Goose Bumps

The matchups have been set for five of South Jersey's six boys' basketball championships, highlighted by tonight's Group 4 final between Shawnee and Atlantic City. Three teams - Burlington City (Group 1), Haddonfield (Group 2) and St. Augustine (Parochial A) - will be trying to repeat as South Jersey champs. The South Jersey Parochial B final will be set up after tonight's semifinals: Moorestown Friends at Cardinal McCarrick, and McCorristin at Holy Spirit. Here is a look at the five other South Jersey finals, along with the Central Jersey Group 1 championship game: Group 4. Top-seeded Shawnee (25-1)

A week ago, fans attending 76ers games were still cheering for the Eagles. On Saturday night in an electric setting in the Wachovia Center, the cheers were all for the Sixers. Allen Iverson enjoyed another virtuoso performance, the first 60-point game of his career, in a 112-99 win over the Orlando Magic. He shot 17 for 36 from the floor and 2 for 5 from three-point territory. He also drilled 24 of 27 free-throw attempts. When he hit two free throws with 1 minute, 7 seconds left to become the first NBA player to score 60 points since Tracy McGrady last season, the crowd roar was deafening.

Forget, for a moment, The Wall. By now, anyone remotely familiar with the CoreStates U.S. Pro Cycling Championship has heard of that vertigo-inspiring incline in Manayunk. It remains a stunning place to view Sunday's 156-mile bicycle race. But guess what? The Wall is not the only spot to find the soul of competitive cycling. Try getting up and out early enough Sunday to secure a place along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway just before the 9 a.m. start of this country's most important single-day professional bicycle race.

William Titelman, lawyer and lobbyist, is known as one of the most thick-skinned guys in Harrisburg. But in late September he and his wife spent the night in a place that gave him goose bumps. The Lincoln Bedroom. So awestruck was Titelman, 50, that he rose at dawn and penned letters to his three children and his mother, mementos he hoped they would cherish for a lifetime. He'd been awakened that morning by the sound of a chopper, and opened the blinds to see Marine One taking on board the man Titelman was helping reelect: the President of the United States.

THE MIAMI HEAT isn't bringing in a singer to belt out "The Star-Spangled Banner" before tonight's playoff game against the Celtics. With the news of Osama bin Laden's death, at the hands of U.S. forces, the team has decided that the 19,000-plus fans should do the honor. Also, the team was already planning to honor U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Henry Hernandez as part of its "Home Strong" program that recognizes soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, the team is ramping up the pregame festivities, and Hernandez will be joined by other military personnel who will unfurl a 50-foot American flag during the national athem.

Halloween is upon us, the time for things that go bump in the night. New to video this week are two superior chillers guaranteed to produce goose bumps on a cold autumn night. "Ginger Snaps" (VHS: priced for rental; DVD: $19.99) is a real find. This direct-to-video Canadian gem played a few film festivals but was deserving of a theatrical release. Two sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, are their high school's outcasts. They're obsessed with death and flaunt their individuality to a community where nonconformity is unheard of. When Ginger is attacked one night by a mysterious beast, she soon gets in touch with her inner animal self, slowly turning into a werewolf with only one person to stop her - her sister!

WOW! The op-ed by Calvin Helton Sr. gave me goose bumps all over. The man is prolific, astute and has a hand on the pulse of what is going on in the black community. We're all affected by this senseless violence. I have attended two such funerals already this year. Young, black, promising males, both under 25 - gone. Mr. Helton was so right that it will take men to help raise our men of the future. I feel so bad for all of the families left behind by this insidious sickness of violence against black men today.

WITH THE passing of Bobby Thomson yesterday, I started to think about the importance of his Great Home Run. Sure, many others are just as much or more prominent for winning bigger prizes, like Bill Mazeroski's and Joe Carter's, both ending the World Series. And who could forget Kirk Gibson's painful but joyous romp around the bases after his bolt ended a World Series game? And, true, Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World" only put the New York Giants in the World Series, which they would eventually lose.

At the same time Jon Young was feeling nothing, he was giving teammate Mike Caruso goose bumps. Young's fifth-inning home run made Caruso's one-hit pitching gem stand up as the Cherry Hill West baseball team beat Mainland, 1-0, in a first-round game in the Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic at Rowan University. The Lions will meet Delsea, a 5-2 winner over Millville, in a second-round game at Deptford 1:30 p.m. Saturday. The disappointing aspect of the game was that, by luck of the seeding draw, yesterday's matchup came in the first round, not the final.

The protagonist of the musical Goosebumps believes that you know something is right for you if it causes goose bumps to rise on your arms. Goosebumps, itself, raises no goose bumps. There is not much right about this new musical or its premiere production at South Jersey Regional Theater. The thing about geese the musical calls most immediately to mind is not a bump but an egg. A goose egg, a zero, is about what the music, lyrics and book of this show rate. All three are by Allan Jay Friedman, who doesn't do any of them well.

