They need a smack down to prove they’re committed to their beliefs

HANGING WITH THE FELLAS - True story - I come from a background spent studying psychology and working in clinical settings. I had my own practice when I was in sixth grade. Anyway, I know this schizophrenic young man who ventures into multiple personality disorder and a few beers ago we were enjoying each other’s company when he looked across the table and said, “You don’t get it, do you?” 

So when Cape baseball pitcher Allen Vickers’ mother, Christie, wrote and told me about her son’s recovery from Hodgkin’s lymphoma and mentioned how friends Will Betts, Jon Goodwin, Dean Tappan, Dylan Reynolds, J.T. Tana, Willie Makowski, Hunter Walsh and many others would just come over and hang and try to stay out of trouble, I just thought of that shirt.

GETTING HOME - I am going to write the sports book on how to get home when victory is in your grasp. I think you need to look at it negatively - like a worst case scenario - and that way you’ll know how to protect a lead.

Great athletes do crazy things, good and bad, but I’m getting home. Reflect back to the last Super Bowl and remember Randy Moss caught the go-ahead touchdown and that should have been that. But instead you can’t tackle goofy Eli who couldn’t escape my grandmother’s grasp.

FREE TIBET - I go to more sporting events with more variety than any sane person I know and my job is to pay attention. I have never heard a discussion of Tibet start up and, in fact, any zealot for human rights who disrupts a game needs a smack down just to prove they’re a player committed to their beliefs.

Talk about attacking the messenger. And there seem to be a lot of Chinese Americans who have a problem with China except they live here. You don’t see Mexicans going all anti-Mexico. They’re too busy working and making money and making the rest of us look lazy. Go to our own ghettos and then talk to me about Tibet.

USA FIELD HOCKEY TEAM - Carrie Lingo, of Cape and North Carolina and veteran of 50 international competitions, will travel with the United States field hockey team to Kazan, Russia, at the end of April to compete against five other nations in a qualifying tournament for a spot in the 2008 summer Olympic games to be held in Beijing, China, political climate permitting. Fourteen of the 18 USA roster spots come from Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey. The team has 10 players coming from the ACC with five others from Old Dominion. It is obvious that hockey talent in the USA is clustered in certain areas of the country.

CAPE’S SILVER MEDAL- Axel Sjoblad was a Swedish exchange student who went to Cape circa 1984-85, lived with the Hopkins family and played soccer and ran the 800 meters on my track team. Axel competed for Sweden in the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics in the sport of team handball and won a silver medal. Team handball is a seven-on-seven game with six players and a goalie where you throw and bounce a ball and try to throw it in the net.

“Same as soccer except no feet,” Axel used to tell us but we would all laugh because we were stupid. I don’t know of any other Cape-connected Olympic medal, so let me know if you can think of one.

SNIPPETS - Ryan Reed had a pair of hits as Delaware (11-19) beat Rutgers 5-3 Thursday, April 9, after losing to Delaware State April 8, when the Hornets scored eight runs in the ninth inning to win 10-6.