A starting left tackle on the University of Delaware national championship football team, Trip DelCampo is now two years away from being Dr. DelCampo the chiropractor compacter. Trip at left tackle had great feet under a big body and I always knew he was smart just by the way he looked at me quizzically and with a slight sense of amusement.
Last Tuesday I met Trip in the parking lot of Atlantic Liquors at 11 a.m. and he, like Cody Smith, looked like an escapee from the lineman for life tribe, but I know my peeps anywhere. Trip admitted to a playing weight of 6-foot-6 and 320 pounds which is why kids always wanted his chin strap - you big yo. But now at 240 pounds he looks less the baller and brawler and more like Dr. Trip, professional back cracker and spine aligner.
Anyway, Trip is a liquor rep - ain’t we all - in the summer and asked me if I was picking up some booze. I told him I was getting my hair cut - Kim’s Hair Creations is nearby and we go back 20 years - but it seemed like a dumb reason to be in a liquor store parking lot already crowded. But it’s just where I park.
SLED DRIVER - My Clockwork Orange, Under Armour shirt-wearing self was walking into Food Lion at dinner time Tuesday when an older man driving one of those electric shopping carts for the handicapped was stuck on the doorway threshold leading into the store. I came up behind him, broke down into my lineman’s stance, and said, “Hold on, I got this!”
I used short choppy steps over a wide base and pushed him into the store. The cart wouldn’t work so I pushed it over to the side and the guy turned around and said, “Do you want it?”
“I just pushed you and your cart over two obstacles and into a parking spot, so what makes you think I can’t walk around the store under my own power?” I asked. Then I offered him my arm to take him to his car if he needed assistance.
He said, “No, I’m fine,” and just walked away and out the door. What was that all about?
LONG TIME COMING - This is not the Barack Obama story but rather a memoir about black athletes coming of age in basketball published in 1995 by Chet “The Jet” Walker, a starting forward on the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers team that some, including me, consider the best in NBA history. That team had Wilt Chamberlain at center, Walker and Luke Jackson at forwards and Hal “Hi Gear” Greer and Wally “Wonder Jones at the guards and Billy “Kangaroo Kid” as sixth man. Walker averaged 19 points a game and 8 rebounds for that year.
The Sixers’ finished the regular season 68-13 and beat Boston to end the Celtics’ run of eight consecutive NBA championships. Boston finished that regular season 60-21 behind player coach Bill Russell and averaged 119 points a game. Where is that game today?
THE BUTTER JOKE - No joke, in the spring of 1964 at a downtown Philly hotel I sat on the dais of a basketball banquet next to Bob Cousy - The Cooz - who today is in the NBA Hall of Fame and on the NBA’s All-Time 50 Greatest Players List. I was there having been voted the Outstanding Basketball Player in the Philadelphia Catholic League, which cuts no ice in dumb little Delaware and I don’t care.
Cousy had just retired - the ceremony in the Boston Gardens a month earlier was called The Boston Tear Party. Cousy invented everything that is flash today in NBA basketball. He began his speech telling the story about how he asked a server for more butter and she responded only one pad per person.
He said, ”But I’m Bob Cousy, keynote speaker and NBA all-time all-star.”
And she said, “That’s great! I’m the lady who gives out the butter.”
Cooz sat down, turned to me and said, “You can use that anytime you want.”
I was called to the podium being compared to All-Big Five Saint Joe’s star Steve Courtin who was more famous in the city for mooning his graduation class. I was handed a plaque, turned around and pointed back to my chair, not offered an opportunity to speak. And I’ve never used the butter joke, although I have a pretty good one involving narrow doorways, fat linemen and Wesson oil.
SNIPPETS Thursday, June 12, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Cape high, Mariner Middle or Rehoboth Elementary schools just dig out your drivers license as proof of residency then you can vote in the referendum to approve or not a new turf field and mini stadium at Cape Henlopen High School. Listen to all the arguments paying particular attention to the human personality trait known as grouchiness. Don’t get in the grouchy line!
Most of Cape’s athletes are also academic honor students all the way down to the primary grades.
My grandmother always said, “Never argue your case but point out the shortcomings of contrasting positions.”
Academic athletes on turf fields under the lights practicing and playing games over the next quarter of a century making Cape the best high school facility in Delaware sounds pretty exciting to me. But I’m the guy who goes to games, so of course I’m in favor of it.
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Sports Editor Emeritus
Email Fredman at fredman@capegazette.com
