Mercy rules for mismatches and rules unwritten

Mercy, mercy me - Mismatches in youth sports are kept somewhat under control by mercy rules, sometimes known as slaughter rules, which have gone the way of sudden death, which is now sudden victory. But across all the sports from high school on down, it’s the unwritten rules that govern the tactics of the dominant team against a can’t-hang opponent. We remember when Del State football lost at Portland State 105-0. I remember in Cape football’s down years where the other team took a knee before halftime not wanting take a 50-0 lead into the halftime locker room. Many times when you see a dominant score, also known as a crooked number, it’s only half of what it could have been. Spontaneous sports discussions on this issue sprung up in my world after it was reported that the Milton Major League 11-12 All Stars beat Woodbridge 41-0. I wrote on my Facebook page that I would be hot if I had a son on the downside of that score. And that is all I said without any elaboration. But a thread started because in sports “we talk the talk,” it’s what we do. But it turned nasty so I took it down because it turned personal, ultimately coming back at me for “writing garbage” my entire career. Sunday following the Thursday game I talked to runner Breck Vanderwende from Bridgeville about the 41-0 loss to Milton because Breck was the official scorer for Woodbridge and had a son on the team. “There was nothing Milton could do, we were just that bad, and the umpire didn’t help with a tight strike zone the entire four innings. We were all at the mercy of the moment. I just don’t know what you do in that situation,” Breck said. 

A walk off - A young woman and mother and wife of the winner of the Seashore Striders 5-Miler from Virginia spoke to me before Sunday’s race telling me she overheard some of us talking about runaway scores and how to handle the situation. She relayed a story about her 9-year-old daughter playing select soccer and traveling three hours for a game that found her team down 7-0 in the first five minutes. “Our coach spoke to their coach about maybe backing it down and passing the ball around so the realization of the humiliation didn’t get any worse, except he wouldn’t, and they scored three more times in the next two minutes. And so our coach took his team off the field and to lunch, refusing to subject his girls to a friendly that had turned patently unfriendly.” And then her husband, 39-year-old David Angell, holder of five ODAC running titles when he ran for Roanoke College, blazed to a 25:53 to destroy the field, showing no mercy.

Victory formation suckers - Twice in my writing career I saw a football coach, his team lined up in the victory formation, fake the kneel down and hit the home run pass, the Flip Wilson side of Hail Mary, a “Devil Made Me Do It” moment. You know, a sports mirrors life moment, in case you temporarily forget some people are all the way crazy, so play the game until the clock runs out.  

Payback - A good coach never dials in revenge or payback when facing a foe that had worn them out over a decade. Remember in the movie Tombstone when Doc Holliday says of gunfighter Johnny Ringo, “Make no mistake, it’s not revenge he’s looking for, it’s a reckoning.” It means, “Let’s settle the account today and put one in the win column for us.” You can’t erase a loss; you own it and move on. 

Pounded from the pulpit - A Sunday morning in 1960, a crowded 10 o’clock mass at Our Lady of Grace in Penndel, Pa., the visiting priest adorned in screaming green vestments stepped to the pulpit. He went right after the eighth-grade basketball team, 31-0, who had lost the day before to Saint Stanislaw, the Polish parish from Lansdale, Pa. “All I’m hearing is how old the Polish players looked, that they all needed a shave, that the dads were wearing bowling shirts in the stands. OLG couldn’t take them down on the court and couldn’t accept defeat without resorting to ridicule, derision and jokes.” There was one altar boy on the stage and it was me, a star on the team. The moment was powerfully weird, and I admired the priest for being relevant and teaching a lesson I would always remember. The Polish moms organized a spontaneous pierogi party in the Penndel parking lot after they beat us. Yep, I was a good player, and I had jokes. 

Snippets - I met St. George’s Tech football coach J.D. Maull July 17 at the Legends Stadium field house. We talked all things football; it was great catching up with coach, and I learned a lot because he knows more about the scholastic statewide scene than I. And he gave me a St. George’s helmet for my collection and that was cool. Go on now, git!