Buzz Bissinger: An unlikely baseball factory and its star

Buzz Bissinger, an Inquirer columnist who won a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter and is the author of "Friday Night Lights" and "Three Nights in August," knew about Phillies first-round draft pick Jesse Biddle before the scouts with radar guns.

The best and most improbable sports act playing in Philadelphia right now hasn't been the Flyers. It hasn't been the Phillies, who for the first time in five years actually scored more than a run. The honor belongs to a small private school in the wobbly urban heart of Germantown. It is called Germantown Friends School, or GFS for short, its campus shunted into Coulter Avenue like a series of Lego pieces jammed together by hammer. While many of you out there may have not heard of GFS, you are no doubt familiar with the vehicles that the parents drive, probably because you have been stuck behind one.

In keeping the Quaker tradition that defines the school, where less can still be even less and exceeding the speed limit is a shameful reflection of ostentatious frenzy, most of the cars are minivans 10 to 15 years old. Every now and then a used Volvo wagon pops up, which under unofficial Rule 6 of the parents' handbook, is perfectly acceptable as long as the mileage is over 150,000 and it has never been washed. And, of course, Priuses are beginning to proliferate like rabbits.

In accordance with unofficial Rule 7, each vehicle regardless of make, must be completely obliterated by bumper stickers. Slight variation is allowed, but in general they must read along the lines of "Honk if

You Still Hate Bush Because You Should," "How Would You Feel if a Cow decided to have you for dinner?" "Why Weren't You at Woodstock?" and "Only Men who are Possibly Girly Attend Tea Parties."

The school in other words is quite liberal.