EVERYWHERE IN THIS FAVORED LAND the sun is shining bright, everywhere bands are playing and every heart is light. Everywhere men are laughing and everywhere children shout. There is even joy in Mudville because not one Phillie has yet struck out.

We should know better, you and I, than to get pumped up on opening day of the baseball season. But after a century and a quarter of opening days, Phillies fans have acquired the instincts of lemmings hurling themselves off a cliff into a raging sea of 162 games where all Phillies teams have drowned except one in 125 years.

I've just finished a sobering new book called "The Rise and Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team's Collapse Sank a City's Spirit" by Mitchell Nathanson, a lifelong Phillies fan and an associate professor at Villanova Law School. It should be required reading for every fan who forgets the Phillies past and is doomed to repeat the heartbreak of every Phillies season except its single championship in 1980.

The book chronicles the history of Philadelphia and professional baseball through the prism of a nine ninning game played in October 1977, Game Three of the National League playoffs in what would be instantly enwreathed in the hearts of Phillies fans as Black Friday.

It was a "you had to be there" day at Veterans Stadium that never shook with the lung power of fans like it did in the bottom of the second inning when Phillies fans literally hooted Dodgers pitcher Burt Hooton into walking in three bases-loaded runs. A stadium that was never so silent as the bottom of the ninth after the inexplicable disaster that unfolded in the top of the inning.

It was like watching the two-week collapse of the 1964 Phillies take place in a matter of 20 minutes. You who are too young to remember are born with this dreadful losing Phillies DNA in your baseball fan genetic makeup, like a renegade gene to some fatal disease where the odds are 125-to-one against.

The books's unlikely thesis is that "the city of Philadelphia is a baseball town that passionately hates its baseball team." That may sound strange in the era of the feel-good young Phillies coming off a division-winning season.But we're talking about a franchise that made headlines in 1923 for arresting an 11-year-old boy who refused to return a foul ball. The kid spent the night in jail and was charged with larceny, until a judge released him with a stern lecture to the Phillies management. The Phillies made baseball history by establishing the right of a fan to keep a foul ball.

And our Fightin's made history of a sort today when tied 6-6 in the ninth inning our closer Tom Gordon gave up four of the five runs our bullpen would allow in an 11-6 loss that would be the first of 2008. God, I love being a Phillies fan. It hurts so good.

Continue reading "No one ever said it was easy to be a phillies fan" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I GET SO MUCH CRAP over the internet from well-meaning friends or angry cranks who want to share the latest patriotic Hallmark moment or anti-immigration screed attributed to someone who never said such things. What really bugs me is that the people who send me such things seem to have no interest in whether or not what they sent me was true. They're almost offended that I would doubt them, and even more offended when my doubts prove to be true. It's like I'm not going along with the program, a harmless exchange of ideas. Who cares who said it or why or even if it was ever said at all..

The most recent example is the message I received from a friend from Philadelphia now living in South Carolina. The remarks are attributed to another Philadelphian, Bill Cosby:

Way to go, Bill
,
'They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...

And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.

And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.
People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.

The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.
$500 sneakers for what ? ?

And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

Where were you when he was 2 ? ?

Where were you when he was 12 ? ?

Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol ? ?

And where is the father ? ? Or who is his father ?

People putting their clothes on backward:
Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?

People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something ?

Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up ?

Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from??

We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa ..

With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back.

People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now.

We have millionaire football players who cannot read.

We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs We, as black fol ks, have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

We cannot blame the white people any longer.'
Dr. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.

*************************************************************************************************************

The person who sent this to me, of course, was white. And I figured this particular angry missive was attached to Bill Cosby's name because of the contraversial remarks he made at the NAACP gathering ia few years back on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education which ended the legalized segregation in public schools exisiting under the Seperate But Equal ruling by the Supreme Court decades earlier. I knew Cosby's remarks were critical but could they have possibly have been as harsh as those depicted above?

