The art of being convivial and trivial not to mention brief
The art of introduction - Sure, I was wearing a Temple shirt along the press row for the opening day of the Slam Dunk tournament. And yes I noticed Temple head coach Fran Dunphy sitting along the wall with his assistant Aaron McKie. And so I went up at intermission to grab a photo and introduce myself with context clues in terms of where I fit with Temple and Philly basketball. You have like 20 seconds to do that otherwise it sounds like you’re unraveling a resume to guys who have a biography of more pages. Dunphy said, "Sure, Dave, how have you been?” I realized Gene Harris and Bob Cilento had already informed him I was a Temple guy from back in the day, and Fran told me he knew my granddaughter Anna was on the Owls lacrosse team. Dunphy has 500 Division I wins as a head coach at Penn for 17 years and Temple for 10. I remember him as a Philly-style point guard at LaSalle. Aaron McKie went to Simon Gratz then the 6-foot-5 swingman played for Temple where he started all 92 games of his career, scoring 1,650 points, and played with Eddie Jones and Mark Macon. At one point that team, 1987-91, was No. 1 in the country, causing a spike in Temple admission applications. Marc Macon was drafted by the Denver Nuggets and had a six-year NBA career.
Cape connections - So somewhere in the early 2000s I bring Cape’s Mad Stork Tommy Sheehan to Temple as a possible non-recruited walk-on player as a tight end. It helped that Temple recruiter Spencer Prescott was a former athlete of mine, a tailback when I was head football coach at the Mitchell School in Haverford. While there, I hooked up an internship for my son Jack with the director of football operations. Tommy, Tim Widdoes and I toured the weight room and Tommy noticed that Mark Macon was in there working out. Tommy asked our tour guide, a student trainer, “what’s Mark Macon doing here?” The kid didn’t hesitate to answer, “Can’t hit the open 15-footer.” That was quintessential succinct Philadelphia sports talk.
Laser light show - I was at Lincoln Financial Field for opening Monday night game Sept. 8, 2003, versus Tampa Bay. I was fat cat press box guy. The most incredible laser light show it was, like being in a Star Wars movie, but after 10 minutes I became less impressed. At least until the lights came up and the Rocky theme played and Sylvester Stallone appeared in the upper deck wearing a Duce Staley shirt and shadow boxing. Now that was cool. Watching Slam Dunk basketball, I find myself getting laser light show spoiled, the players are so astronomically out of this world that I start to get used to it, almost expecting dunks raining down from the rafters.
From my inbox - "There is an error in the story and the picture caption on the Beacon wrestling report, page 81, second pic, right column. It is Kenny Shade-Rania, not D. Grabowski in the photo. Also, Kenny wrestled D. Weyant, not Grabowski." Grabowski never wrestled in this match. Mariner forfeited the last match, which Grabowski would have wrestled in. Neither Beacon nor Mariner published any results from this match. If not for student manager middle school girls at the table, I would have gotten everything wrong. I want to host my own sportswriter retirement banquet and offer free admission to all who can produce copy of where I "messed up" over a 33-year career. There are some classics, from the 27-year-old who stole home in a high school game (it was his younger brother) to having a mom, Lori Voss, make seven saves in a lacrosse game, not to mention listing a live person on a passed-away list.
Snippets - Great thing about having Showtime in your house is all the people you see from the statewide sports scene. I often say, “I’m the sports guy in Delaware who knows the most people who don’t know him back,” but sometimes it’s like being recognized at your own family reunion. I was in a Wawa in New Castle on Saturday and a contemporary gentleman said to me “Fredman, what are you doing up here? Are you heading north or heading south?" I said, “South” followed by "Who are you?” He said, “Coach Bill Geppert’s dad or Will Geppert's granddad." We shared stories for five minutes, talking swim team stuff and then I left. All life legends end up in a Wawa hoping to be recognized. Go on now, git!
