Bumming around town with Bill Bumerton

Bumerton is a retired Navy fighter pilot who had been missing in action for several years while he traversed the globe looking for greener grass. He discovered the grass is only greener here (it’s blue in Kentucky), so he returned to again take charge of his 1954 green Hudson Hornet that has been in storage, refilled his pipe, and is ready to continue his smokin’ ways. Here is what he recently told us at the Sports Paper.

Big Dawg, you have seen most of the Olympic League boy’s basketball teams – North Kitsap and Port Townsend being the exceptions – and by now with your vast experience of nearly seven decades of watching the sport should have a good idea of who are the better players. So who are they? You think, do you, like just about everybody else around here that the best player is Bremerton’s Deonte Dixon. He’s a six-foot-two senior who has good hops, can handle the ball a little, shoots it fairly well, and runs the floor very well. He reminds you a little of Jarell Flora, a six-foot-three redshirt junior at Seattle University who is averaging 12 points and three rebounds. Flora had a breakout senior year at Bremerton after some excellent off-season coaching in Seattle that mainly taught him to bring the ball up the court off rebounds and to be aggressive in taking command on the court. Dixon has the ability to do the same with a little more maturity. There are two other players you really like and they are Alex Barry, a six-foot-four junior guard/forward from Sequim and six-foot sophomore guard Cole Rabedeaux from Kingston. Rabedeaux, you say Big Dawg, has a lot of court moxie, is an excellent passer, good shooting fundamentals and is tough as nails. He could be very special if he continues to improve through his next two seasons with the  Buccaneers. You think his brother, Beau, a five-foot-10 senior guard, is also pretty good. He has very quick hands – he would be arrested for thievery if he did what he did on the court in the streets – is quick and also is a good passer. You saw Barry play Klahowya and he had 20 points in the first half, 14 in the second quarter, and finished with 29 in the Wolves’ 12-point victory. Barry may not handle it as well as the others mentioned, but he has good court awareness and can light up the scoreboard in a hurry if he isn’t carefully watched, and gets on the boards very well. There are other good players in the OL, but those three – Dixon, Barry and Cole Rabedeaux stand out among the crowd, at least for now. … You are like me, Big Dawg, in thinking radio sports shock jocks in Seattle have just beaten the drum to death over Sunday’s matchup at the Clink between the Niners and Seachickens. We turn on the radio in the Green Hornet and we both hear the same thing over and over again through various segments. Just about everybody believes the game will be a physical and brutal war between two teams that may be the best in the No Fun League. Those sports shock jocks all come down on a close score, like 20-17, 17-14, and 24-21. Of course, because it’s Seattle radio, the Seachickens win every time. I suppose the sports shock jocks in San Fran have it the other way. We, though, are thinking alike. We believe the Seachickens will romp. The score may be 34-10 or something like that. It’s just a gut feeling we have Maybe we have hit too many potholes in the Green Hornet and it has shaken our brains, but I can say with your permission Big Dawg that we agree on it being a one-sided affair. It doesn’t matter if we are wrong, Big Dawg, because even if the Niners prevail the Super Bowl will still pit two teams with opposite looks – defense against offense (Patriots and the Broncos). That kind of match up will really get the sports shock jocks revved up. We may have to forego radio for a couple weeks, Big Dawg.  … You and I also both think alike on how the world is passing us by. We believe, don’t we Big Dawg, that social media is becoming too much, and that some day it will all explode and kill off our society internally. We both grew up in a time where the stuff you knew was contained in about a square mile radius. The outside world only occasional crept into our knowledge. It was a peaceful time for young kids like we were. Now you have the ability to know what is doing on all over the world, and it’s all instantly piped to you via social networks and your smart phone. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not. I can remember years ago there were conspiracies swirling about that secret and powerful men with vast amounts of money were working toward a one world government and we in the lower middle class would be enslaved by it. Perhaps some day Big Dawg, and we may not be alive, the ability to control minds will be  a byproduct of social media being meshed into one big conspiracy with a few powerful and moneyed men in control. Wow, Big Dawg, I think I’ve been brainwashed by the sports shock jocks. We better jump back into the Green Hornet and scram. But first, Big Dawg, you need to get me a tall latte.