Cape is a community of athletes and artists

Artistry and athletics - Remember the dreaded game of Pictionary? It’s weird, I have a type of photographic memory except I can’t draw. But I can see things, and I’m able to put myself back in the place where they happened. I see details and hear voices, but I can’t draw. I am an athlete with no artistic talent, but I love art and the artist behind the creativity. I collect original sports art by student artists who are not destined to become famous. Hockey player and artist Jan Morris did several things for me on commission; you know, “Can you paint this and I’ll pay you whatever you think it is worth.” I love this painting of a runner being tagged out at second base. The stop-action, high-definition digital depiction of sports on television is almost unfair, but that artistry is not only part of the game; for many, it’s why they watch the game.  

Otis and Beau - A precious photo of my buddies Otis Blackburn and Beau Gooch sitting in the green Gator at a Cape sporting event. The photo shows the art of friendship. One of my favorite lines is, “You can judge the character of a person by the company they keep.” Otis and Beau always elevated my game. Otis works at Cape in the discipline office, while Beau continues to progress from spinal surgery at Magee Rehabilitation in Philadelphia.  

Black Girls Run - I arranged this running group photo in Dewey before a 5K a few years ago, and I had jokes, which is why the girls were smiling and many were laughing. The running scene is just the best for bringing athletes together who don’t regularly hang out but are just jazzed to meet and greet new people. 

Sports after shutdown - “Love After Lockdown” may be the ugliest show on television that I’ve never watched except for clips while waiting for a sporting event to break out. I just know it’s low-down entertainment from the human side of the Wild Kingdom. I am the sports photojournalist coming off seven months of not much happening who has never missed a deadline. Twice a week, the Cape Gazette has filled a sports section including an uninterrupted four Athletes of the Week along with our columnists and some Friday flashback stuff. I just know we have creatively survived, and now we are ready for some real-time, in-person action to resume. The corona factor is still in play in a pandemic way, meaning worldwide impact, not just in Delaware. And that is commingling in a co-morbid way with everyday sports participation with everyone weighing in like exit day at the Jenny Craig Clinic. Good luck to the coaches and kids who work hard behind the masks to play this out while none of us is sure where any of it is going. 

Websites4Sports.com - If you check the website of your favorite school and the rosters are still empty, you should email the athletic director and ask in a respectful way, “Just how busy are you?” After all, teams have been practicing for three weeks. And once the laborious task of getting names onto rosters is done, then comes the listing of numbers, which for some schools takes another month. And finally it is the responsibility of the host school to publish results along with stats once the game is over. I know during the sports shutdown it’s been cool to bust on DIAA, but please hold your own school districts to the minimum recording and reporting standards. Sports management is now a popular major on college campuses; perhaps all this necessary work should be turned over to the student managers just the way the schools themselves are run by the secretaries  ...  say it ain’t so, yo, but you would be wrong. 

Lulled to awake - I’m a pretty woke dude, I’m told, so much so that I can stay awake through a nine-inning playoff baseball game after one team scores 11 runs in the first inning. Baseball as a spectator sport has always had a tranquilizer effect on the viewer and radio listener, taking the edge off harsher realities like televised political rallies, Senate hearings or endless shows showcasing pundits of sports and politics, all of whom are millionaires and make money off of conflict. Whatever happened to the feature picture inside a picture? I’d like to watch baseball and football simultaneously on the same screen. Maybe it went the way of the Panasonic Plasma or the Motorola Ayatollah. 

Snippets - Chris Flood who works at the Cape Gazette said jokingly, “If there’s a local running race and Fredman doesn’t show up, does it actually happen?” During the pay-to-play phase we’ve just come through, there have been lots of games and tournaments played, and I had no clue what was going down, but I’m pretty sure they happened anyway. Go on now, git!