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RIO DE JANEIRO -- A few months before U.S. table tennis player Tahl Leibovitz left his home in Queens, N.Y., for the Rio Paralympic Games, his wife, Dawn, heard a bang late at night. They didnt identify the source of the noise until their neighbor told them her air conditioner had fallen onto their car.The neighbor was low on money but wanted to pay for the damage eventually. Leibovitz refused the offer.He understands what its like to be in a dark place, his wife said.Amid a childhood scarred by an uneasy relationship with his father and long periods of homelessness, Leibovitz found table tennis. A three-time Paralympic medalist, the 41-year-old competed in his fifth games in Rio, losing in the quarterfinals. He said he hopes to continue playing another eight years, pointing toward a possible Los Angeles 2024 Games.I would define my self-value and self-esteem, he said, through winning and through playing table tennis.He often competes in able-bodied tournaments but meets the classification standards for the Paralympics because he has osteochondroma, which causes benign bone tumors that can limit movement.Previously a substance abuse counselor, Leibovitz works at New York Families for Autistic Children.I tell my patients that although they believe they are not OK, in reality they are actually OK, he said. Their circumstances may not be.When Leibovitz was a young teenager, he broke a basement window at his house. Tensions over that incident with his father began an eight-year period of on and off homelessness, he said.In addition to staying away from home, he stayed away from school. Sixth grade was the last year he completed.The Boys & Girls Club in Queens opened at 3 p.m. on weekdays. There, he could play table tennis until the club closed around 9 p.m. He slept on subway trains at night.I dont know if (returning home) was really an option for me at that time, Leibovitz said.He and his twin sister, Maja, said their father, Ernest, physically abused them. His father, when reached for this story, said he did not consider his treatment of his children abuse.I wasnt hitting him because I was getting mad and upset. I was hitting him because I was trying to make a point, Leibovitzs father said, adding that his son was a problematic teenager.His mother, who was divorced from his father, died in 2006. His father said he wasnt aware of his sons perpetual homelessness. His son told him he was living with friends.Leibovitz and his father now see each other about once a month, they both said, living just over a mile apart.He feels bad about me being homeless for that many years, but he said it made me very tough and who I am, Leibovitz said.Leibovitz played in his first table tennis tournament at the Junior Olympic trials when he was 15. At a tournament in New Jersey in 1995, an international referee told him he might classify for Paralympic sport because of his condition.The next year, Leibovitz won gold and bronze at the Atlanta Paralympics while still homeless. Soon after, he moved in with his twin sister.Leibovitz, who also won bronze at the 2004 Games, is self-coached. Angie Bengtsson, the U.S. table tennis head coach in Rio, said they communicate over the phone to discuss his training. At training camps and tournaments, Bengtsson said Leibovitz helps younger players.They have a lot of respect for him, Bengtsson said. A lot of them want to be just like him.In addition to his athletic success, Leibovitz earned his GED and said he has bachelors and masters degrees from Queens College and a second masters in social work from NYU.Pieces of his past show in his outlook on his sport.Whether I win or lose, Im OK, Leibovitz said. Im not going to say it doesnt matter, but it doesnt change who I am.In 2002, Leibovitz used an inheritance from his grandfather to buy a three-bedroom condo, which he said is too big. Its a problem, he said, he never thought he would have.Im sure theres a lot of it that he wishes he didnt have to go through, his wife said. Even though it was all bad that happened, it will be applied to his life to help others. Thats what hes doing with it now.---Emily Giambalvo is a journalism student at the University of Georgia. Penn State and Georgia are partnering with The Associated Press to supplement coverage of the 2016 Paralympics. Bill Russell Celtics Jersey .Y. -- Syracuse has turned up the defence at the right time all season, and when High Point threatened to pull off a monumental upset the second-ranked Orange did what they do best with their quick hands and savvy play. Paul Pierce Jersey . -- The Magic have their first victory of the new year. http://www.authenticcelticsproshop.com/Larry-Bird-Jersey/ . Defencemen Drew Doughty, Shea Weber and forward Ryan Getzlaf also scored for the Canadians, who started their gold-medal defence 2-0. Goalie Roberto Luongo, getting the call in place of Game 1 starter Carey Price, was solid when needed in making 23 saves for the shutout. Red Auerbach Jersey . Once again Jordan Cieciwa (@FitCityJordan) and I (@LynchOnSports) go head to head in our picks. Last weekend at UFC Fight Night 32 my #TeamLynch got the best of #TeamJC by a score of 9-6. Let us know which side youre on for UFC 167 use the hashtag #TeamLynch or #TeamJC on Twitter. Kevin Mchale Jersey .Y. -- Sabres defenceman Tyler Myers had no intention of changing his hard-hitting style before taking part in a disciplinary hearing for his illegal check to New Jersey forward Dainius Zubrus head. Next fall, baseball will feature a World Series in which the home-field advantage will be earned because a team had a better record than its opponent. It isnt a novel concept. The only really crazy thing about it is that it will be the first time its ever happened.Until 2003, the leagues alternated the advantage, which is fair enough if you believe random is a marker of best practice. Then came the infamous 2002 All-Star Game tie and, in what may been a teensy-weensy bit of overreaction, baseball decided to give the home-field edge in the Series to the league that won the All-Star Game. That edict was miraculously followed all the way through the 2016 season and postseason, though the All-Star Game itself continued to be run as if it were actually what it is: an exhibition.Finally, that era is done. One of the less controversial aspects of the new collective bargaining agreement is the one that detached World Series home-field advantage from the All-Star Game. A few people grumbled over the return