Good stuff, a great life, a story all about family and community?

I can picture a championship baseball or softball game on a sun-drenched field and a crowd of 1,000 “Pop Pop’s only” in the stands. A dugout dispute erupts, some internal squabbling and a manager calls time out and says “somebody get Pop Pop.”

Wally Townsend and his bulldog Mickey come to the fence. They are the first and only responders. The dispute is settled without a raised voice. When Wally showed up at a ball game, all other Pop Pops went down to the JV team. Wally Townsend died on Thanksgiving morning after a long run in the major leagues of his life. I will never forget his bulldog Mickey chasing district and state championship banners around the outfield. Tyler Townsend, his grandson, was on the first Lewes 12-year-old team to win the Little League championship of Sussex County. Colby Cooper led the Rehoboth team to its first 12-year-old softball title and later, up on a dimly lit field next to the rattle and hum of I-95 traffic, the Cape Senior League girls won the state championship.

The banner began with a victory lap, the girls and Mickey Dog quietly left off the chain. A site manager went into alert. “Somebody get that dog! Dogs aren’t allowed on the field!”

I put my notebook into my back pocket and said, “Dude, you get us, and you get the dog! That’s the way we do it. You want Mickey to stay on the bench, try winning the game!”

Mickey died a few years later and Wally was crushed. And later still my chocolate lab Mickey died and Wally offered condolences; we were two guys at a game teary-eyed over lost dogs. That’s how I knew Wally Townsend, quietly soft-spoken, self-deprecating and when all the sports community hoopla ensued over his grandson Tyler being picked in the third round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Baltimore Orioles Wally said to me, “I never thought the kid was that good.”

“Me either,” I added, and that was that.

I will say that everyone on a branch of the family tree that leads to Pop Pop has that same quality and peacefulness and perspective. Good stuff, a great life, a story all about family and community.

RACE PACE - A proper mile pace for a long run allows for conversation without gasping for breath. A few select congenial and elite runners turned racers can push it and still maintain conversational breathing. Last Saturday morning in the Run for the Rose 5K, it was Tommy Nohilly, a 1989 NCAA champion in the steeplechase out of the University of Florida and owner of a personal best 14:44 in the 5K, and Paul Ecker, cross country and track runner at DeSalles University and a former Cape runner, pole vaulter and third baseman. “We talked halfway through the race and I remember racing against him in the summer and thinking he would slow down. This time I knew he would be leaving me,” said Ecker.

Tommy married Kim Elmer, a Florida high jumper (5-10) and hurdler. Their son Eion, 11, also ran in the race.

TWEETING TWITS - Last Sunday in the Eagles press box I thought about making a scene something like “the next one of you who never played a sport in your lives sportswriting ‘tweeters’ that moans and drones because the press box wireless has filtered and blocked you from your Twitter page, I’m going to press your face into your custom made omelet then smack you with a soft pretzel!” And I heard a print journalist utter this sentence: “All them guys is like that.” Yes, maybe they is, and then again, maybe they isn’t.

SNIPPETS - This Friday night, Dec. 4, Dover basketball at Cape will be the first game in the new gym. There is a brief ceremony scheduled for 7 p.m give or take. If your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight may I suggest porking up over the holidays and starting off with a crooked number so you have more to lose. And if you encounter skinny people who think they’re fat do whatever you can to reinforce their distorted body image.