The Sunday Scrimmage

Here we are. Game Day. Another week managing to slide through our fingers.

And it was a tough one.

If you’ve been with us you know what we’re talking about and if you haven’t, well, you should be.

As weeks go, this one had it all: tragedy, comedy, Cat 4-3-2-1 HurriStorms and Flipping Manaforts. A lot of it left us blinking back tears or in just plain disbelief – which is pretty much the nature of our biz – and there’s no sign of it stopping anytime soon.

For now, though, we’d appreciate it if you’d stop sending us clips of “network correspondents” battling leaf-blower winds and garden hoses in send ups of television’s proclivity to dispatch their people to storm zones for well, pretty bogus live shots from the tsunami zone. We get it. We think they’re bogus, too. It’s not how we’d do it but, hey, whatareyougonnado? It wasn’t us and, frankly, we think that tired old network news saw should have been retired decades ago.

For a small outfit we have a lot of reach, we know, with our words triggering responses of all kinds – some good, some not so. We take full responsibility for our words, and some folks think that responsibility extends to the words of others and to that we draw a very careful and distinct line.

One horrific story sadly broken here expanded as we’ve seen several of our stories expand over the years, pulsing for several hours locally while local people processed what we were saying with shock and disbelief before morphing as we knew it would into a regional, then state-wide, then again into a national story with one reader detailing the arrival of news trucks on her street in an email we’ll keep around for a while, writing simply: “O My God, What have you done?”

People often ask us about the reach of our little news site and, as we saw again this week, it is substantial – with the number of people who live in little Moraga reading in on a story originating here in the first few hours of its life.

That happened again yesterday, Saturday, when the Jungle Drums lit up on Draeger Drive in Moraga as locals who know of our interest in local news pinged us about an errant Mercedes bouncing off parked cars and other stationary objects in the 100 block of Draeger.

With our years of news experience it quickly became apparent we were dealing with an impaired driver of some type as the Benz, dragging various metal bits, made its way onto Fernwood Drive (with folks there rather comically detailing its movements) until the driver stopped outside a house on Kingsford Drive and went inside.

Moraga PD’s Lt. Brian South summed up what happened next: “The (DUI) suspect was located and was combative and resisted arrest when contacted by officers. He was ultimately taken into custody and later booked at MDF (Martinez Detention Facility). An adult female was also arrested at the scene for obstructing an officer and she was also booked at MDF. There were no injuries to officers or the suspects.”

Neighbors contacting us said it seemed a little more dramatic than that at the time but, hey, there you go.

There was also some drama on our local sports fields of late, as well, with some apparently contentious moments at the Acalanes game after a player was ejected Friday night and a scary one at Cal High after a player exhibited symptoms of a concussion during play there.

We’re guessing people are on edge and apparently ready to go to “Duke City” more readily for some reason these days because everyone seems to be throwing down over seemingly insignificant things. How about it, Binky? Are you feeling on edge? Care to say why?

Fleshing out additional accounts of “Drive-by Samaritanism” of the type we mentioned in last week’s screed, we would again counsel folks to be sure of what you’re seeing out there before dialing the Three Digits that brings the Blue Thunder on the run.

In two recent incidents in the San Ramon Valley, officers were called out to check on a man in “body armor” that turned out to be a weight vest worn by workout enthusiasts as well as two seedy looking “homeless” types setting up camp in several big cardboard boxes – which turned out to be two kids building a “fort” out of appliance boxes. Remember when we could do that? Jeepers, (archaic word use) we used to field whole platoons of neighborhood kids in castoff war surplus gear for local war games, and we can only imagine what kind of response that would get these days.

Enough of this, time to gather some basil leaves for the night’s veggie pesto and to whip up some guacamole for the football fans among us tuning in for today’s Niner game – they’re playing today, right? Can’t keep up with this scheduling.

Put your face paint on. Hope your team wins. It’s game day.

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