of sanity, but only a few. Home field matters, though it may not be for precisely the reasons you might think, and it shouldnt be determined by an everybody-gets-to-play game featuring 196 or so of the biggest stars in baseball.Going to overall record was a logical next step, one that on the surface few will argue over. Its an incremental, easy step to take, one that youd expect after something as extreme as the All-Star Game tie-in. But its not completely a problem solver, and chances are well have a few chances to rue the occasional unfairness inherent in the new rule over the next five years.Last season, by won-loss record, the Chicago Cubs were 8 1/2 games better than every other team in the majors. By Pythagorean record -- the projected won-loss record based on run differential -- the Cubs were 9 1/2 games ahead of the field, suggesting their mark was no fluke. Chicago was like Secretariat in 1973 or Usain Bolt any number of times. No matter what adjustments you want to make for context, the Cubs lapped the field. That sort of clarity is unusual.If the Cubs had been a bit less dominant, their best-in-the-majors record would have been a less convincing argument for World Series home field. Take a look at this table of 2016 relative power rankings sorted by strength of schedule. Notice how almost all the American League teams are at the top and all the National League teams at the bottom.In interleague play last season, AL teams whomped their NL brethren to the tune of 165 to 135, a 55 percent clip. That almost entirely explains the spread in strength of schedule. Now, lets look at the composite records by division, with the records of the first-place teams and all interleague games removed:AL East -- .502AL West -- .481NL Central -- .480NL West -- .477NL East -- .473AL Central -- .466Thats a really big spread. In a season with the sort of disparity between the leagues that weve had in recent years, you may get a league champion with an artificially exaggerated record, which may or may not be exacerbated by the interleague disparity between divisions. Is it really fair to declare that one team has the best record when its only a handful of games ahead of another team that played a mostly different, and possible superior, group of opponents?The new rule for awarding World Series home field is an improvement, but its not ideal. In five years, when the CBA is next up for renegotiation, we can do better. What are our options?1. Team interleague record: Probably not. For one thing, its a small sample size -- teams play just 20 interleague games apiece. And many years, the World Series combatants wont have played any common interleague opponents.2. League interleague record: Theres more competitive integrity to this idea than using the All-Star game. At least within each interleague matcchup, you know both teams are actually playing to win.dddddddddddd But how much impact should a Rays-Marlins regular-season series have on a Cubs-Indians World Series? Its awkward. And, besides, its also a reaction to a trend. There is no obvious structural reason why the AL should be better than the NL, or vice versa. Theoretically, they should be well-balanced.3. League interleague adjustment: This is a more sophisticated approach. You use the teams overall record, but you adjust it for how the leagues fare against each other in interleague play. In a season like 2016, when the results so heavily leaned toward the AL, the adjustment would be quite large. Not enough to make up the Cubs 8 1/2 game edge on the Rangers, but enough to flip things in other years. This adjustment should be simple enough to be displayed on the daily standings just to keep things as transparent as possible.4. Record against other playoff teams: Maybe we want to award home field on the basis of performance against playoff-worthy teams. Two problems make this a likely nonstarter: small sample sizes and timing. We dont know the playoff teams until the end of the season, and that makes it hard to track this race in the daily standings. At the same time, it might add some luster to a late-season matchup between likely playoff teams when one of them has already clinched a seed, but not World Series home field.5. Colley Matrix method:?Youre judged by how your opponents did against their opponents. Or something like that. Simple in theory, but really complicated in execution. Alas, that latter point is probably the deal killer. Again, we want this to be something people can follow and comprehend from basic standings.6. Record against .500 teams: In terms of clarity and large-enough-sample size, this is a good option. There are a lot of years when teams rack up lofty records by beating up on bottom-feeders. An example: The 2015 Mets went to the World Series despite going 28-38 against teams over .500. Of the 40 teams to play in the World Series over the last 20 years, 13 have finished under .500 against winning teams. Theoretically, this occurs because of randomness and the strength of schedule factors we want to iron out.Most years, the teams with the best records against .500 teams are not coincidentally the teams with the best records overall, but not always. Last season, the Cubs had a robust .586 winning percentage against other winning teams, but that was just the second-best mark in baseball. Texas was .648 against .500 teams last season. We didnt say this was a metric that predicted postseason success. But it does eliminate team performance against the chattel that occupies teams schedules to disparate degrees.If you used this last option as the home-field decider, here is how the last 20 years would have looked:First, you can see that using the All-Star winner awarded the home field to the wrong team too often, but it could have been worse. Also, most seasons, you get the same answer whether youre looking at overall record or just record versus .500 teams. But when there is a difference, the middle column seems to be an improvement. You smooth out some of the scheduling disparities without using something as cumbersome as a strength-of-schedule adjustment, or some other formula that would confuse a lot of people when they stare at the standings on their tablets or in their newspapers.In any event, baseball deserves credit for making progress on this issue, which may seem minor until Game 1 of the last series of the season, when all of a sudden it seems really important. Weve got five years to toss around ideas, because while progress is good, more progress is even better. ' ' '