If an idiom is about to fly out of your mouth, cover it up and run home

Grandmom Rose looked balefully at me as I flashed my first driver’s license and said, “As you strike out on the dating scene, remember not to date any girls who can throw you out taking the extra base.” I looked back quizzically and responded nonsensically, “What extra base?” “I’m talking idiomatically, idiot.” It took about 48 years to hear the word idiom again outside a classroom. Last Saturday night 11-year-old Holden Kammerer, while watching the Cape Junior League game and prompted by his dad Scott attempting to figure out the etymology of baseball chatter, turned to us guys and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny to put together a list of baseball idioms?” I told Holden to round third and go home, then have his dad Scott divulge to him the identity of his real father. What 11-year-old drops an idiom like a drag bunt on a bunch of beer leaguers? Basically the hundreds of baseball expressions used to describe things that aren’t baseball-related are idioms. If you’re taking the bagel on this, go to Google or get some cream cheese.

Don’t beat your wife - Doug Brown of Rehoboth is a UVA guy and banker dude who looks like a runner and just floats along like a subprime loan. Last Saturday at the Kelly Fritchman 5K running on his 43rd birthday, Doug, 27:39 threw down on the final stretch to cross into the chute just ahead of his wife Diane at 27:43. That is 4 seconds he’ll wish he had back for a lot of days over the coming year, but I have it on reliable instinct that his athletic wife, a former Cape lax coach, let him win because it was easier than wrapping a present.

Local Marine - All Marines are local and “support the troops” is easy to say and has become cliché. What is needed is civic action and awareness and the rest of us civilians showing up where we can help. This Saturday at 7:30 a.m., the Fifth Annual Run for Chad 5K and mile walk will set off from Cape Henlopen High School. Lance Cpl. Chad Clifton, a Cape graduate, was a gifted writer and cool kid who was killed in action Feb. 3, 2005, in Iraq at the age of 19. Chad’s book, “A Random Soldier,” a collection of journal entries and emails written by Chad, will be available for sale at the race. All Marines are local. You’re local, so get your butt out there on Saturday morning and support the troops.

Missing the boat - Anglers pretty much don’t like fit and tan runners and racers, not to mention moms with jogging strollers blocking the only road into their boatyard on an early Saturday morning.

I’d go so far as to say from my observations of three such Angler’s Road congestive road failures this spring and summer that the boat people have little tolerance for runners, probably because it’s not a real sport like fishing.

But riding your big old Dodge truck too close behind a woman with a jogging stroller who is there to support a fundraiser for cystic fibrosis and yelling at people is a bit over the top.

The race raised funds for the Kelly Fritchman swimming scholarship, and trust me, there was no one on that road as tough as that girl.

The irony to all this is that Todd Fritchman is an avid offshore angler and can talk fish smack with the best of them.

Snippets - Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa won the British Open by seven strokes last Sunday and embraces his nickname of Little Shrek which is great because that joker does straight up look like Shrek.

He speaks a language called Afrikaans, which goes all the way back to a 1652 Dutch settlement but I don’t want to Boer anyone with actual history. I went to high school with a boy named Droopy wholooked like a basset hound in mourning. Former Cape Principal Ron Burrows was called Skippy by his staff but he never knew it in the eight years he worked there. I have no idea who pinned that moniker on him. Yo, Skippy!