Share: 

Dave Truitt of Lewes honored with his own Blue Rocks game jersey

August 17, 2018

Quiet and classy - A round corner table at the Rehoboth Beach Country Club, the Rehoboth Bay as a backdrop, and a view all the way to the Indian River Inlet bridge served as the setting for an afternoon lunch. Joe McDonald, executive director of the Delaware Stadium Corporation (Frawley Stadium-Blue Rocks), presented an official Blue Rocks uniform shirt with No. 25 commemorating Dave Truitt’s 25 years on the board and never missing a meeting. The name Truitt is written on the back. Then there were photos taken followed by baseball stories, yarns from back yonder. Dave, 87, is longevity guy, from an Eagles season ticket holder since 1960 to his love of the Phillies to his tenure on the Cape Henlopen school board. A left-handed pitcher of some renown in his day, Dave was offered a contract by the Philadelphia Athletics at age 17, but his mother wouldn’t let him sign it because the A’s played on Sundays. Dave also talked about his days at Catawba College (Coaches Hanley and Georgianna came from there). Dave is in a phase of life where retrieving an inside card from his deep past can leave him stumped. His wife Helen filled in some blank spaces. and his lifelong friends Dickie BrittinghamDickie Buckaloo and Don Burton were there with him on every story. Granddaughter Olivia Wilson just beamed, taking it all in. I offered a quip: “Only in Sussex County can you have four lifelong friends at a table, all first names beginning with letter D, and two are Dickie.”

Stop-and-go traffic - I am a head-on-a-swivel searcher of stories and photos. The opportunities are all around us, but you have to see them. Walking from Legends to Champions Stadium Aug. 15, I see the woman in a neon vest (they are everywhere) holding the reversible red stop and green go signs. I ask her to hold up one of each and Carol Hargreaves jovially obliges. It was her idea to turn around backward. I wrote on Facebook: “it’s what happens when a retired third-base coach becomes a school crossing guard.” I have seen more indecisive third-base coaches than anyone – “Go! Go! Stop!” “You’re out!” “Roscoe, I told you to stop!” “Don’t even start with me, coach. No one go, goes and stops at the same time.”   

Gold Award for Girl Scouts - The scoring table at Champions Stadium received a major upgrade this summer thanks to Darby Klopp’s Girl Scout project, the Gold Award for Girl Scouts. Arena Signs (Ed Martin, my daughter-in-law Suzannah Martin Frederick’s brother) put the Cape championship signs up Tuesday morning. All first class, and the campus looks sharp. Visitors to Champions Stadium will be greeted by a total of 18 state championship signs on the way into the stadium, all from field hockey and girls’ lacrosse. The Gold Award will be presented to Darby Sept. 11, when Cape hosts Dover. Last year, the Senators upset Cape in the first game of the season and went on to reach the semifinals of the state tournament.

Periscope depth - I’m running silent and deep always looking for sports stories that include names I recognize and athletes I know, even if they don’t know me. The 2017 field hockey Delaware State Player of the Year Peyton Kemp is a freshman on the roster at Syracuse University. Kemp scored 110 goals in four years at Delmar, which is just incomprehensibly whack. The 2015 Delaware Field Hockey Player of the Year from Mount Pleasant High School Kate Walker is a junior playing at Michigan. Ryan Langford is an assistant coach at Michigan and married to Maren Ford Langford of Lewes, a former Cape and Princeton player and member of the U.S. Indoor National Team. Sydney Ostroski returns for her junior season of field hockey at West Chester University. Logan Shuttleworth is a freshman at West Chester University and listed as a setter on the Golden Rams’ volleyball roster. 

Band Camp - Ask Chris Burkhart and Barry Eli if Fredman loves the Cape band. I always thought the University of Delaware, Temple, Delaware State, West Chester and UMass bands were tremendous. A slight problem is I don’t understand any of it, but it jazzes any and all football games, which are just too long. There are some great bands on Cape’s schedule including Dover, CR and Sussex Tech, to mention some of my favorites. I often kick myself, not because I didn’t play in the NFL, but because I can’t play the piano. Time to wade in the water like Ramsey Lewis. Go on now, git!

Subscribe to the CapeGazette.com Daily Newsletter