See for yourself. Below is a transcript of Cosby's closing speech to the NAACP celebration on May 14, 2004, at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

*************************************************************************************************************
Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing."

Ladies and gentlemen, these people set -- they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have 50% drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?

The church is only open on Sunday. And you can’t keep asking Jesus to ask doing things for you. You can’t keep asking that God will find a way. God is tired of you . God was there when they won all those cases. 50 in a row. That’s where God was because these people were doing something. And God said, “I’m going to find a way.” I wasn’t there when God said it -- I’m making this up. But it sounds like what God would do.

We cannot blame white people. White people -- white people don’t live over there. They close up the shop early. The Korean ones still don’t know us as well -- they stay open 24 hours.

I’m looking and I see a man named Kenneth Clark, he and his wife Mamie. Kenneth’s still alive. I have to apologize to him for these people because Kenneth said it straight. He said you have to strengthen yourselves, and we’ve got to have that black doll. And everybody said it. Julian Bond said it. Dick Gregory said it. All these lawyers said it. And you wouldn’t know that anybody had done a damned thing.

50 percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse? I want somebody to love me. And as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child, and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents. And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid -- $500 sneakers -- for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.

Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York -- just looking ahead. Thank God he doesn’t know what’s going on. Thank God. But these people -- the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother." Not, "You’re going to get your butt kicked." No. "You’re going to embarrass your mother." "You’re going to embarrass your family." If you knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family. In the old days, a girl getting pregnant had to go down South, and then her mother would go down to get her. But the mother had the baby. I said the mother had the baby. The girl didn’t have a baby. The mother had the baby in two weeks. We are not parenting.

Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people. They are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards. Isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? Are you not paying attention? People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack -- and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. (When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What’s the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up).

Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra.” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with, “Why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not; they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house.

They sit there and the cousin says, “What are you doing here?”

“I just killed somebody, man.”

“What?”

“I just killed somebody; I’ve got to stay here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well, give me some money, I’ll go….”

“Where are you going?”

“North Carolina.”

Everybody wanted to go to North Carolina. But the police know where you’re going because your cousin has a record.

Five or six different children -- same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t who this is. It might be your grandmother. I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns thirteen and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother. By the time you’re twelve, you could have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.

I’m saying Brown versus the Board of Education. We’ve got to hit the streets, ladies and gentlemen. I’m winding up, now -- no more applause. I’m saying, look at the Black Muslims. There are Black Muslims standing on the street corners and they say so forth and so on, and we’re laughing at them because they have bean pies and all that, but you don’t read, “Black Muslim gunned down while chastising drug dealer.” You don’t read that. They don’t shoot down Black Muslims. You understand me. Muslims tell you to get out of the neighborhood. When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, bean pies and all. And your neighborhood is then clear. The police can’t do it.

I’m telling you Christians, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you hit the streets? Why can’t you clean it out yourselves? It’s our time now, ladies and gentlemen. It is our time. And I’ve got good news for you. It’s not about money. It’s about you doing something ordinarily that we do -- get in somebody else’s business. It’s time for you to not accept the language that these people are speaking, which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it?

What is it with young girls getting after some girl who wants to still remain a virgin. Who are these sick black people and where did they come from and why haven’t they been parented to shut up? To go up to girls and try to get a club where “you are nobody....” This is a sickness, ladies and gentlemen, and we are not paying attention to these children. These are children. They don’t know anything. They don’t have anything. They’re homeless people. All they know how to do is beg. And you give it to them, trying to win their friendship. And what are they good for? And then they stand there in an orange suit and you drop to your knees: “He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything.” Yes, he did do it. And you need to have an orange suit on, too.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the award -- and giving me an opportunity to speak because, I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done -- they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown V. Board of Education -- these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English. I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry that you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that‘s not my brother. And that’s not my sister. They’re faking and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city, and all these people have to pick up the tab on them because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.

