Little League baseball tournaments have launched

Welcome to my house - The Cape campus is the greatest venue for just about anything, from the Metropolitan Opera to the Slam Dunk basketball and state championship wrestling tournaments to outdoor play days and tournaments on multiple fields. A common comment from first-time visitors is: “This is a public high school? Looks more like a small college.” And the best news is the campus is east of Route 1 and belongs to all of us.

Gentleman Bill Lyon - Bill Lyon, is a long-time, top-of-the-tree sports columnist for the Philadelphia Bulletin and later the Inquirer. I call him Broomall Billy because that’s where he lives. Great guy, no ego. I know him and he knows the less well known me, although out of courtesy I reintroduce myself, which is more than my former students do when I bump into them in Food Lion. Bill is now 78 and has just finished a five-part Sunday series on growing older with Alzheimer's. It’s scary to read it because we think creative people who challenged their mind every day to think deeper and more expansively have a built in hedge against dementia, but there are no guarantees. And breaking news is that Hall of Fame former Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summit is close to exiting the court on the far side of early onset Alzheimer’s. Grandmom Rose: “Make each day count, even if someone else has to count for you.” And don’t yell at me, she said it.

A numbers game - Digital pictures are just numbers projected into images; like most of us, I have no idea how it works, but I do know numbers track us like an annoying guardian angel who knows way too much. That’s especially true in the sports world, everything is quantified, from the score to playing time to the length of a career to knowing when it’s time to get out, to step off and give someone else a shot at your slot. The best part of sports is being a player. There’s not much introspection, circumspection or reflections on the good old days. But if you move over and become a coach or sportswriter, the game is more cerebral because your body just doesn’t perform like it did when you were clueless to contact and could take a hit without screaming “Ow!”

Little League - The District 3 All Star 9-10 baseball tournament has launched. Lewes/Rehoboth plays Milton Tuesday, June 28, in Millsboro at 7 p.m.  in a winners bracket game. The championship will be Friday, July 1, at 7 p.m. in Millsboro. In Senior League baseball, Cape and Georgetown will play a winners bracket game Thursday, June 30, at 7 p.m., at Lower Sussex. All stars are often the intersection of town ball and travel ball, and in the past there have been conflicts, with travel ball winning most of those decisions. Not sure at this point whether that is still an issue. 

Snippets - Lexi Gooch is going to Eastern University. Thirty-nine years ago in Philly for the Penn Relays, I dropped off some Cape track guys at Eastern a Friday night in April at the room of Howard and Bryan Stevenson. Both brothers went on to Ivy League graduate degrees, so Lexi knows “you can get there or anywhere from Eastern College.” It’s down the road from Villanova along Lancaster Pike. Maddy Irwin is going to Lynchburg College and will no doubt join a hockey roster heavy with former Henlopen Conference players. I notice that Cam Wick, a volleyball/lacrosse player, knocked down all kinds of art awards at graduation. Artists see a different world than the rest of us. I shudder to think what Cam sees when she looks at me. I once joked that Hank Draper saw me as an aerodynamically flawed duck too fat to lift off. A group of 10-year-olds ran a championship banner around the ball field 10 year ago. I watched and remembered saying, “Now that is a sad story for somebody.” “Why is that, Fredman?” “Someone just peaked; it is their last banner and their best moment. Trust me on that.” I peaked in eighth grade. I’m just thankful I didn’t know it at the time. Go on now, git!