“This is radio nowhere! Is there anybody alive out there?”
Bruce Springsteen,
“Radio Nowhere”
RADIO NOWHERE- Speaking of Sea Witch weekend, Anthony Joseph, WGMD sports director, was left in the lurch last Sunday and asked if I’d help him with the radio broadcast of the Central at Cape game. But he didn’t say we’d be sharing the same microphone and that I would be under the weather and beyond my usual dazed-and-confused self and trying to make sense out of a game that was 27-0 at halftime but never got to the 35-second running clock differential. It was the game “never close” but lots of touchdowns in the second half. They all seemed to blur, one into the other, with the game finally ending 53-28.
“What do you think Coach McDowell said to his team at halftime?” Anthony asked me on the air.
“There are people in the stands and a new field - I don’t think he has to say anything,” I said. In fact, real athletes don’t listen to speeches; they play to show off like a dolphin tail flipping for tourists. There are always chances to make plays and get noticed. I did think both teams were scratching their heads at halftime - Cape for rumbling pretty good on the inside and still behind 27 points due to the disintegration of special teams play and Central with a patient running game that was never stopped.
POSITIVE DISINTEGRATION - TPD is the Theory of Positive Disintegration, which in sports sees “Getting lit up” as an opportunity and learning experience because it is easy to front run throughout life and learn nothing. Depression, anxiety, angst, uncertainty and crushing disappointments experienced through unfulfilled dreams are all “growth and character building experiences” and all jokes aside, I believe that is why rich and privileged people are never funny or interesting.
Negative disintegration occurs for those who think life means always being the high scorer on an undefeated team and these people go through life unaware and unquestioning except when it comes to weighted grades.
I love the football players on this 2-6 Cape team because they are tough and strong young men and they battle together and don’t scapegoat and just keep coming after an opponent. True, they have suffered positive disintegration, which none of us strives to achieve, but it’s how we respond and learn that is so revealing of who we are.
BOW WOW SHOT! “Don’t bring the cannon to our house.” Can it be put any more simply?! I never met the man. He is Philly like me, but the Sussex Central principal was asked personally by Cape Principal John Yore not to bring his toy cannon to last Sunday’s homecoming game (who needs inflamed emotions? The dance was Saturday night), but after the first Golden Knight touchdown, “Boom!” went the cannon and what happened next I am sure has never happened in the history of Henlopen Conference football.
A state police officer told a visiting high school principal the cannon must leave the stadium or “you and the cannon leave the stadium.” There was no more cannon - only fans making cannon noises which is their inherent right under the First Amendment of Football to the Conference by-laws (although Cape doesn’t have a rule “No Barking,” which goes back 25 years. “Wuff! Wuff!”
CITZEN PATROL - What about the right of nondeputized citizens not on patrol to be exempt from intrusions from those who don’t understand “the social contract” and continually throw themselves into the gears of social cooperation like an errant ball bearing in a machine shop. Last Sunday morning it was right in the middle of the Sea Witch 5k road race, which is staged at Grove Park and runs down Henlopen Avenue and 16 to 32 minutes later everyone young and old magically comes back and happily runs through the finish chute.
Last Sunday, though, there were lots of unhappy people, many of them parents of children who were yelled at by a patrolling citizen for not running against traffic in a race with police escort and secured intersections and sanctioned by the City of Rehoboth. I will say this, if someone yelled at one of my grandchildren during a road race it would be a Night of the Living Freds horror festival and all these captain Safeties and Wankers on Patrol for the good of us all need to slow down. I can take patrollers all kinds of places where people need to be yelled at but a word of caution, they will hurt you, which is why you yell at law abiders and children and families with dogs in the ocean. What is a soapbox, anyway? I’ve never seen one?
SNIPPETS - What does the Delaware 59-52 win at Navy mean in the overall “Fans Search for Meaning” in Division 1AA football? It means that Senior Peter Gaertner’s 38-yard field goal with 2.6 left on the clock that lifted Delaware State to a 17-16 win at South Carolina State has kept the scenario alive that Delaware State could be at Delaware in the first round of the NCAA 1AA tournament and all those student tickets would change to “no counts,” just don’t mess with my sideline credential. Delaware is tough and will be put to the test the last three games against James Madison, Richmond and Villanova. Saturday, Nov. 24 is the first round of the playoffs.
An axiom of Economics: The food supply grows arithmetically while the population grows geometrically. Last Week on WIP sports radio Gary Cobb-better know as G Cobb-a former Eagles and Southern Cal linebacker said. “One great receiver like Randy Moss presents a mathematic problem but add Donte and Stalworth and your problems are existential.”
He meant to say “exponential,” I guess, which proves what I know - a little education is a dangerous thing. An existential receiver would be free to run his own routes and would have responsibly only to himself. It kind of sounds like Moss so maybe that is what G Cobb actually meant? By the way, where’s my cannon?