We have to begin to build in the neighborhood, have restaurants, have cleaners, have pharmacies, have real estate, have medical buildings instead of trying to rob them all. And so, ladies and gentlemen, please, Dorothy Height, where ever she’s sitting, she didn’t do all that stuff so that she could hear somebody say “I can’t stand algebra, I can’t stand…" and “what you is.” It’s horrible.

Basketball players -- multimillionaires can’t write a paragraph. Football players, multimillionaires, can’t read. Yes. Multimillionaires. Well, Brown v. Board of Education, where are we today? It’s there. They paved the way. What did we do with it? The White Man, he’s laughing -- got to be laughing. 50 percent drop out -- rest of them in prison.

You got to tell me that if there was parenting -- help me -- if there was parenting, he wouldn’t have picked up the Coca Cola bottle and walked out with it to get shot in the back of the head. He wouldn’t have. Not if he loved his parents. And not if they were parenting! Not if the father would come home. Not if the boy hadn’t dropped the sperm cell inside of the girl and the girl had said, “No, you have to come back here and be the father of this child.” Not ..“I don’t have to.”

Therefore, you have the pile up of these sweet beautiful things born by nature -- raised by no one. Give them presents. You’re raising pimps. That’s what a pimp is. A pimp will act nasty to you so you have to go out and get them something. And then you bring it back and maybe he or she hugs you. And that’s why pimp is so famous. They’ve got a drink called the “Pimp-something.” You all wonder what that’s about, don’t you? Well, you’re probably going to let Jesus figure it out for you. Well, I’ve got something to tell you about Jesus. When you go to the church, look at the stained glass things of Jesus. Look at them. Is Jesus smiling? Not in one picture. So, tell your friends. Let’s try to do something. Let’s try to make Jesus smile. Let’s start parenting. Thank you, thank you.

SO WHY COULDN'T THE PERSON who sent this feel comfortable enough to send the speech in its entirty. It speaks for itself. Why edit it to aggravate rather than inform? Why remove the context? Why make it sound like just another racist rant on the internet rather than the upsetting and groundbreaking speech it was?

I know why. But please don't confuse me with one of them.

Continue reading "Say it ain't so, Cos, while you tell it like it is" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:13 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

OK, OK, I'M REACHING HERE, which is not unlike what this Chicago Lions leaper was doing in a lineout against the Philadelphia-Whitemarsh Rugby Club during a Rugby Super League match at South Jersey RFC's fine pitch on Evesham Road in Deptford, N.J. a couple of weeks ago. Chicago hammered the homeboys 40-5, which should be embarrassing, and which, quite frankly, is.

But because I AM THE MEDIA and I can spin a massacre into a Cinderella story. Chicago turned into frogs at midnight. Of course, Philly-Whitemarsh turned into Fijians.

Not that that's a bad thing.

Continue reading "What me worry? Where's the ball?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 07:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

WHEN I QUESTION MY FAITH which I do constantly, I find myself stumped over the basic questions. Simplest among them being, do I believe in Jesus? I say "simplest" because if you answer yes to Jesus then God is a snap. There is no Jesus without God. And I don't mean that in the father/son way. Could Jesus exist as a concept, let alone a belief, without a God? So the answer is yes to both, but now we get down to the Clintonian definitions: what you you mean by "believe?"

Do I believe in Jesus? Damn right I do. Do I believe Jesus is God, or the son of god, born flesh by Mary, herself born without original sin, a virgin mother who got schtupped by the Holy Ghost? That's not a religion that's a Jerry Springer show. And yet if I don't believe it, I know that that story informs my belief in . . . what? Jesus? Jesus Christ our lord? Jesus H. Christ? Christ almighty? The Christ of my parents or the Jesus the nuns would always bow to at the very sound of the name. Jesus.

Do I believe in Jesus. Hell yes.

But I have no words. You either get Jesus or you don't. At least my own personal Jesus, the one I talk to without opening my mouth. The answer quicker than the thought itself. What would Jesus do? Don't ask. He might do it. And if not Himself, a multitude of transparent lunatics and opportunists speaking for Him. I call him Him. I'm like Flo at the check-out counter in the Progressive car insurance commercial who answers a customer's wow with "Wow! I say it louder." He's a Him to me. So I guess that makes me a Christian.

And to think I was just getting over being Catholic.

Jesus, will you give a guy a break? Knock wood. Oh, sorry. That was inappropriate.

Continue reading "A Question For the Monday Morning After" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 04:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THERE'S A SCENE IN EPISODE TWO of HBO's miniseries John Adams where George Washington (David Morse) pays a visit to Abigail Adams (Laura Linney) and describes the annihilation awaiting New York City by the reinforced British army, now out for blood since their staggering losses at Lexington and Concord where one thousand redcoats were killed or wounded. Abigail Adams says to George Washington,"That such evil should befall to people. Could it be punishment for the sin of slavery?" Washington looks downward, emits a half laugh "Hmpff" in contemplation, and says finally and softly, "I cannot say."

A scene like that, so human, so dramatic, so intimate, is at the core of this wonderful series. Washington, the patrician slave owner from Virginia, commander in chief of the Continental Army, compelled to speechless acquiesence before conscience of a Massachusattes farmer's wife. And not two days after that episode aired for the first time last Sunday, Barack Obama would take the stage at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia where he would attempt to speak candidly about the issue of race, and the legacy of "America's original sin," the legal sanction of human bondage. As William Faulkner reminded us, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

One of the most effecting scenes in episode two is the arguement over a vote for independence during the Second Continental Congress between John Adams and John Dickinson, leader of the Pennsylvania delegation, who urged caution in the face of the military might of what was then the most powerful army in the world. The fact that Dickinson is played by a Yugoslavian immigrant named Zeljko Inavek and Adams is played by Paul Giamatti adds a certain bittersweet irony to the equally compelling arguements by both principled men.

In the end Independence won the day because Dickinson abstained from the vote, and yet when the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time from the steps of Independence Hall, Dickinson is shown listening astride a horse dressed as an officer in the Continental Army. The dove who lost the vote for peace still donned the military uniform of his country.

When I read David McCullough's biography of John Adams, a scene I remember is that of John Adams, then president of the United States, in his nightshirt manning a Philadelphia volunteer bucket brigade during a fire in the middle of the night. The burning building belonged to a print shop that published the harshly critical newspaper supported by Adams' political enemies.

Think of that image. . .the president of the United States in his pajamas passing buckets to save the property of a man who hates his guts. It's pretty powerful stuff. I believe we will see that moment in the miniseries because episode one foreshadows that event by showing Adams running to fill a bucket from a frozen water pump at the shout of "Fire!" which turned out to be a turning point in American history called the Boston Massacre.

Continue reading "They Were Magnificent and Flawed and Ours" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 12:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

SO THIS RACISTS IS SITTING on a barstool at a neighborhood tavern when in through the front door walks a priest, a minister and a rabbi. "What is this -- a joke?" says the racist. . Suddenly a blonde walks in the front door. The bartender tells her, "Three. You'll need three and at least one lighbulb for each."

As the blonde leaves by the front door, Elton John enters from the rear, followed seconds later by Michael Jackson who is holding a sturdy leather leash with what looks like an alligator on the other end. "Excuse me," calls Jackson to the bartender "Do you serve komodo dragons? " Meanwhile, in the corner sits a jazz drummer awaiting the punchline and the signal for a rimshot, "Drump-CHISH!"

But seriously, racists don't tell racist jokes because they hate. They tell racist jokes because they love. . . to laugh. Especially at racist jokes, which are as common as herpes and as easy as to spread. All you need is one forced -- or even consensual -- incident of unprotected humor to be infected by schadenschwartzfreude (the guilt-filled glee one takes in laughing at a racist joke).

For instance, "Why are there only 49 contestants in the Miss Black America Beauty Pageant?" "Because nobody wants to be Miss Idaho." Drump-CHISH. A good racist joke has to pass liberal muster by being so clever you can't imagine some hate-filled troglodyte would even get it, let alone have the unique wit to create it. Back in the 1980's Philadelphia's first black mayor, Wilson Goode, had a President Bush style "nuke-u-lar" speech impediment that manifested itself, seemingly, every fifth word. The racially uncomfortable joke back then was Goode's response to a question about the Middle East. "Mr. Mayor, what's your opinion of Beirut?" "I think he was the greatest white baseball player of all time."

Oh, sorry. . . Drump-CHISH! Since the November election there's been a joke going around some of the less circumspect watering holes frequented by paler Philadelphians. It's a joke that I believe ought to be on the public record because it's -- kes ca say? -- unique to our town. Unlike the way I heard it, I'll substitute the B word for the mayor. "First we elected a good brother. Then we elected a street brother. Now we got a nutter brother." If it weren't true, it would't be funny. And if someone accuses me of being a racist, I will respond by quoting the advice of my Colorado attorney, William Tecumseh Levy, who told me, "Not only deny the allegation, deny the alligator."

Continue reading "No, no, Mr. Mayor, I mean the other Beirut" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THIS PHOTO TELLS YOU EVERYTHING you need to know about the game of rugby as it is played these days. I am addressing this observation to a lot of you "back in the day" rugby players who haven't tied up the laces on your boots in earnest since a try was was worth four points. I'm also addressing you younger guys who are just breaking in to this exciting, enigmatic and yet elemental lifestyle called rugby.

To give you a sense of where I'm coming from, I'm the guy who years ago came up with an idea for a bumper sticker to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the tragic crash of an airliner into the Andes mountains. The charter flight of 45 passengers and crew members was filled with players and supporters of a Uruguyan rugby club on their way to play an away match in Chili. The plane crashed on Oct. 13, 1972. Seventy-five days later, long after the families and the world had given up hope of finding any survivors, two rugby players -- a 22-year-old second row and a 19-year-old winger -- walked out of the mountains after an heroic trek through snow and ice that saved the lives of 14 other survivors huddled miserably at the crash site. Soon the world discovered the answer to the miracle of how they all stayed alive without food for more than two months. And that's when I printed up bumper stickers that said, "RUGBY PLAYERS EAT THEIR DEAD."

Rugby has always been a edgy sport with edgy people attracted to it Sure they hold responsible jobs and raise families and pay taxes and sometimes, lord knows why, even vote Republican. But I don't know a single rugby player who wouldn't eat a dead teammate if he had to. (Well, at least a dead teammate who wasn't Italian.)
When I started playing for Whitemarsh in 1968, rugby was sort of the outlaw motorcycle gang of contact sports. It's reputation -- well deserved, I might add -- preceded it. Rugby was everything people said it was. And my team -- Whitemarsh -- was even more of that. We prided ourselves on being bigger, tougher, faster, harder on the field, with more of us than them singing louder, funnier and longer at the party. We wanted it all. And then not to get arrested on the way home.

But in our wildest dreams none of us "back in the day" rugby guys could imagine a future where white second row forwards could routinely jump seven feet in the air in a single bound. And yet you see this sort of counter-intuitive, anti-gravitational, anabolic-steroid-free leaping ability at virtually all levels of rugby as it's played in the first decade of the 21st Century .

It's marvelous to look at when it's done right, such as this Kodak moment yesterday afternoon in Cherry Hill, N.J., where Phitladelphia-Whitemarsh forwards out-skied their Rugby Super League rivals from the black-clad Chicago Lions. But in a competitive contact sport context, let alone a rugby football context, these unnatural teammate-assisted pyramids seem as contrived as a routine by Big Five cheeerleaders during a college basketball time out at the Palestra.

Don't get me wrong, I love watching the cheerleaders lift their perky pals over their heads. But if I saw Dionte Christmas and Ryan Brooks hoisting Mark Tyndale overhead and then holding him high above the hoop until he scored Temple's winning basket over St. Joes in the Atlantic Ten Tournament championship, well sir, I'd be thinking that something hinky has happened to basketball.

I'm not saying that rugby isn't better a game than it used to be. I'm just saying that these days we bury our dead. And I miss the meat.

Continue reading "On St. Patrick's Day even white men can jump" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 09:23 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A WEEK AGO I COULDN'T have told you the name of the governor of New York. I'm not proud of that. I should have known. Especially because he would become so famous so suddenly. "Of course, Gov. Eliot, um. . . Wasn't he a something before he became a something?"

Apparently, yes. Eliot Spitzer was a self-righteous prick before he became a scandalized schmuck.

Watching his awkward attempt to man up in the midst of his public humiliation was the short course in Spitzer 101. His two press conference appearances since being outted as Love Client Number Nine had all the appearances of candor, with none of the satisfying chewy taste . Spitzer spoke like a semaphore, flashing words like "atonement" and "remorse" and "apologize" in sentences crafted with the grace of Morse code. He acknowledged responsibility for wrongs he never admitted. He shouldered the burden of disappointing millions of New Yorkers who believed in the values "I tried to stand up for" when in fact it was laying down that got him into the mess he's in.

Like New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's famous "I am a gay American" speech, Spitzer's oddly worded resignation statement seemed more like a political address to the future. It was all about values rather than judgement. As if there were values involved other than the $4,300 price tag for a piece of tail. And in true American compound-the-hypocrisy fashion, the famous faithless husband acknowledged his fall from grace before the world with his stunned and catonic, yet loyal, wife beside him, boring laser hole into his skull with her sad tired eyes.

Humbug. It's all humbug.

(And I wonder how much Kristen charges for a humbug job.)

Continue reading "with a name like spitzer, he's got to be screwed" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 05:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

ON A RAINY FRIDAY AFTERNOON on the same day that it was reported that Barack Obama had raised an inconceivable $196 million dollars for his presidential campaign I stood next to a young woman offering herself as a volunteer at the reception desk at Obama's Philadelphia headquarters on the fourth floor of former bank building a 15th and Sansom Sts. in Center City. She asked for a Barack Obama poster to put in her front yard in Powelton Village. She was told that such a sign would cost her five dollars. And she paid.

"I felt guilty,"she said later, noting that when she worked as a volunteer for Chaka Fattah during his run for mayor of Philadelphia no one ever charged her for campaign posters. She didn't have to add that she also felt stupid and vaguely insulted. Five dollars for a campaign poster? This is change? Earlier that same week a middle aged city employee and District Council 47 union activist used her lunch hour to stop by Obama's newly opened Sansom Street headquarters to ask for an Obama for President sign to put in her South Philly rowhouse window. She was treated like a bag lady trying to get over on Ebay. "You people come in here expecting free material," said a shockingly unpleasant man.

If I hadn't witnesssed the one incident I wouldn't have believed the other. But in a very short time Friday evening I heard mutiple and unforced stories about how creeped out people were by their Barack Obama Philadelphia headquarters experience. "They looked at me like I was al Queda," said one very non-Muslim looking guy with an Irish surname who walked out of headquarters the same time I did. Maybe Obama campaign staffers thought he was a Hillary mole. Whatever, the negative unwelcoming vibe was as noticable as it was unnecessary

So why would Obama campaign people in the newly opened Pennsylvania primary headquarters act like surly twenty-something sales clerks at The Gap? I could venture a guess or two, none of them kind and none of them a valid excuse. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they were hungry. So what? They'll never have another opportunity to make a good first impression. And that's bad politics. The last thing the Obama campaign needs now is to appear uninterested and disconnected from the people in Pennsylvania, a state that doesn't love you back, as well as a commonwealth thickly populated by lifelong residents who never forget a slight. And if a free campaign poster is too much to ask for, what are the odds of getting universal health care?

