Jerry Kobasa: That was the classiest thing I’ve seen all year

ELENA - Nice kid and a super person - you just don’t get any better than her and that’s all aside from Elena Delle Donne being the best high school basketball player in the country and the best ever in Delaware scholastic basketball.

Jerry Kobasa, former Sussex Tech head coach and now athletic director and head men’s basketball coach at Wesley University, was at the Ursuline game and at the fieldhouse for the boys quarterfinal games. Jerry is also a member of the DIAA boys basketball committee and I may as well throw in he used to own the Sail Loft in Milford while I’m trying to get clear of his biography and get on with my story.

“I saw the way the Cape girls clapped for Delle Donne when she left the game,” Jerry told me before the boys games last Sunday. “That was the classiest thing I’ve seen all year. That is what sportsmanship is all about.”

“Right,” I said, “especially when you’re losing by 50 at the time. When you’re that far behind even your uniforms start looking dumb.”

Cape’s Meg Bartley is a fan of Delle Donne’s since middle school, so after the game photographer Dan Cook put together a photo of Meg and Elena, which is sports the way it should be.

DREW AND THE DOCTOR - I’ll bet you it was 23 years ago that I took my twin sons to a Sixers game on their eighth birthday. And I brought along Drew Ostroski who was my student at Cape. Drew brought his prized Doctor J ABA high-flying Afro photo tripping hard thinking Julius was going to cruise the cheap seats signing autographs.

We got into the Spectrum and suddenly every gray-blazered Afro-American usher had been coached by me a dozen years earlier when I was “Philly guy.” Our seats were changed and Rick, who was a 6-foot-8 high jumper and 48-second quarter miler in high school, took Drew’s picture into the locker room and had Julius sign it along with a personal message about keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground - or something like that.

RODNEY AND THE DOCTOR - The next year I was back in the Spectrum parking lot on a Friday afternoon with seven-foot high jumper Rodney Smith. We had just come across town from St. Joseph’s College where Rodney had talked his way past an admissions interview securing a four-year track scholarship. The admissions director had given Rodney two tickets significantly prolonging my long day.

We sat in a parking lot at 5:30 p.m. waiting for the Sixers to arrive for work so Rodney could talk to Julius. Moses Malone arrived in a blue Cadillac with pop-up lights, Clem Johnson drove a blazer and Maurice Cheeks had something fast. Finally Julius arrived in a crimson Mercedes and Rodney was off suggesting I stay behind. Hook
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Julius and Rodney stayed on the hood of his car and talked like old friends for 10 minutes. Afterward Rodney said, “We are supposed to turn in these lame tickets for ones behind the bench.”

The Sixers came out early to warm up and Julius Erving, the biggest name in the sport at that time, said, “Hi, Rodney, glad to see you got your seats changed.”

NAME DROPPING - Drop a name during a causal sports conversation. “Sure, I know Steve McNair - we had coffee together the morning of the 1999 Super Bowl.”

Just make sure the drop seems causal and don’t belabor the causal contact with celebrity and be ready for your opponent’s trump card. The actual best of all-time name drops was when Buck Thompson once said to me, “I was watching a game at the Naval Academy last Saturday with my friend Buddy Ebsen. He used to be quite a dancer, you know.”

Now I’m a tough audience in a name drop contest - not being impressed by much - but Buck stopped me cold on that one.

“You mean like Jed Clampett?” I asked. “Hold that card, Buck. Never play it early. It is always a closer!”

I told that story while emceeing the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame banquet and on cue had the Phillies organist launch into the theme from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” I could see Buck laughing at his table and I was laughing. The rest of the room was like, who are these guys?

SNIPPETS - The DFRC - Delaware Foundation Reaching Citizens with Cognitive Disbilities - is sponsoring a silent auction and wine tasting evening at Baywood Greens on March 29 that leads nicely into a June golf tournament and Blue-Gold 5K road race in Lewes. These are all preliminary to the Blue-Gold All-Star game in late June which features the hand-in-hand buddy program. Drinking wine and impulsive bidding seems like a dangerous combination, but I can only speak for my debit card self.

Could there really be clay pigeon carcasses scattered about Cape’s new turf field? How sophisticated is that planned irony, fake grass attracting fake birds? Have you watched those ESPN classic basketball games from the 1980s? Forget the short shorts. Do you see how skinny those players were?

You know a full generation later in 2008 we are all on steroids because evolution doesn’t work that fast and, in the case of some people, it doesn’t work at all. Stick that in your school choice curriculum.