Current Phils fans are very young, match color of towels

I call it borderline personality disorder while holding a bat. I call Ryan Howard a “good kid” and I admire him for enjoying a blessed life with many gifts. And so when the “Big Piece” took a borderline low curve ball for a called strike, sending the Giants to the World Series, I thought it was fitting. Somewhere in this latest quest to be the best, the Phillies looked at too many pitches, booted too many balls and threw too many fat pitches to Cody Ross. The tightness could be felt in the ball park and hundreds of miles away. The talk was brash but the Phillies wanted “off the deck” in any way possible and forgot that the spoils go to the alley cats, the scrapers, clawers and biters in the game of sports survival. And now the World Series - do Philly fans watch or lick their wounds and return to bashing Kevin Kolb? Do they root for Texas and their boy Cliff Lee to do what they could not, or get behind a Giants crew that quite frankly possesses all the elements Philadelphia fans admire? Question asked and answered.

A Man in Full - Like a filibuster? “Fill it up, Buster!” “A Man in Full” by Tom Wolfe depicts a powerful man who realizes his life is now populated by replacement players in important positions. I call them “skippies,” professional people who look like big children. The current crop of Phillies’ fans is very young and co-ed and match the color of their rally towels. They refer to “we” instead of “they” when droning on about their team. A man in full like me, who spent the first 10 years of his life rocking a row house two blocks from Connie Mack Stadium, was a kid who could identify all the players in the entire league from the bleachers. The A’s were still Philly. I didn’t know of dinosaurs - when did that infatuation begin? I don’t know the Chickie’s and Pete’s crowd and they don’t want to know me. It’s in my North Philly shot-and-frosted-mug-of-Schmidt’s-on-tap blood to want the Phillies to win, but the Brady Bunch bandwagon brigade needed a good dose of a called strike three and they got it. You have to suffer if “we” want to sing the blues.

Senior Night hockey - Seven field hockey athletes escorted by family members were recognized before Cape’s Friday, Oct. 22 game versus Milford which Cape won 3-0 to extend its regular season record to 12-0 with three games remaining. When the girls were juniors, they were 14-0-1 and as sophomores 14-1. Add it up, 40-1-1 regular season and still counting. That is amazing, spectacular, miraculous and fabulous. The seniors include Meg Bartley, Brittany Betts, Caitlyn Hardy, Caroline Judge, Holly King, Hannah Pepper and Katie Yeager. And yet personally I feel these girls are under-appreciated. They are gamers, leaders, students and have embraced younger athletes to make them feel a part of a long and great Cape hockey tradition. A state championship would be a great way to close it out, but how a student athlete conducts himself or herself every day in school and sports is the true mark of a champion.

Nil to nada - The Cape soccer team shut out Caesar Rodney Thursday, Oct. 21, a team they haven’t beaten in the 41-year history of the school district. And they still haven’t beaten them, as the Vikings went to double overtime with no scoring and a final result of 0-0. Soccer is 7-3-2 on the season and hosts Sussex Tech Tuesday, Oct. 26, at Legends Stadium in a 7 p.m. game. Goalie Andrew Scrutchfield has posted seven shutouts this season and given up just one goal four times. Sussex Tech is 9-1-1 but hasn’t scored many goals against the better teams. So what is up? A great big ball you’re allowed to kick and the biggest net in all of sports and no one can score?

Snippets - A great middle school field hockey game played out at Cape’s turf field Thursday, Oct. 21, as undefeated Mariner and Sussex Academy battled each other in an evenly played game won by Mariner 2-1. Hannah Collins and Sam Broadhurst scored first-half goals for Mariner while Annie Perdue scored in the second half for Sussex Academy.

Cape football looked like 1975 in the gold pants, white shirts with blue letters and blue helmets - and the team looked athletic, hungry, emotional, organized and confident all game long in last Friday night’s win at Dover.

It was the same old Cape, like grandfather old! During a third-quarter timeout, Cape’s offensive coordinator Herky Billings got on fullback Jerome Johnson. “Somebody hits you and you go down like a sack of potatoes,” said Herky, hitting his high pitch button.

A young black man looking like a lineman from the ‘90s holding a sideline down marker laughed and said, “I ain’t never heard that one before.” Johnson was playing his tail off, had 180 yards for the game and then in the fourth quarter he took it to yet another level. A coach once told me, “That guy dropped you like a Kurdish CARE package.” I just love football people.