We have to get better at that. All of the Stanley Cup winning teams throughout the past few seasons, when they needed to play defense, they did it. If you can play defense, that's when you know it's game over.
My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.
My high school coach was Ray O'Conner. He has coached a lot of players that have signed professional contracts, and many of those have gone on to play in the major leagues.
I was also lucky to play for an owner, Bud Selig, who truly cared about his players. He'd call me into his office once in a while when he knew things weren't going so well. And it's funny. Every time I left there I always felt like something good was about to happen.
You know, when I was a young boy I used to play baseball in my back yard or in the street with my brothers or the neighborhood kids. We used broken bats and plastic golf balls and played for hours and hours.
Merlin really taught me how to concentrate, that you play each play as if it were the only play. And if you put all the plays together like that, then you'll come out on top.
He took me under his wing when I first came to the Rams and taught me everything - his technique in the pass rush, how to play off blockers, and how to make the big play.
And in an era where radio stations that are inclined to play Styx music are your classic rock stations and the stations that play current music look at us as dinosaurs - the only way we could reach people with our new music, generally, is to perform live.
And for REO - they get to play for some Styx fans and then we get to play in front of some REO fans. It helps spread the new music to the following of other bands.
Mike gets to play four roles this time, if we ever did it again, he will play my role as well. He is a comic genius, everyone wants to be in this movie, let's hope that everyone will wish to see it as well.
I happen to love working in cinema, but the theater is always there... you know, and I would never shut the door on it. Even though it's been quite a bit of time since I've done a play, last one was in New York.
You'd go in, read the script once for timing and then you would sit around and play games. The sound effects people would come in and we would do a dress rehearsal so they could get the effects and the music cues in place. Then you would wait until you went on the air.
