NORTHERN LEHIGH FACTS

FROM KEITH GROLLER

I've been told to keep my cool and not get into back-and-forth exchanges when I get accused of certain things by ill-informed fans and parents. "Don't lower yourself to that level because they have more experience down there than you do" is basically what someone told me.

So, don't worry, I won't do that here after being accused of bias and holding a grudge against Northern Lehigh softball in messages earlier today -- both left on this blog and sent to me personally via e-mails.

Here are the facts:

Last year we honored about five Colonial League players of the week for the whole season. One of them was Northern Lehigh's Julie Wagaman.

Then when Julie Wagaman pitched a no-hitter this season, we ran a picture of her from that player-of-week shot from 2009. Few other players in baseball or softball have solo, portrait-style pictures of them run in the paper for one game, but Julie's picture ran. I thought it was great.

So far this year I've been allowed to cover about 6 high school softball games, two total in the Colonial League. One of them was Northern Lehigh's lopsided win over Northwestern, which basically turned into a feature story saying lots of positive things about the Bulldogs.

In addition, we've had two girls chosen as Morning Call High School Players of the Week so far this year-- one in the Colonial League. It was Tamara Stubits. Guess what school Tamara is from?

Northern Lehigh.

So, you make the call? Does this sound like a grudge and bias against Northern Lehigh to you?

Yes, it's true that Northern Lehigh had a nice win on Saturday night over Palisades, a win that was acknowledged in a blog post earlier today (Sunday). But I wasn't assigned to cover that game. In fact, I was told there was no room for any extensive game coverage on any softball game on Saturday for the newspaper.

Feeling bad about that, I still showed up at Pates Park during the afternoon and filed a couple of reports on Groller's Corner about the earlier games before I had to go to Coca-Cola Park at about 6 o'clock for a column on former Phillies player and Tourette's Syndrome victim Jim Eisenreich.

And so, no, I wasn't there for Northern Lehigh's win.

Bias? Grudge? Had Palisades won the game, Northern Lehigh people would have been thrilled I wasn't there to cover them. But since Northern Lehigh won the game, and I wasn't there, the old "What do you have against us" charges resurface. Amazing. Just amazing.

But it is refreshing to know that the more things change, the more some things stay the same, and I will leave it at that.

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I wanted to bring to your attention to a new section on the right side column of Groller's Corner.

We're calling it "Keith's Hot Stops" and this is where we're going to list links to other blogs and websites.

So far, we've only got two up there -- one for the Howard Deppe All-Sar Baseball Classic which is held every June to benefit the American Cancer Society. The site has all of the information you need on that very worthwhile event.

The other is directing you to an entertaining and informative blog on the IronPigs and Coca-Cola Park done by my friends in "The Noise Nation," which is the No. 1 fan group of the IronPigs. I encourage you to read both sites often and we hope to add to the list of "Keith's Hot Stops" when we can. If you have some that would be of interest to me and Groller's Corner readers, please pass them along and if we like them, we'll add them.

FROM KEITH GROLLER