June 6-7

Wednesday lunch as usual with Jenny and her mother, in the afternoon terrible news was released on social media. Longtime McCaskey basketball coach Steve "Bird" Powell passed away earlier in the day, he was 68 years of age. Bird's health issues over the past few years were well-documented, the news came as no surprise but it's still a shock. Bird was involved with the program at JPM for better than forty years and spent twenty-six of them as head varsity coach. His career mark was 468-245 (a .656 winning percentage), along the way his teams recorded thirteen seasons of twenty or more wins, qualified for league playoffs twenty times, earned eleven division titles, played for the league title fifteen times, won it nine times and also brought home district titles in 2000 and 2002. Within a half-hour of my seeing the news on the Internet the phone rang, it was his wife Gloria calling to tell me. I told her I was aware of it and she was surprised to hear the word was out so soon, I told her that given Bird's status as a public figure it's not unusual the news would spread quickly. I personally knew him for thirty years, he was one of the most genuinely good people you could ever meet and it goes without saying he will be missed. After supper I was at McCaskey (of all places), the local summer youth baseball leagues are underway. The city has two teams in the local "midget" league, on this night the Lancaster Junior Tornado hosted the team from Ephrata. The league has a School division and a Community division, this was a School game and the Jr. Tornado is basically the JPM high school roster minus the graduated seniors who are ineligible by rule. The Tornado took an 8-1 lead in the third inning and held on to win 9-6. There was no PA announcing but the booth was open so they could use the scoreboard and play some music between innings. On Thursday we finished up week #7 of dek hockey and Reservoir Park, in the Draft game Green beat Gold. The Club game winners were the Riot over the Pub Dawgs, the Owls over the Hammerheads and the Misfits over the Kings. Take care, thanks for reading.