PRESS ROW - I would never flash a homemade media pass and dislodge a nonworking media person from a scorer’s table. I just want a platform on which to write and hope to get a box score after the game. That way I have a clue about who people are, because unlike the other 98 percent of press row citizens at the Bay Ball Classic, I have to write a story that makes a modicum of sense.
The basketball at the Bay Ball Classic has been outstanding and there is one thing you learn from watching the best teams and that is they have tall people. But aside from that they also have discipline and patience and can play all four quarters without blinking, and they don’t let crowd comments get them off their game.
HEAD FAKE - There are two magic moments on the basketball court and, besides the slam in traffic, the other is the swat and rejection of a shot as in don’t bring that weak junk in here no more.
And that goes back 50 years which is why crafty players hardly ever get their junk packed. Just throw a head fake on a shot blocker and you can eat a sandwich waiting for him to come back down.
The crossover dribble is also held in high regard, but it’s a dangerous move to cross over in someone’s face and most players end up turning the ball over.
TALENT PASSED DOWN - There are lots of stories on every team at the Bay Ball Classic centering around young men who had fathers who were great players. The question is nature versus nurture and is it possible to inherit “game” if daddy never showed you how?
I am saying absolutely yes - that athletic talent runs in families and I’ve even seen father and son combinations with the same style and hand placement on a jump shot.
Tracy Jones on this year’s Cape team is a throwback scorer with quick hands and reflexes who just knows where to be. He can feel the game and doesn’t force it to be about him - he just takes advantage of opportunities offered. Tracy’s dad, Tracy, also known by close friends as Chucky, was a tremendous player for Cape in the early 80s. He was built like a tight end and was so smart in the open court - like a Magic Johnson - always finding the open person. I can see the same game in father and son and I believe a great deal of the manifested talent is inherited.
And, of course, there’s the mom and, trust me, if you follow an NFL offensive lineman to a family reunion just look for big broad shouldered momma flipping burgers and catching them behind her back. But seriously, athletic women are the unsung heroes of athletic children often allowing “cut from the JV team” daddy to think the quickness he never possessed was passed down to his triple sports, all-state daughter.
BIG MIDGET - Justine Tuck, defensive end for the New York Giants, was a roving correspondent on the Jim Rome program. Tuck was in the lockerroom making fun of the receding hairline of Amani Toomer when Toomer looked into the camera and said, ”Tell them about your nickname, Big Midget. Don’t he look like a Big Midget?”
That is real guys in sports lockerrooms just steadily busting on each other and coming up with nicknames like ‘Big Midget,” which the announcers will never touch because John Madden doesn’t want an actual activist group of regular midgets coming after him for being insensitive.
RESOLUTIONS AND REGRETS - If I get to recycle my life in a white trash sort of way, I wouldn’t spend all my time playing, coaching and writing about sports. I would simply lift weights, run, play the piano and take apart car engines and put them back together again.
My 9-year-old grand daughter Lizzie was playing a keyboard at Christmas and I told her that her great grandmother was a piano player, which is just like being a writer except the keyboard makes sounds. I could have delivered columns as songs, but now I’m stuck inside a culture that is more rhythmic than reflective.
And, believe it or not, I used to drive a quarter midget Indy race car for Scrappy’s Speed Shop a mile from the Langhorne Speedway and Scrappy wanted to teach me mechanics but I resisted not aspiring to be a Grease Monkey. Now I know that was at least a quarter midget mistake in my life.
SNIPPETS - Lewes Polar Bear New Year’s Day dip is at 1 p.m. at Cape Henlopen State Park. If you made a resolution not to drink then don’t take a swig from any bottle labeled bear juice. I have a friend who thinks it’s uproariously funny to spike soft drinks with rum as the clean and sober crowd gets on his nerves.
Speaking of teachers being overworked. They are, of course, not overworked and most of them know it and would never complain to the media about it. When I was given meaningless mandatory paperwork to fill out to feed the bureaucratic machine, I just went stupid claiming I flunked homeroom in college.
Dennis Forney, my immediate supervisor in the newspaper business the last 25 years, likes to joke, “I’m not calling any mandatory meetings because I know you won’t come. But we’re having a meeting and your input is important, so if you want to attend that would be great.” Now that’s professional!
This is not mandatory, but if you want, “Go on now, git!”
