Cape lacrosse rolls onto Bullis School campus in Yellow Peeps Transporter

Buicks in parking lots - I have joked, “There are no Buicks in the parking lot of a club team lacrosse tournament.” Cape was not out of its economic league Saturday afternoon for an opening game at the Bullis School, which had already played five games and is considered a top five team in the country by pundits who have the leisure time to consider such rankings. Cape is a wealthy public school district; just drive around activating motion-sensitive security cameras and dodging golden retrievers, and you’ll affirm what you already know. Cape, a good team with 12 seniors, trailed 10-0 at the half because they didn’t get off the Chris Long-driven Big Yellow Taxi until the second half. And there’s half the problem. You all can’t be arriving in Potomac in some 45-foot Fisher-Price bus rolling out like some weebles from a garage sale. Get a coach bus – actually, get two – and roll the road in class and comfort. Hey, I like being stupid where my tuition is waived every column deadline. One year, I had a student in class with a T-shirt that read, “I ride the short bus.”  What made it funnier was he actually did and turned stigma into status.

The Sixth Sense - Remember the movie with Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment filmed in Philadelphia? The classic line from Osment was, “I see dead people.” Well, I vote for dead people competing against other dead people on my yearly Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame ballot. There are 30 chapters in the PSHOF and I’m an inducted member of the Bucks County Chapter. Each year I get a ballot with nominees for the more exclusive HOF club and must choose only two of six deceased and 10 of 20 living. Randy Newman has a song, “I’m Dead But I Don’t Know It,” meaning he’s so yesterday, but no one will tell him to step off. Here are just three nominees: Chuck Daly coached the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA titles in 1989-90 and the Olympic Dream Team to a gold medal in 1992. Won 900 games from high school through college and the pros. Andy Musser was a Phillies broadcaster for a quarter-century in a 45-year career that also included calling Eagles, 76ers and Villanova games and working the World Series, Super Bowl and Masters tournaments. Dennis Green, a college and NFL coach, worked at Stanford and was head coach at Northwestern where he was Big Ten Coach of the Year, and was head coach of the Minnesota Vikings for 10 years, and head coach of the Arizona Cardinals for three. Green is well known for his line in a Coors Lite commercial, “They were who we thought they were.” A final sentence from Hall of Fame President John Chaump reads, “We must attract younger members; unless we do, we surely face extinction.” I’m already feeling like Bruce Willis listening to Randy Newman on the eight-track car stereo with Haley Joel Osment riding shotgun.    

See you around - The second round of the NCAA tournament saw most teams Denny Greened: They were who we thought they were, except for LSU’s 69-67 win over Maryland and Duke’s 77-76 win over UCF. Duke is Destiny’s Child, mostly good things happen to them in big games. It’s no coincidence their mascot is a devil. Duke was done. It was time to put the butter on the toast, then the retriever snatched it off the table. UCF, up four, missed a breakaway dunk followed by a Duke three-pointer. You know the rest of the story. You’ve got to believe if Coach K closes this out with an NCAA title that he will go Bruce Willis and hit the rubber chicken circuit putting people with short attention spans to sleep like Haley Joel Osment.

Snippets - Let the games begin. A full slate of high school and middle school games are scheduled for the last week in March. Dress layered so you call peel yourself like a giant mandarin or maderin from The Giant. The Inclusion Kid, Davey Fred, will be throwing the six-pound shot put Thursday, as Cape’s Unified track team is embedded inside the Indian River at Cape meet. I asked Davey, “Is that shot put heavy or light, Davey?” He answered, “Yea, Fred,” which is technically correct. Stand clear; I’ve seen that cat go sidewinder and throw a 16-pound bowling ball halfway down the alley. Go on now, git!