Johnny Cash once said "Trust gets you killed, love gets you hurt, and being real gets you hated."

I'm not sure about the overarching truth of the Man in Black's words, but I certainly agree with the last part.

It happened to me today. I commented on a 𝕏–Twitter thread where I said I'd rather have a 31-year-old Dale Murphy on my (theoretical) team than the 31-year-old Bryce Harper.

I was real. I said, "I'm taking Murphy. Better guy. Better teammate. Better era."

A lot of present day Phillies fans now hate me for this quite reasonable take. The point of the question was to get people talking about it because they are statistically very similar players.

Come down on the other side of my claim? Fine. I'm no hater.

As far as "being real," any number of things that come up these days will get you hated. It's part of the deal today.

For instance, if you bring up the idea that the vice president has the IQ of a literal dullard, or that the current president exhibits legitimate cognitive decline, some people will hate you and call you all sorts of names.

But it's real.

We're in for a rough go at things no matter who wins the election. Yet, we can't control that. One vote? Big deal.

What can we control? Attitude and effort. There are other things that we may be able to control some of the time, but we have 100% control over our attitude and effort 100% of the time.

Need more insight on that? We're opening the doors again to our Inner Sphere program where we dive into these ideas in our small groups called "juntas." For more information on what we're up to and if we may be able to help, sign up for more information here:

We have limited availability for the fall session, which will be starting in earnest next week and continuing until the week before Christmas. Your commitment would be 90 minutes per week, every week for the rest of the fall.

As always,

Brian

P.S. – I was being real with myself yesterday when listening to a Highwaymen song. I said to myself, "Man, I really think Kris is the best one." On that song he was. Even though I like to say Waylon Jennings is my favorite, I love Kris Kristofferson. Of course, Willie Nelson—our last remaining Highwayman—and the aforementioned Johnny Cash are no slouches, either.

Kris Kristofferson, who died at age 88 on September 28, has made for some of our favorite subject matter. We've written and podcasted about him a bunch. I went back into the archives and found a Substack post where we talked Kristofferson and our Inner Sphere before we'd even officially launched:

RIP, Kris.

And while you're there, sign up for our Substack emails if you haven't already. Bigger things are coming… soon.

P.P.S – The link to the tweet in question: