Ring Side Ramblings

As a callow youth I, along with my neighborhood homies, did my share of annoying the adults who lived in our neighborhood.

We accomplished this mostly by just existing, but we were also somewhat the scamps at times.

In response to their disapproval of whatever we did, we labeled them “old fogies”.

It would appear that I have crossed over to fogie-dom.

As many may know, I have a retirement job in sales. The other day a grandmotherly type, her mid-20’s daughter and the daughter’s 3/4-year old son dropped in to make a purchase.

The entire time they were there the boy continued to try to get my attention by shouting ”Hey!” “Hey!” “Hey!” at me.

I’m sure tiny wisps of steam started to waft from my ears. I was ready to throttle this kid.

What’s worse, neither granny nor mommy made any attempt to set the youth straight on the use proper manners.

I have a good friend I’ve know since he was 10 years old. Now 42, he still calls me Mr. Byrne. I tell him, “Jeff, we’re all adults. You can call me Dave.”

“Okay Mr. Byrne,” he replies.

Maybe junior needs to spend a week with Jeff and his dad.

Football Time!

Covered the first game last night of what one hopes will be a long - and successful - era at McCaskey for new football coach David Given.

As a proud J.P. alum [Class of ‘69. See everybody at the reunion on Oct. 24!] It would’ve been nice if the Red Tornado had won, but hey, you can’t have everything.

Besides, going back a generation or two, McCaskey coaches winning their debuts isn’t exactly commonplace.

Forty years ago this month, after a summer of barely contained anticipation, Jack Cassebaum’s first team walked quietly, a closed-ranked football phalanx packed shoulder-to-shoulder, into the quaint depression-era cage that was Coatesville’s former home field.

And left, bloodied, 55-0.

In fact, McCaskey’s highly-touted, and new-fangled, Run-&-Shoot offense wouldn’t find the endzone until the end of the month as the Tornado followed with losses to Steel-Hi (63-0) and John Harris (81-0).

That’s right. Despite recent revisionist history, McCaskey didn’t go back-to-back with the infamous 80-0 & 81-0 losses to Harris. There was a 40-0 loss [in ‘68] in the middle there.

Not that that matters. Just sayin’.

And, by the way, the 55-0 loss to Coatesville was significant, at least momentarily, because over the previous two seasons, 1967 & 68, Coatesville was the only team McCaskey defeated!

Again, just sayin’.

In 1972 George Burke lost his first game, to Berwick, 34-28.

In the wake of Burke’s unprecedented mid-season firing, in October of ‘75, Gordie Kraft’s first game as interim coach was a 21-7 loss to Wilson.

Norbie Danz’s first team fell to Harrisburg, 19-7, in 1976.

A 7-0 loss to Carlisle inaugurated the Jack Neal era in 1986.

Only Scott Feldman got off on the good foot, posting a 38-15 victory over Allentown Allen in his 1998 debut.

So anyway, Big Red opens the Given Era with a 41-27 loss at E-town that had the feel of many losses of the past.

Saw an electrifying offense that put points up at will. And a defense inclined to surrender points at will.

In that defense of the defense, Given revealed after the game that four starters were sidelined due to adademics.

The cynic in me wanted to say, “Welcome to McCaskey!”

But the Ringside doesn’t do hate, and going negative is so … negative.  I kept a civil tongue.

Given appears to have an idea and, more importantly, the kids believe he has an idea. Which can’t be a bad thing.

There are cat people and there are dog people. And I am, most assuredly, dog people.

But over the past year my heart was stolen by a 7-1/2 pound ball of gray, tiger-striped American short-hair.

He first appeared just after the 4^th-of-July holiday last summer, poking his tiny, kitten head out from under the gazebo on the sales/display lot, site of my day job.

He was skittish. I was curious.

Obviously, he had been abandoned on my stone-graveled acre. Over the next few days I coaxed him out with a small pan of kitten-chow.

It became a ritual. I would arrive for work in the morning, fill his bowl and then shake the contents. Out would pop his head and, when I’d gone inside, he’d come out and eat.

Over the next few weeks he got bigger and acquired a name: Raoul.

This was because his every declaration came out Rowl! His interrogatories: Rowl?

As July turned to August Raoul grew and, despite the appearance of his eyes not yet “opening”, he expanded his field of exploration, roaming the vast openess of my sales lot chasing grasshoppers and butterflies.

He also warmed to his human benefactor, breaking off whatever he was doing to great me on the dead run when I arrived in the morning. He would follow me to the doorstep of my office, then turn away and scoot under the gazebo.

I’d sit on the floor of the gazebo. He’d come out and do figure eights between my legs, allowing me to lift him, gently, with my foot. Soon I was picking him up.

It was also this time when I realized that there was a reason his eyes had not yet “opened”.

He had no eyes!

Now the decision I’d been mulling - whether or not to take him inside my office - became clear. There would be no way he could survive the winter, much less avoid getting flattened trying to cross Route 230, if he was blind.

If I took him to the shelter, well, I didn’t like his odds. So one day when he let me pick him up I carried him inside. A new chapter in our relationship began.

In September we had our first Doctor’s appointment. Raoul was a hit with the staff at the Neffsville Veterinary Clinic, as well as with his doctor, Dr. Blythe. It was determined that he was likely seven weeks old when I found him.

But when Dr. Blythe returned with the results of his blood tests, her mood had darkened.

He had tested positive for Feline Leukemia Virus. Would I allow her to draw more blood for another test, to be certain this wasn’t a false positive?

Sadly, the result was the same.

Dr. Blythe figured Raoul had picked up the virus in utero, likely the reason his eyes never developed.

“This doesn’t have to be a death sentence,” she said, noting if I kept him isolated from other animals, and he didn’t become ill, he might live 5 years, maybe more.

With a cat-hating, 12-year-old Springer Spaniel at home, not to mention the occasional “fresh air” visits by my daughter’s equally cat-hating Great Dane, adding Raoul to the mix there was not an option.

And so he became my resident assistant. Despite being blind, he’d scamper around the 10-by-16 environs of the office, “swimming” under furniture; climbing up the screen of a sample window propped against the wall; playing - with delight bordering on ecstasy - with the catnip-infused straw balls I’d buy him.

There was a brief moment, in November, when our relationship soured after he had been neutered and sank into a depression, as one might after losing one’s testicles.

But he got over that and returned to jumping on my lap and taking part in his favorite pasttime: allowing me to roll him on his back and hold him, like a baby, in the crook of my arm while he took a nap.

Winter became spring and spring turned to summer. I went on a home-improvement-project vacation the third week of July and when I checked in on him, it appeared that he had not touched his food.

Nor did he eat over my first few days back in the office. He was, obviously, a very sick cat.

The trip to the vet confirmed that the virus had erupted with a vengeance, hitting the fast-forward button on his life. A life now measured in days.

Heartbreakingly, there was only one choice to make. Raoul went, blessedly, quickly as I stroked him.

He’d had a great year. A year he wouldn’t have had otherwise.

And my life had been better for that year.

Grazing over back blogs I noticed I had comments, three of them, on one of my earlier posts!

This is amazing in that there have been no comments posted, nada, not a one, since this opus began.

Until now.

I figured the “comments” option was not activated, and I was O.K with that. I would’ve been O.K. too with them activated. There’s nothing like feedback.

So it might figure that the comments would take me to the woodshed.

And deservedly so.

In my blog on the passing of Tom Miller I refered to his junior-year foil as “Trinity’s carpet-bagging Bob Truby”.

As the father said in So I Married An Axe Murderer, “That was a bit offsides.”

In the world of Pa. wrestling where state-level athletes never seem to transfer to the small, talent-starved border districts, but invariably show up in the lineups of the sport’s Big Dogs, [No! No! No! I’m not calling anybody out. Once bitten, twice shy.] I misinterpreted why a two-time Maryland State Champion would compete for one of the, then, powers of the WPIAL instead of, say, a school like Fannett-Metal.

As a byproduct of that cynical assupmtion, I snarkily smeared the reputation of a champion who, frankly, didn’t deserve the slight.

Bob Truby, I am truly sorry.

Never one to follow the adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” the rules committee of the National Federation of State High School Associations has once again weighed in on the subject of weight classes in scholastic wrestling.

Using a set of statistics gleaned from the National Wrestling Coaches Association’s Optimal Performance Calculator of wrestlers’ hydrated body weight, [talk about letting the camel’s nose under the tent flap!], measuring 195,000 wrestlers, the NFHS has submitted a set of proposals that would, once again, alter the landscape of scholastic wrestling.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that one of the four options is to do nothing.

What do you think the chances are of that happening?

Yah, me too.

In all three of the “change” options you can kiss goodbye the 103-pound weight class. There is no longer room for the truly little guy.

In options “A” & “B” the intent is to distribute the 195,000 wrestlers equally over 14 weights, with the target of each class to contain 7.14% of those wrestlers.

The classes for Option “A” would shake out like this: 110 pounds, 119, 125, 131, 136, 141, 146, 152, 159, 167, 177, 192, 216, 285.

Option “B”: 106, 113, 120, 126, 132, 138, 145, 152, 160, 170, 182, 195, 220, 285.

Option “C”, designed to distribute the wrestlers at a rate of 7% to 8 %, the mid 6% range in the first three classes, would look like this: 107, 115, 122, 128, 134, 140, 146, 152, 159, 167, 177, 192, 216, 285.

The thinking is that moving the low end north of 103 would greatly increase the number of eligible wrestlers for the first weight class while significantly narrowing the gap between 103 and 112.

Noble idea, yes. Especially concerning the 9-pound gap between the first two classes.

But what about the technically advanced 95-to-100 pound freshman who is just spinning his wheels in the junior high setting? Wrestling varsity at 103 he was under-sized, true. But his skill level could often offset the handicap. At 107, not to mention 110, he is going to get his clock cleaned on a regular basis!

Replacing the class eliminated at the light end of the lineup is an added class at the heavy end, largely between 160 and 195, depending on the option.

While the current weight spread is 11 and 18 pounds [160-171-189], under “A” and “C” it would be 8, 10, 15 [159-’67-’77-’92] while under “B” it woud be 10, 12, 13 [160-’70-’82-’95].

Light-heavy and heavy weight would remain largely unchanged with 285 remaining the top end while light-heavys would pick up a pound under “A” & “C”, five pounds under “B”.

No word on when these changes will be voted on, and it should be acknowledged that these are just proposals at this time.

But, like the song in Damn Yankees, “What Lola wants, Lola gets”!

The Manheim Central School Board has hired former Penn State wrestling coach Troy Sunderland to lead Manheim’s high school wrestling program.

Sunderland, who stepped down in April after directing the Nittany Lion program for eleven years, replaces Shane Mack, who resigned to accept a teaching position in the Derry Township School District.

A 1993 Penn State grad, Sunderland coached the Lions to a 115-90-2 record in dual meets and four Top-10 finishes at the NCAA Division I championships. Under Sunderland, the Lions’ best team finish at Nationals came in 2008 when they placed third overall.

Sunderland coached three individual NCAA champions, twenty-five All-Americans and seven Big-10 champions.

Named the 1999 “Rookie Coach of the Year” by the Amateur Wrestling News, Sunderland was also recognized as the 2003 Big-10 Coach of the Year.

A two-time PIAA champion at Mt. Union High School, the McVeytown native was a three-time All-American, and two-time NCAA runnerup, for Penn State, winning 100 individual matches.

He was the Outstanding Wrestler of the 1993 Big-10 Championships, winning the 150-pound title, and also won the Eastern Wrestling League 150-pound title in 1992, Penn State’s last year affiliated with the EWL.

He led the Lions to a second-place finish at the 1993 NCAA tournament as a senior and returned to State College that Fall as an assistant to his college coach, John Fritz.

After three years, Sunderland took a similar position at the United States Naval Academy, returning to “Happy Valley” as Fritz’s replacement in 1998.

While he works on gaining the credits necessary for secondary education certification, Sunderland, whose undergrad degree is in Earth Sciences, will work with former Elizabethtown College and Millersville University wrestling coach Steve Capoferri . Capoferri runs a number of  alternate education schools and Sunderland will serve as a behavorial specialist at the Shiremanstown location.

… to head one of the most storied programs in Pennsylvania.

In a recent conversation, Shane Mack confirmed he has tendered his resignation as head wrestling coach at Manheim Central High School.

Mack, who had been assistant principal at Manheim Central Middle School and then at the High School, wished to return to the classroom.

With no positions open in Manheim, he accepted a teaching position at Hershey High School, beginning with the 2009-10 school term.

“I’m taking a year off from coaching,” he said, “and then we’ll see what happens.”

In four years coaching under one of the sport’s biggest magnifying glass, Mack’s teams were a cumulative 28-30 overall.

He coached eight L-L League tournament champions _ including four in 2006 when Manheim won the team title. He sent 19 qualifiers to the District III tournament and guided seven PIAA State tournament qualifiers.

Perhaps the high point was 2007 when four Barons _ Brock Stoltz, Jared Zeamer, Jordan Enck and Marcus Zimmerman _ qualified for states. Enck and Zimmerman achieved the finals  that year, each placing second, and Enck returned to the finals in 2008, winning the state championship.

Since this is a wrestling blog, how about some wrestling news?

Several local wrestlers are competing in the National High School Coaches’ Association Team Duals.

McCaskey’s Devin Anderson and Warwick’s Adam Chapis are members of the Keystone Brawlers Gold.

Hempfield’s Dakota Minnich and Penn Manor’s Bobby Rehm are members of Team Premium.

Hempfield’s Austin Miller and Solanco’s Dan Neff are members of Team Premium Select.

Lost my BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!!!!! virginity last week at Hersheypark Stadium, seeing BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!!!!! and the E Street Band for the first time, ever.

Now, the above graph is not entirely true. I had seen the troubador of the Jersey Shore once before, but he wasn’t BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!!!!! then. He was just Bruce Springsteen, and the E Street Band, while pretty much in its present day form, had yet to gain that title.

I’m in debt to my colleague, John Duffy, for filling in a couple blanks in his advance on the BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!!!!! show at Hershey, giving me a new understanding of what I experienced way back in 1973.

June 6, 1973. Riding a way of immense popularity, the band Chicago is booked into the Spectrum in Philadelphia in support of their newest release, Chicago VI.

On the undercard, billed as a “Special Guest”, is an unknown named Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce comes out and, in what Philadelphia Daily News music critic Jonathon Takiff will refer to as one of the most shameful moments in Philly music history, is booed unmercifully!

How could this happen? Isn’t Bruce a near-god in Philly?

One has to go back several months.

From John Duffy’s remembrance of a Bruce show at York College in November of ‘72, we get a picture of Bruce and the E-Streeters, their sound equipment pretty bare-bones, playing small clubs and college gyms.

Their act is energy-driven. And loud. And, according to reviews of the time, it works.

Now imagine it’s early ‘73. Columbia Records, having signed Bruce, recently released his debut album and looking for a way to promote him, turns the task over to the geniuses in A&R.

We can almost see the Montgomery Burns-Smithers meeting in the record exec’s office:

“We’ve got this hippie-poet-Dylan type, what’s his name: Stringbean?

“That’s Springsteen, sir. Bruce Springsteen.”

“What? Oh. We’ve got to get the word out on this album: Meetings In Raspberry Park.”

“That’s Greetings From Asbury Park, sir.”

“Right. We’ve got to get him on the road and push sales. Who do we have touring this summer?”

“Well, sir, there’s Chicago.”

“Good. Good. We’ll have Stringbean open for Chicago. It’ll be synergy.”

“That’s Springsteen, sir.”

Flash forward to the Spectrum, June 6.

This may or may not have been Springsteen’s first large-arena gig. It was certainly his first in the Spectrum. It was not a good pairing.

Nor was pairing Bruce with Chicago. There is a great crossover in fan bases now, but Chicago fans seldom greet warmly someone who is keeping them from their heroes.

In 1983,  at the Mann Music Center, Chicago fans will be so rude to opening act John Stewart  [… people out there turnin’ music into gold … ], that he will stop the show and remind them that he’s going to play whether they, the fans, like it or not. So they might as well shut up and enjoy the show.

Bruce was not that feisty.

That night, overwhelmed by the Spectrum’s acoustics, the band was loud and  unintelligible. Their sound was so much noise. Bruce’s singing, now revered, was way beyond noise.

On a first date that night with the young lady who would, two years later, become my wife, I was not impressed.

Months later, my college-age and musically hip friends would extoll this hot, new artist: Bruce Springsteen.

“Bruce Springsteen?” I would  answer. “I saw him. He sucks!”

Bruce released The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle that September. It sold, but didn’t break records.

Two years later, two days after my wedding and on my 24th birthday, Bruce releases Born To Run.

The rest is history.

He appears on the covers of both Newsweek and Time Magazines the same week.

Unprecedented.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!!!!! is born.

I became a fan. Never saw him though, until now.

From the opening drum riff of Badlands to the closing chords of Bobby Jean, Bruce and E Street were awesome!

Played three hours, including a one-hour, seven-song encore that blew way past Hershey/Derry Township’s 11 p.m. curfew.

And, from the opening drum riff of Badlands to the end of Bobby Jean, 18-year old drummer Jay Weinberg, was outstanding!

Substituting for his father, Max Weinberg, [who likely was stuck in California with his “day job”, leading Conan O’Brien’s house band, the Max Weinberg 7] Jay Weinberg drives the band forward.

He. Never. Stopped.

And reaches his peak in a bravura performance in the middle of the encore, on Land Of Hope and Dreams, when he practically bounces out of his seat while keeping the beat.

If his dad’s not careful …

And if dad’s stuck in L.A. when the tour crosses the Atlantic for the its European leg, 18-year-old Jay Weinberg will be drumming for the E Street Band.

In Europe.

In summer.

How cool is that!!

Class, please write a theme: What I did on my summer vacation.

Yes, Mr. Weinberg?

I refuse to listen to Rush. Ditto Hannity, Beck and the either/both Lauras.

I will not watch O’Reilly. I will not read anything by that aneorxic harpy Ann Coulter.

I make this choice for the same reason I do not shoot heroin into my veins.

It is toxic, addictive, and will destroy my soul.

[In the interest of unbiased fairness, I do not watch Olberman or Rachel Madow either. Although, my shower-dress-breakfast routine is accompanied by Morning Joe.]

I mention this because reading the op-ed/letters page of my Sunday News is as close as I dare to dip my toes in the ongoing left-right war.

Most recently the sorry state of our once-mighty auto industry has been the subject of some fulmination.

I get it, times are tough. I’m not some over-schooled, ivory-tower white collar living in a bubble. I worked in a factory for 33-1/2 years. I’ve lived the ‘Murrican Dream.

And because I worked with the lunch pail stiffs, I also know that when times get tough, we get tough … on those who aren’t us.

And so we read letters bashing the Japanese for the decline of General Motors. Chrysler. Ford. Because, if I’ve got it right, the Japanese fought us in a war over 60 years ago!

Using that logic 100 years ago we, as a nation, should’ve cast a jaundiced eye on our neighbor to the south, Mexico, because they took up arms against us in 1845!

[Come to think of it, we did send “Black Jack” Pershing over the border to chase Pancho Villa.]

Other than building cars Americans wanted, the Japanese did nothing to Detroit that Detroit did not do to itself.

While Toyota-Nissan-Honda et. al. were building, and promoting, quality small vehicles, Detroit was saying it could not be competitive. And with the crap they ran out there (Pinto anyone? T-1000? Valiant?] it was a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Quit looking overseas [where much of our jobs have gone, by the way] for scapegoats.

And stop beating on the Japanese.

We did enough of that 60-plus years ago.