kept me confident and motivated.”

Courtesy of Weider Health & Fitness

Making his Olympia debut with his dad, Sergio, in 1984.

THE PATIENT IS CURED

“I’ve changed a lot of my thinking since the New York Pro. I keep thinking I got this far with zero help without truly believing 100% in myself. I look at it as if I were on my deathbed for the past 13 years, struggling, not performing at my best, and I still beat guys while I was suffering. And now they found a cure for me. I’m getting out of the hospital a new man. I appreciate life so much more and also now feel unstoppable. I have a winner’s ring on my finger, reminding me I don’t have bad luck. The world isn’t out to get me.

“In fact, I have great luck because not that many people have done what I’ve done. I’m now more grateful for the bad things that happened to me ’cause I see life in a whole new light now and know now that all those horrible things that have happened to me since my first show were all for a reason— and a gateway to a new beginning.”

Postscript: As of Aug. 5, Sergio is sponsored by Old School Labs Supplements, Angry Mills Sinister Labs, Pro Tan, and Body by Eddie Inc. He also has his own clothing line named after his father’s signature pose, VictoryClothing.com. Things are looking up!

FLEX

from Bodybuilding Feed https://www.flexonline.com/ifbb/trials-sergio via http://www.rssmix.com/

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itsjaybullme · 6 years

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The Trials of Sergio

Per Bernal

DATELINE: SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2017, WESTCHESTER COUNTY CENTER, WHITE PLAINS, NY

Courtesy of Sergio Oliva Jr.

A synchronized double biceps with wife Brooke.

Click "NEXT PAGE" to continue >>

[pagebreak]

Per Bernal

THE BIG LEAP

Per Bernal

VALIDATION

Click "NEXT PAGE" to continue >>

[pagebreak]

Per Bernal

NAVIGATING THE CONTEST

Per Bernal

WHY ME?

Don’t say it too loud, but sometimes it’s hard to banish the thought that Sergio maybe thrives on punishment. Like the masochist who loves a cold shower, so he takes a warm one. Hear him.

Click "NEXT PAGE" to continue >>

[pagebreak]

Per Bernal

NEXT STEP: COLUMBUS

Courtesy of Weider Health & Fitness

Making his Olympia debut with his dad, Sergio, in 1984.

THE PATIENT IS CURED

FLEX

from Bodybuilding Feed https://www.flexonline.com/ifbb/trials-sergio via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes