Cape basketball coach Steve Re resigns, will focus on his own kids

Re resigns - March Madness is called The Big Dance, but when it comes to sports, I only dance alone with no mirror in the room. I am George Clinton’s Atomic Dog, “Bow-wow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah,” a Fredman Funkadelic. Coach Steven Re resigned by letter to Cape AD and administration, and also met with players in the program. That is the proper way to do it. Coach sure didn’t consult with me or give me a heads-up, no file sharing with the veteran sportswriter. But I was there through his tenure and every other basketball coach going back to Ralph Baird. That job at Cape, and to a lesser degree football, attracts its share of critics with high expectations who offer no help. Working on a master’s degree, spending more time with your kids and spouse as they grow up (hopefully spouse is already grown), it all makes more sense than coaching basketball. The AAU subculture that now envelops high school basketball has contaminated the sport, just too many players on the move looking out for themselves. And gone are the outdoor courts where improvisation was learned from the legends and masters of the game. Now everything is three-balls, or coast-to-coast, one-man fast breaks. I told Coach Re and the end of each season, “You should get three credits in abnormal psychology for the job you’ve done.” I told my grandson Mikey on the sidelines of Wednesday’s lacrosse game, “Coach Re resigned as basketball coach.” Mikey looked surprised, asking, why? I told him, “I have no idea.” His next question “Who’s going to do it?’ I answered, “I have no idea.” Later from Coach Re to my desktop: “Family commitments and the age of my kids place a lot of demands on my time; that is the main reason. I started as a head HS coach at a very young age and have been doing it for almost 20 years. Time to pour into my own kids the way I have other people’s.”

Cheap-shot artists - Perhaps they should have their own side street with easels at the July 4 Lewes Sidewalk Art Sale? Every professional sport includes cheap-shot safeguards, from basketball with flagrant ones and twos, to baseball bean-ballers and base runners. In girls’ lacrosse, whistles are blown before anything happens – see shooting space – but in boys’ lacrosse the lines are blurred. There is the allowable whacking and slashing as distinguished from the late-arriving, cross-checking, lift-you-out-of-your-shoes penalty which may be worth 60 seconds in the box. But watch out – here comes the message, brought to you by the dad whose twin sons, Jack and Tom, played full-contact lacrosse and could roughhouse and rough-talk their way into any penalty box. If you seriously injure a defenseless player with a malicious late hit and that player stays injured, it will dog you the rest of your life, to say nothing of their life. And that’s why you don’t do it. My grandson Davey developed his own sport of taking down spectators at a wrestling match. His defense, “You laughing, Fred?” was protection against irate mommy with a handbag.

Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen sings, “This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?” It’s about satellite sameness, traveling the Amercian superhighway with no accents and no local culture, everything just the same. Thursday was opening day in Major League Baseball, a sport best savored from the cab of a pickup truck or perhaps from a back-porch glider. I thought of purchasing the MLB premier package which would give me everything I don’t want while excluding local games I want to watch. My man cave had become a caveman cave, just so prehistoric, but I think a push mower and sickle just add a little atmosphere. And all brewpubs aside, just remember, fellow Phillies fans, “When you see the three-ring sign, ask the man for Ballantine.”

Broadcast team - Jim Nantz has been the play-by-play announcer for the NCAA Final Four every year since 1991. This year will be his 29th straight. Bill Raftery and Grant Hill have been part of the team since 2015. We haven’t heard from Billy Packer since 2008, when he coined the observation, “Their team has great length, they are long.” And now when teams have big men, they are just called Bigs. Nantz is the ultimate crossover artist in broadcasting, going from the Final Four to anchoring the Masters golf tournament the last 20 years. Nantz covered the Super Bowl, the Final Four and the Masters in the same year in 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019. His net worth is $15 million, but his real worth is that he is just a good guy with a great voice. Nantz wrote a book “Always by My Side,” about his father’s 13-year struggle with Aizheimer’s disease. His dad died in 2009 at the age of 79. I’d still like to hear Gus Johnson call the final game.

Snippets - Sussex Tech boys beat Cape this year in football, tied in soccer, and won twice in basketball and swimming. And so when Cape lacrosse goes to Sussex Tech and wins the JV game 17-0 and varsity game 22-0, it raises the “What’s up?” flag. And now let me run this flag up the pole, “Go on now, git!”