Chris Short Field upgraded with style over spring break
Chris Short Memorial Field - John Glenn of Hardscapes is a close friend of baseball coach Ben Evick and son of George Glenn, former Cape football coach, and while the team was in Hawaii playing baseball and jumping off cliffs into the ocean, John and his crew were revitalizing the Cape field with a stone backstop/backdrop and moving the Chris Short plaque on a pedestal to where it can be actually seen, read and appreciated. Short was a Lewes High School hurler who went on to pitch for the Phillies and once struck out 18 New York Mets in 15 innings. The 6-foot-4-inch crew cut lefty died in 1991, three years after suffering a brain aneurysm that left him in a coma. He won 135 games in a 15-year career. Short's teammates sometimes called him Styles because of what they considered his weird dressing habits (they had never been to Sussex County). Chris Short was born in Milford, the son of Judge Isaac Short II. Chris and his wife Pat had three sons: Rhawn, Nickey and Eric. Guys who played with Chris at Lewes are still walking around, are all over 70, including his catcher Bill Lofland, who will tell you what it was like to catch for a guy who could throw 90-plus into a mitt purchased at Pep Boys.
Rotation resumes - The spring break for sports is over as students return to class for the last lap sprint to the summer, and right on schedule three days of cold, rainy weather is predicted. Multiple-sport athletes with siblings who also play on teams down through middle school have to “pick their spots” and allegiances, not to mention line up transportation to and from school and games. It becomes a full-time operation, and if you throw in Odyssey of the Mind or math team, it may be better to just play Angry Birds on your smartphone.
Relatives of the week - Last week I was watching the Nationals on television battle and lose to the San Diego Padres as Richmond righty Tim Stauffer shut down the Nats over two late innings. Tim is the nephew of lawyer Bill Schab of Lewes, so I rocked Facebook: ”Madison Avenue Lewes on the mound in Washington." Tim was the fourth pick in the first round of the 2003 baseball draft. Tim’s agent was Ron Shapiro, also Cal Ripkin’s agent, also a friend of mine. Last Sunday Mark D’Ambrogi and Dave Frederick and their sons Hank and Mikey sat in the Notre Dame box at PPL Park in Chester, Pa., watching the Irish beat Syracuse 15-14 for the ACC lacrosse championship. Both the Orange and the Irish are first-year members in the toughest lacrosse conference in the country and you know North Carolina, Duke, Virginia and Maryland were stunned that none of them were in the championship game. Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan is Mark D'Ambrogi’s first cousin. Gene Corrigan is former Notre Dame athletic director and ACC commissioner. Mary Corrigan, Mark’s mother, is in Baltimore Lacrosse Hall of Fame and grew up good friends with Barbara Dougherty of Dewey Beach; in other words, we locals were all over that game. Several players in NBA playoffs played in Cape’s Little Big House, including stars LeBron James, Dwight Howard and Blake Griffin - bunches of locals claiming to be cousins but I need to verify that.
Snippets - Clippers owner Donald Sterling, 80 years old, is under fire - he looks it - for a scratchy audio tape telling his blended girlfriend of color - yes, the dude is married - not to bring her black boyfriends to Clippers games. Sterling has been hiding in plain sight his entire life, sometimes seen as a humanitarian while others know him as a first-class elitist jerk. Ironically, Sterling is now Wonder Bread in the toaster, but outrageous millionaires don't really get my attention. The old guy is a two-faced poser who owns a sports franchise; there is a constitutional right to hold offensive opinions while not being secretly audiotaped, which is an invasion of privacy. I don’t even like talking about this stuff. Reporters even asked the Rev. Jesse Jackson about it, the guy who, back in 1984 in a Washington Post interview with a black reporter, called New York City “Hymietown,” a racial slur toward Jews. Jackson also has a 15-year-old daughter by a 1998 girlfriend, so why go to him to pass judgment on the Clippers' owner? I hear stupid stuff every day, not the least of which is “Go on now, git!"
