Jersey Shore

Jersey Shore won the 2010 Carpenter Cup baseball tournament yesterday, defeating Suburban One League National/Bicentennial, 7-3, at Citizens Bank Park. Jersey Shore last won the title in 2002. The victory completed a Jersey Shore sweep of the Carpenter Cup, as the softball team won the championship on Tuesday.

After five years of declining values exceeding those of Philadelphia and its suburban counties, most Jersey Shore towns experienced flat or positive price changes in this year's first quarter, economist Kevin Gillen of Econsult Inc. said Thursday. In an analysis for Prudential Fox & Roach, Gillen found that the typical Shore home declined in value by a scant 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in the quarter. Prices fell 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 6.2 percent in the third quarter.

I have surfed the perfect waves of South Africa, strolled the great corniches of the Mediterranean, sailed the rocky shores of New England, hiked the Welsh and Scottish coasts and relaxed in the luxurious Caribbean, with a man-servant nearby and my glass never empty. But, no place can beat the Jersey Shore. Don't raise your soft palms in mock horror. I know how blue that water is off Mombassa and how everybody in Biarritz walks around barefoot up to their sunglasses. Wildwood they ain't.

In yet another sign of a golf market in flux, Blue Heron Pines West, the original high-end daily-fee course at the Jersey Shore, is being sold. The course in Galloway Township, which has been popular with vacationers, casino patrons and golfers on getaways from Philadelphia since it opened in 1993, is being sold by Ole Hansen & Sons Inc. to RDC Golf Group, a New Jersey company that owns or manages a half-dozen courses on the East Coast. Neither buyer nor seller would disclose the price.

More than any state in the nation, New Jersey has taken a stand against the invading tides. It has the most engineered beach in the country, its coastline bearing more scar tissue than any other shoreline. It has one of the nation's highest annual shore-protection budgets, $25 million, administered by the state's land-use agency, the Department of Environmental Protection. The state is so committed to shoring up its beaches that the department's commissioner, Robert Shinn has lobbied in Trenton and Washington for beachfill money.

RE CHRISTINE Flowers' recent "Jersey Shore" column: Christine, loved your article. I go to Sea Isle City every summer and invited some out-of-towners to the beach with me. Reply: "No way I'm going to the Jersey Shore. I watched that MTV show . . . " Lovely. Keep fighting the good fight. Dougie Morrison Philadelphia

Gina Falcone had one thought yesterday as she strode to the batter's box. "I was thinking, 'I don't want to have to play another game,' " Falcone said. "It was too hot. " So the Monmouth Regional junior took matters into her own hands. Falcone swung at the first pitch and drove in the winning runs as Jersey Shore rallied and conquered defending champion Lehigh Valley, 6-5, to win its first Carpenter Cup Classic softball title at FDR Park. Trailing, 4-2, entering the bottom of the sixth, Jersey Shore erupted for four runs with two outs.

"JERSEY SHORE" made a blockbuster trade earlier this year, dumping a group of boorish, bronzed clowns on Europe in exchange for hundreds of studious young men and women, eager to make money and soak up the American experience. We gave the world "Snooki" and "The Situation. " The world gave us Aytac and Olesia. The cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore," according to published reports, didn't have a personal renaissance in Florence. They spent their time racking up fines, beating each other up, and butchering the native tongue while the country collectively referred to the crew as "tamarri," Italian for uncultured or vulgar.