Beer Pong

With the sun setting and Penn State's Big Ten title hopes fading, Rodney Kinlaw sat alone on the sideline. The last Nittany Lion to leave the field, Kinlaw was engulfed by jubilant Michigan players after the Wolverines prevailed, 14-9, yesterday in an old-fashioned - some might say ugly - slugfest. As he headed to the locker room, Kinlaw took one last moment in the Big House, a place where Penn State has endured so much misery. "We haven't beat Michigan since I've been here," Kinlaw said of the Lions' ninth straight loss to the Wolverines.

Here are some off-the-wall and off-the-cuff observations from around Citizens Bank park yesterday. Food department 1 While the pregame crowds at Tony Luke's and Rick's Steaks in Ashburn Alley were as thick as the grease on their grills, the lines for McNally's Schmitters were surprisingly short. 2 Here's guessing that the cheesesteaks also outsold the $10 Chili Glazed Duck Quesadillas at Harry the K's. Philly is many things. A duck-quesadilla town isn't one of them. 3 A trip to the ballpark can also be educational.

The neighborhood has changed plenty since she bought her little rowhouse on Levering Street in the 1960s, said Margaret Seador, nodding at a sea of young women in tiny sundresses and huge sunglasses and men in plaid shorts and flip-flops. But for the last 23 years, the buzz and color of the bike race up the Manayunk Wall have been constant. "I sit here all day," said Seador, 82, who said she had enjoyed the rebirth of her neighborhood. "It's wonderful and different every year.

Last night, in the late October chill and gloom, the ghosts were out at Citizens Bank Park. The historic possibilities for the Phils in Game 5 of the World Series created more than excitement. The event, so rare in Philadelphia, also dredged up memories of 126 years of Phillies baseball and the spirits of those who never played in a Series, or never won one, or never got to see one. There was Rich Ashburn, the swift and witty centerfielder and broadcaster whose ingratiating presence still hovers over Philadelphia baseball 11 years after his death.

Friends and fellow students at the College of New Jersey know that 19-year-old John Fiocco Jr. vanished from his dorm early Saturday. It's what they don't know that makes many fear the worst for the popular freshman from Gloucester County. Officials yesterday added to the worry when they announced that the state police's Major Crimes Unit, which handles kidnappings and homicides, had become involved in what technically remained a missing-person case. As the search for Fiocco, of Sewell, finished its fourth day, authorities and school officials sought to quell rumor and panic but offered little new information.

When James Trexler heard his sentence - one year in jail - for threatening a black motorist and using racial epithets, he began to sniffle. Soon he let go a sob and noisily blew his nose. About five minutes earlier, the Gloucester County courtroom had been still as Trexler, 24, read a short statement about the person he said he used to be. He is a changed man, he said in a monotone yesterday. He said he was embarrassed that he had been "the type of person who could say such a cruel thing.

THE SHORT POUR Film Fest, to be held this weekend at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, owes a big debt to the inventors of Steadicam. Despite imbibing ample, sudsy portions of their feature subject, dozens of film directors somehow managed to keep their cameras focused long enough to produce a watchable body of work. The festival, the first devoted to short films about beer, includes more than two hours of original live action, animation, music videos and commercials. "It's really opened my eyes to how much media coverage and attention there is on beer, even way beyond what we see in TV commercials," said the festival's producer, Jeff Moses.

We haven't been to a Phillies game this season. Maybe we'll go Tuesday. That will give me time to prepare, because going to a ball game these days is considerably more complicated than it used to be. Let's see, what should I wear? Having watched with dismay as Phillies crowds grow increasingly red and as Flyers fans continue to believe the color of their shirts can impact the outcome of a playoff series, I guess we'd better join the club and dress like 4-year-olds at a T-Ball banquet.

The lawyer for a Fishtown man accused of delivering the fatal kick to the head of David W. Sale Jr. during a beer-fueled melee two years ago outside the Phillies' ballpark told a Philadelphia jury that his client was a victim of mistaken identity and would testify. "He never touched David Sale," Jack McMahon, the attorney for Francis Kirchner, said Wednesday in his opening statement to the Common Pleas Court jury in the trial of Kirchner and two others in the death of Sale, 22, of Lansdale.

For a lying, scheming criminal and junkie, he cleaned up well, and, under bruising cross-examination, more than held his own. If I had to score Round One of the most important testimony to date in the trial concerning sex abuse and conspiracy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, I'd give it to the beleaguered - yet believable - 30-year-old victim staring at his alleged abuser in court. "Mark," as he was labeled in the 2011 grand jury report, is the Bucks County man charging a criminal breach of trust by the Rev. James J. Brennan, a priest and family friend he thought of as an uncle.