How can 33 million people watch the Eagles lose to Dallas?
Ryan “Pop Tart” Whibley is hosting baseball workouts for anyone in grades 612 at the high school field on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 p.m. Whibs and his peeps will work on the fundamentals of defense, offense and have plenty of scrimmage time with live pitching. This free clinic will run until the World Series ends.
The Phillies have 10 games left in the fight for the playoffs and as of this writing have the second-longest active winning streak in baseball at six, one behind the Marlins. This weekend’s three-game series in Florida should be a slugfest.
Some crazy, crooked number like 33 million people watched the Eagles lose to the Cowboys last Monday night. How does that survey go?
Ring! Ring! “I know you aren’t calling me at 10:30 on a Monday night asking me if I’m watching a football game. Isn’t that against the law? What’s the halftime score? Did you say 30-24 in favor of Philly? Looks like I picked the wrong weeknight to quit drinking.”
Dallas is in Green Bay this weekend and Pittsburgh comes to Philadelphia. Both the Boyz and the Birds are pegged as three-point favorites by the Las Vegas odds makers, but I’m paying attention for recreational purposes only. What other purposes are there in life?
I watched a Beacon Middle School soccer game last Wednesday afternoon because my life is out of control. Beacon has two full teams; there was a squad of 14 cheerleaders and three managers in uniform. But there is no scorebook and no roster and I’m expected to spell names correctly, but sometimes I mess up all over the place.
Speaking of names, I wonder if in the Little Big House the names of last year’s girls basketball team versus Caesar Rodney could be taken down. That game was some six months ago.
I saw a parent - I know not who - who spoke to me in a questioning manner.
“I didn’t know they sold pizza at football games.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “It’s the great share-the-booty compromise between the junior class and the football booster club. It creates a very festive church bazaar atmosphere which is often reflected in the play of our team in the first half.”
Speaking of the new tunnel - not that I’m an expert, I’m more of a trestle guy - I think the idea is to come roaring out of a dark tunnel thundering through a cloud of white smoke. But when you see the team run into the back and out the front it’s kind of comical in a cone field advantage sort of way.
Beacon beat Millsboro in field hockey last Wednesday 5-0 behind two goals and two assists from Sara Young, and one goal each by Allie Yeager, Brie Pavlik and Izey Delario. Anna Frederick had two assists. Goalies Taylor Hardy and Kelsey Buckingham shared the goaltending duties.
CELEBRATION TIME C’MON - Terrell Owens is the wonder boy of end zone celebrations. Early this season his interest/obsession with Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt manifested itself in a 15-yard end zone penalty after Terrell got into a sprinter’s stance, and then again last Monday night when he “broke the tape” on his first deep ball touchdown against the Eagles.
Contrast that with DeShawn Jackson dropping the ball backwards at the one-yard line. I have seen Owens, whom I believe still has world class speed, leave 4.4 NFL corners standing still. Did you know his middle name is Eldorado? Owens was a third-round pick in the 1996 draft and, in a way, because of his workout regimen and obsessively clean dietary lifestyle, he is a role model if you don’t mind that his bolts are not all the way tightened down.
SPORTS STEREOTYPES - A successful high school coach knows how to recruit his own building and some know how to recruit buildings in other districts, but that card wasn’t in play when I was in the game. I came to Cape and saw signup sheets for baseball and lacrosse and made the comment, “That’s great so I get all the black people?” I later joked to my team, “Is it possible that so many slow back athletes showed up on the same team in the same year?” The kids all laughed because they enjoyed dumb joke Philly guy with the funny walk.
Last Wednesday I watched Beacon soccer defeat Millsboro Middle School 8-0. First of all I didn’t even know that Sussex Central went to a two-middle-school model - Millsboro and Georgetown - and secondly, as I watched a team which fielded a healthy and observable number of Hispanic players, many of whom were athletic and had ball skills, I wondered why they weren’t scoring goals. I could only conclude that the Americanization of the world game was style-cramping and before anyone goes all politically correct garbage on me, consider the possibility that I may be right.
TITANIUM - This Saturday, Sept. 21, 1,000 competitors will compete in the Make-A-Wish Triathlon staged at Sea Colony in Bethany Beach because they have an ocean.
A few years ago I did a face-to-face interview with Cape student Chris Conway, who had lost his lower leg to bone cancer when he was in Milton Middle School. Chris wanted to be a middle linebacker on the football team. During the emotional and so unbelievable, you-can’t-make-it-up interview, Chris told me that after his amputation the boy in the next hospital bed decided his Make-A-Wish was to pay for Chris’s new leg. I lost it and told Chris to knock it off; how much did he think I could take? I nicknamed him Titanium and it stuck. I wanted to organize an 800-student, all-school lap of the track with Chris in the lead to celebrate his high school graduation and toughness and inspiration, but it never happened ‘cause as my grandmother said, ”High school ain’t Hollywood!” Maybe not, but Titanium is still my buddy and one of my heroes.
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Sports Editor Emeritus
Email Fredman at fredman@capegazette.com