Continue reading "What's up wid dat?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 03:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

MARCH MADNESS IS NOT THE EXCLUSIVE DOMAIN of college hoops, as any fan or player of the sport of rugby football will be glad to tell you -- (and a special shout out to any mother or wife of a rugby player who gets stuck with ther soggy chore of washing and/or burning the game day jerseys after a March madness mud wrestling match like the ones Saturday afternoon between Brandywine Rugby Club and the visiting Baltimore-Chesapeake RFC at Brandywine's pitch in a former pasteur in the vast and beautiful horse and cattle country of that part of southern Chester County that is closer to Wilmington than West Chester.

When March is acting lionish with high winds, horizontal torrential rains and olympic pool- sized puddles the sport of rugby achieves a sort of sacred messiness caused by wet hands, sodden boots, floodtide turf, and muddy balls (yeah, including the ones they play the game with). A wet sloppy field is the great common denominator of rugby, where every speedy back in the three quarters line is transformed into a lumbering second row forward with bad hands. To imagine what it's like to cleanly catch a wet muddy rugby ball that has been passed or kicked in your general direction is like shooting a clean game of billiards while chalking your cue with axel grease.

Rugby players love playing in the mud because injuries are rare when the ground is as soft and spongy as a water-logged sofa left out overnight at a frat party kegger. Mud is a true democratic athletic condition. The fast get slower, the slow get slower still, and everyone drops the ball constantly. It would be comical if it weren't so unavoidable.

This photo is from the B side match which was played in great part during a sudden white squall of wind and 50 MPH bullet-like rain drops that arrived as suddenly as a twister and hung around for 20 minutes. As heavy as the rains were where you were yesterday, imagine trying to pass, kick, tackle , ruck and maul in rain and wind so fierce it blinded you as some other blind many was hurling his body at you. Look at some of the players facing the wind coming from the left in the photo above. And to think they actually pretended that they could see what was going on.

The young turkheads from Brandywine won both the A and B side matches, 22-15 and 20-5 respectively, remaining undefeated on the young season that started with a championship tournament performance in Fort Lauderdale last month where Brandywine defeated some major rugby clubs in the United State and Canada, including the Georgiaforeign-student rich rugby factory Life College and the Toronto Scots in the final.

March Madness on a rugby pitch. . . It's never pretty, but it sure is beautiful.

Continue reading "i got your march madness, right here, pal!" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

MARCH MADNESS IS NOT THE EXCLUSIVE DOMAIN of college hoops, as any fan or player of the sport of rugby football will be glad to tell you -- (and a special shout out to any mother or wife of a rugby player who gets stuck with ther soggy chore of washing and/or burning the game day jerseys after a March madness mud wrestling match like the ones Saturday afternoon between Brandywine Rugby Club and the visiting Baltimore-Chesapeake RFC at Brandywine's pitch in a former pasteur in the vast and beautiful horse and cattle country of that part of southern Chester County that is closer to Wilmington than West Chester.

When March is acting lionish with high winds, horizontal torrential rains and olympic pool- sized puddles the sport of rugby achieves a sort of sacred messiness caused by wet hands, sodden boots, floodtide turf, and muddy balls (yeah, including the ones they play the game with). A wet sloppy field is the great common denominator of rugby, where every speedy back in the three quarters line is transformed into a lumbering second row forward with bad hands. To imagine what it's like to cleanly catch a wet muddy rugby ball that has been passed or kicked in your general direction is like shooting a clean game of billiards while chalking your cue with axel grease.