THE MIAMI HEAT isn't bringing in a singer to belt out "The Star-Spangled Banner" before tonight's playoff game against the Celtics. With the news of Osama bin Laden's death, at the hands of U.S. forces, the team has decided that the 19,000-plus fans should do the honor. Also, the team was already planning to honor U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Henry Hernandez as part of its "Home Strong" program that recognizes soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, the team is ramping up the pregame festivities, and Hernandez will be joined by other military personnel who will unfurl a 50-foot American flag during the national athem.

WITH THE passing of Bobby Thomson yesterday, I started to think about the importance of his Great Home Run. Sure, many others are just as much or more prominent for winning bigger prizes, like Bill Mazeroski's and Joe Carter's, both ending the World Series. And who could forget Kirk Gibson's painful but joyous romp around the bases after his bolt ended a World Series game? And, true, Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World" only put the New York Giants in the World Series, which they would eventually lose.

Careers are mostly about taking steps. West Chester's Sean O'Hair is about to take the next one in his progression as one of the best under-30 players on the PGA Tour. The 2005 Rookie of the Year is on the 12-man American team that will take on the rest of the World (minus Europe) in the biennial Presidents Cup matches starting tomorrow at Harding Park, a municipal course in San Francisco. He's the only member of the U.S. squad who has never played in one of these. He was in position to get to his first Ryder Cup a year ago but didn't.

After a workout at the Skate Zone in Voorhees yesterday, a handful of Flyers went to the Phillies parade - hoping it was a test run. "You really want to take in just the passion and the way the fans here treat their sports teams," said winger Scottie Upshall, a Center City resident, before heading to the parade. "For myself and for all of us here, all we really have is the video of old [parades], and to witness firsthand what it's like, it puts the taste in the back of our minds to what it would be like maybe in June.

FOR A SPECIAL performance in his final baseball act, Nick Ferdinand deserved something akin to a Tony. A home run of 400-plus feet would have been enough. But there was also a two-run triple and, while playing rightfield, a spectacular catch and one-hop bullet right to the plate. What a way to go out! Or not. Wait. Hasn't the 6-1, 200-pound Ferdinand, freshly graduated from Archbishop Ryan High, signed with Bloomsburg to help the football team as a wide receiver? Indeed.

Seven seasons ago, the Phillies enthusiastically announced that their rebuilding effort was over. They drew a line in the infield dirt and issued a challenge to the rest of the National League East. Remember the "Bring It On" promotional campaign of 2000? The Phillies finished tied with the Chicago Cubs for the worst record in the majors that season. "Send It Back" seemed more fitting than "Bring It On. " This season of high hopes has brought the Phillies another new catchy promotional campaign.

WOW! The op-ed by Calvin Helton Sr. gave me goose bumps all over. The man is prolific, astute and has a hand on the pulse of what is going on in the black community. We're all affected by this senseless violence. I have attended two such funerals already this year. Young, black, promising males, both under 25 - gone. Mr. Helton was so right that it will take men to help raise our men of the future. I feel so bad for all of the families left behind by this insidious sickness of violence against black men today.

The matchups have been set for five of South Jersey's six boys' basketball championships, highlighted by tonight's Group 4 final between Shawnee and Atlantic City. Three teams - Burlington City (Group 1), Haddonfield (Group 2) and St. Augustine (Parochial A) - will be trying to repeat as South Jersey champs. The South Jersey Parochial B final will be set up after tonight's semifinals: Moorestown Friends at Cardinal McCarrick, and McCorristin at Holy Spirit. Here is a look at the five other South Jersey finals, along with the Central Jersey Group 1 championship game: Group 4. Top-seeded Shawnee (25-1)

A week ago, fans attending 76ers games were still cheering for the Eagles. On Saturday night in an electric setting in the Wachovia Center, the cheers were all for the Sixers. Allen Iverson enjoyed another virtuoso performance, the first 60-point game of his career, in a 112-99 win over the Orlando Magic. He shot 17 for 36 from the floor and 2 for 5 from three-point territory. He also drilled 24 of 27 free-throw attempts. When he hit two free throws with 1 minute, 7 seconds left to become the first NBA player to score 60 points since Tracy McGrady last season, the crowd roar was deafening.

At the same time Jon Young was feeling nothing, he was giving teammate Mike Caruso goose bumps. Young's fifth-inning home run made Caruso's one-hit pitching gem stand up as the Cherry Hill West baseball team beat Mainland, 1-0, in a first-round game in the Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic at Rowan University. The Lions will meet Delsea, a 5-2 winner over Millville, in a second-round game at Deptford 1:30 p.m. Saturday. The disappointing aspect of the game was that, by luck of the seeding draw, yesterday's matchup came in the first round, not the final.