I’m just doing my job raising the questions

The Rehoboth All-Stars lost to Lower Sussex last Tuesday night 4-2 and were eliminated from the tournament that keeps going on as long as you keep winning. Parents looked at family members and other parents and joked, “So, that’s it for the summer? No more baseball? What do we do now?”

The joke was funny because of the embedded truth within it, just like all jokes. The travel ball argument surfaces around all sports - is too much too much and how much of travel ball is a social outlet for travel parents? There is now enough data available, including “I Survived Travel Ball” T-shirts (my idea) to ask older teens and those in their early 20s if, upon reflection, they would trade their travel ball days for something less goal-directed like riding boogie boards or simply kicking with friends with no parents in proximity. I’m just doing my job raising the questions.

MOST KIDS ARE MEDIAN - The bell curve is the fat part on the graph that amplifies upward and where close to 70 percent of us meander throughout life having a great time. I think - sports guy talking - that more parents have skewed visions of their kids’ talents than ever before in recorded history. Reasonable people just get way crazy and it’s like they inhabit the person and personality of their children.

I respectfully stand, listen and pay attention - thanks to a renewable Ritalin prescription from a Canadian pharmacy - to otherwise reasonable people extolling the prowess of little people years away from a change of voice, and I want to say, “It is great that you love your child and are out here supporting them just as long as you realize you are all the way crazy approaching involuntary commitment to your own family room.”

PHILLY HEROES - The joke “A hero ain’t nothing but a sandwich” isn’t funny in Philly where a hoagie isn’t a hero or some stupid sub or torpedo. Chase Utley is now a legendary hero in Philly after forgetting he was wired for live sound last Monday night at the home run derby in Yankee Stadium and responded to the boos after his introduction by saying, “Freak you,” which was carried live by ESPN. Then everyone apologized, like those who boo or fat guys in recliner decline deserve or need protections.

And the best was former Eagle and Channel 10 sportscaster Vai Sikahema, born in Tonga, who knocked out Jose Conseco in the first round of a celebrity boxing match and said of Conseco, “That’s what happens when you step into the ring with an out-of-shape guy who doesn’t respect the sport, a guy with a salon tan and bleached teeth.” Sikahema gave his $5,000 in prize money to the widow of a fallen Philadelphia police officer, saying, “A person fighting for a cause will always triumph over a person simply fighting for money.”

I CAN’T MARK LYDIA - I have been an active athlete all my life. There is no doubt if my self-confident and arrogantly self-assured self attempted to “mark up” super soccer striker Lydia Hastings –Rehoboth/ Cape/Maryland - in the open field I would be eating my own dust with her image long out of focus range.

Lydia was invited to the U20 camp which is coached by Tony DiCiccio (winner of U.S. Gold and World Cup with Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain.) I am assuming Lydia will be at Maryland in the fall, but sometimes players at her level go national team then drop back to college. It is hard keeping track of her.

SPORTS CONNECTIONS - Ryan MacLeish, the RBP Rookie of the Year, is the son of Col. Tom MacLeish of the Delaware State Police. Tom is a first cousin to Richie Cornwall, who played basketball with me for two years at Our Lady of Grace Grammar School where we posted a two year record of 55-4. Our team was coached by Dick Docherty, later sports editor of Bucks County Courier Times and my mentor in the sportswriting business. Wayne Fish, who covers the Flyers for the last 30 years and races in local Seven Sisters races, worked under Doc at the Courier Times. Cornwall went on to star at Syracuse University averaging 15 points a game and played in the back court with Jim Bayheim and Dave Bing.

Ryan MacLeish is deeply embedded in the national network of sports celebrities and there are many roads I didn’t even travel.

CAPE CRUSADER FUNDRAISER - This nonprofit basketball club will hold a barbeque chicken fundraiser and clothing drive fundraiser Saturday, July 26, in the parking lot of the Salvation Army located on Route 1 just north of Rehoboth Beach next to the Nike outlet store. Barbequing begins at noon and runs through the latest of dinner hours. All the monies raised will help support the Cape Crusader basketball program for kids ages 8-12. The nontattered and serviceable clothing donated from the closet of your personal overstock - seemed cool at time of purchase - will live to have a retro cool life of its own somewhere on the planet.

Back in 1988 I was showing a film in geography class titled “Gorilla Hunters of Cameroon” when a student screamed, “Marcus, that chief has on the same jacket as you!” And it was true - you just don’t think of gray Adidas and a white striped, zip up the front warmup jacket on a “National Geographic” photography safari, but the chief was all the way cool.

SNIPPETS - Just read a medical abstract that concluded a certain percentage of fat is good because it cushions organs and insulates the body and that the white matter of the brain is covered with fat which explains why the suddenly skinny seem so stupid.