Rugby players love playing in the mud because injuries are rare when the ground is as soft and spongy as a water-logged sofa left out overnight at a frat party kegger. Mud is a true democratic athletic condition. The fast get slower, the slow get slower still, and everyone drops the ball constantly. It would be comical if it weren't so unavoidable.

This photo is from the B side match which was played in great part during a sudden white squall of wind and 50 MPH bullet-like rain drops that arrived as suddenly as a twister and hung around for 20 minutes. As heavy as the rains were where you were yesterday, imagine trying to pass, kick, tackle , ruck and maul in rain and wind so fierce it blinded you as some other blind many was hurling his body at you. Look at some of the players facing the wind coming from the left in the photo above. And to think they actually pretended that they could see what was going on.

The young turkheads from Brandywine won both the A and B side matches, 22-15 and 20-5 respectively, remaining undefeated on the young season that started with a championship tournament performance in Fort Lauderdale last month where Brandywine defeated some major rugby clubs in the United State and Canada, including the Georgiaforeign-student rich rugby factory Life College and the Toronto Scots in the final.

March Madness on a rugby pitch. . . It's never pretty, but it sure is beautiful.

Continue reading "we got your march madness, right here, pal!" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 01:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I CALL SHOTS LIKE THESE "DRIVE- BYS." I drive around Philadelphia and I shoot photos out my car window or windshield or rearview mirror and occassionally all three at the same time. This dude on the bike actually scared me because I was shooting something else across the street and he flashed in and out of the frame so fast I didn't even get his license number. Still it's a cool shot. And these biker guys are skinny, aren't they? No gut on this guy.

Continue reading "where'd you get your license, pal? Pep Boys?!" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 12:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

IT WAS DURING RUSH HOUR at the Pen and Pencil Club, that frantic hour between closing time everywhere else in Center City and the 3 a.m. last call at the bar of the storied journalists' club on Latimer Street, when I turned to the attractive companion of a friend of mine who had arrived for a nightcap and asked, "So what do you think of Barack Obama?"

I know, I know, it sounded like a pick up line, especially since my friend's attractive companion happened to be an African American woman in her 30's and I could expect a warm and enthusiastic response to my inquiry, or perhaps a guarded counter-question asking what I thought of Barack Obama. What I wasn't expecting was her reply. "I think he's a sleeper."

I beg your pardon. "I think he's a sleeper," she repeated. Since Obama's presidential candidacy is picking up momentum like a freight train on a down slope I knew she couldn't mean "sleeper" as in a candidate that comes out of nowhere to win the nomination -- say John McCain six months ago. "You mean you think he's an enemy agent?" I said and she nodded yes.

Now I have heard that such people exist but I've never met one face to face and she certainly didn't fit whatever stereotype I had imagined an Obama-is-a-sleeper-Islamo-fascist-agent true believer. So I walked her through a series of questions to establish that she wasn't a). drunk, b). putting me on, or c). out of her freakin' mind. By the time I had established that she was none of the above a number of people were listening to my interrogation and joining in with questions of their own.

"If he was a sleeper, why would he keep a name as obviously foreign as Barack Hussein Obama?" That's part of the plan, she said. Hide in plain sight. "If he becomes president, what is he going to do? Surrender? Declare Islam as the state religion of the United States?" She wasn't sure, but whatever he did would be at the bidding of some unnamed mastermind in the Middle East. She also pointed out that Obama's step father was a colonel in the Iraqi or Iranian army. "What?!"

In the end her opinion was backed by no hard facts, merely an internet fed conspiracy that she embraced "hole" heartedly despite more gaps in logic than slice of swiss cheese. Faced with such an intractable position at so late an hour there was only one thing to do, fight rumor with rumor. "You know who's the real Manchurian candidate?" I said. "Which presidential candidate spent years of torture as a foreign prisoner of war?" Mister McCain? Mister John SIDNEY McCain?

Continue reading "Hail to the Sleeper" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)