Pay-to-play sports - There was a cartoon in the New Yorker 25 years ago of a guy jogging. He was wearing tattered and torn, old, gray sweats. Two primped up women wearing headbands stood on the corner wearing track suits. One said to the other, "People who can’t afford to jog should just stay home.” A Sunday morning at DE Turf watching my granddaughter Meredith play for the 2028 Eastern Shore Lacrosse Club team on her 14th birthday drove home to me that all sports feed into the system of pay to play that is the economic engine; if people didn’t want it, then it wouldn't be happening. The entry fee for last weekend's Live-Love-Lax tournament was $1,800 per team. The entry fee to run a major marathon is easily $100. It’s a pay-to-play sports culture for most athletes who are all about it.

Foul pole - If you’re a baseball fan, you know that the entire foul pole down both baselines is in fair territory. You also know that baseball leads all sports in instantaneous statistics, available from the obscure to the mildly interesting. Ask the computer a question and it will spit back the answer – it’s just the way it is programmed. The political world has generated talks of deportations that always center on securing the southern border. I researched in 30 seconds that 30% of Major League Baseball players are Hispanic, which may be close to 300 out of 945 players overall. But when pitching the question, “How many of these players are U.S. citizens,” the answer comes back, “No real accurate stats are kept on this question.” I then went to ice hockey – a full-tilt, full-body, cheap-shotting sport where if you flip the puck over the protective glass you are going to the penalty box because, as Americanized Russian players say, “You can’t be doing that.” There are 57 active Russian players in the NHL. Ask the NHL database how many Russian players are U.S. citizens, and the answer comes back “not much information.” The Great 8, Alex Ovechkin, is a Russian citizen, not a dual citizen. Is there any chance of Alex being deported before he chases down the Great One’s career goal record of 894 goals? Alex needs 27 to set a new record, unless he’s deported first. Wayne Gretzky, a Canadian, became a U.S. citizen in 1988. Mixing sports with politics and privilege, and pitching awkward questions to a soulless AI computer often returns the answer, “Beats the bejesus out of me.”   

Transphobic - I have no fear of a transgender sprinter winning the Delaware state championship in the 100-meter dash or setting a state record throwing the 4-kilogram shot put. But transoceanic and transcontinental athletes coming to America and grabbing up the limited number of scholarships that the travel culture seems to be chasing since second grade is a different reality, and not being xenophobic, I have no fear of that either, but it's real and widespread, and I don’t know why. St. Joe’s women’s field hockey has 10 foreign players on the roster, while Northwestern has six. The University of Alabama had the individual champion at the NCAA national meet. Doris Lengole, a sophomore from Kenya, ran 19:21 for 6K. She owns a personal best 15:04 5K, which was run indoors. Kenyans speak English, but it's hard to understand the dialect. Alabamans speak English too, but if my Philly self stops at a Piggly Wiggly, I’m using a vending machine and skipping the dance.  

You’re upset - Last Saturday I watched all or part of five upsets in college football. Alabama lost to Oklahoma 24-3, Ole Miss was chomped by Florida 24-17, Texas A&M lost to Auburn 43-41 in four overtimes, Colorado got jaywalked by the Kansas Jayhawks 37-21 and Arizona State beat BYU 28-23. But BYU did win both the men’s and women’s NCAA national cross country championships, so there is that. The MIT women won the Division III NCAA cross country title. Two of the women are majoring in artificial intelligence and decision making. Learn how to do a crossword puzzle using Siri. That's how the smart people do it. 

Snippets - Mixed messages are like mixed drinks, blended together, both resulting in headaches. The third annual Rehoboth Beach Santa Bar Crawl set for Saturday, Dec. 7, is the same day as the Rehoboth Marathon. The bar crawl centers around drinking, what the marathoners call hydration. I'm looking for roster reveals from middle school up through high schools and hoping coaches realize a roster without numbers is nothing but a homeroom list without a facial recognition program. The Rylie’s Smile Turkey Escape 5K is set for 9 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 28, at American Legion Post 17. A kiddie K will race at 8:45. Go on now, git!