This Week’s Metro Column (and Philadelphia Weekly article)

With the new baseball season upon us, I didn’t head down to D.C. to see Halladay start his championship run. Oh no. I headed back to Strawberry Mansion, where the moral of the story is this: The baseball league that I’ve been watching since ’07 is the answer to those “flashmob” worries.

It’s confession time: I was a teenage gangbanger.

My East Side Jayhawks wolfpack was so thick that we’d startle faculty by suiting up for “Pimp and Ho” or “Chicano Heritage Appreciation” Friday photo shoots outside the cafeteria. Gang conventions convened at Bob’s Big Boy (breakfast buffets) or Taco Bell (Mexi-Melt dinners).

People knew we meant business, that peace would disappear should we ever throw down with the rival West Side Kings crew, that we represented a societal shift toward anarchy.

From the Jayhawk archives

The best part? Getting called to the befuddled principal’s office for turning conventional behavior upside down just for laughs. You know, exactly like how Philadelphia fell into a maelstrom of “flash mob” paranoia about the dang kids these days and parental responsibility.
That’s not to say there weren’t serious worries. People got hurt. That’s seriously worthy of punishment.

Nor is it to say, technological advances notwithstanding, flashmobbery has been here since Cain and Abel brawled. Even though they have.

Nope, for all the end-of-civilized-behavior hand wringing, a breathing example of how to distract kids from the boredom that begets questionable behavior entered its fourth year Saturday. Having watched the Strawberry Mansion All-Stars baseball league from day one, I’ve seen countless adults committed to children’s progress. I think it’s high time every hardscrabble neighborhood heeds the lessons here.

On Saturday, I watched wide-eyed T-ballers figuring out what hand to put their new glove on, some heading to the Mayor’s Box for a pre-season Phillies game, and dozens of parents aglow with pride as they saw their front-tooth-lacking offspring instantly take to positivity’s camaraderie.

When one kid tried to leave, a coach told him, “Hang out with us. You’ll be alright!” I wondered whether Coach Itchy leading them through calisthenics was the first time they’ve even been taught to stretch their growing limbs.

The scene was inspiring but I figured these were parents already dedicated to guiding their children to success in life. So, I asked league founder Rick Ford how they can reach the unreachables.

“We gotta get out there and show people that there’s an outlet that will de-escalate all this (flash-mob) stuff. Word will spread and there’ll be more kids out here next week,” said Ford, whose league spread from one diamond to six or seven. “We need to ask people, ‘What are you doing to help?’”

Well, what are you doing to help?

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As for the Weekly, I headed out to Mascher Street to meet up with glass-blower John Pomp, who’s been commissioned for a enviro-fundraiser with an Earth Day hook involving a pretty-damn-cool wine decanter …

One hundred signed-and-numbered versions of “The Touch” decanters will be sold on Newton Vineyard’s Web site (newtonvineyards.com) for $500 each starting on Earth Day—now international, the commemoration started here 40 years ago. Ten percent of the proceeds go to Global Green U.S.A., an affiliate of Green Cross International, which lobbies for environmental sustainability.