DELAWARE SPORTS IN THE 1990S 

In the first decade of the 20th century the three big sports in Delaware were baseball, trapshooting and horse racing. At the start of the last decade of the 20th century there was no professional baseball in the state, no trapshooting and horse racing was rapidly disappearing. That was soon to change. With a bang.

On April 9, 1990 the best everyday player Delaware had produced since Judy Johnson - Delino DeShields - made his major league debut by banging out three singles and a double against the St. Louis Cardinals. At that time only ten players had collected four hits in their first game, one being Delawarean Spook Jacobs. DeShields would go on to finish second in Rookie of Year balloting to David Justice.

On April 16, 1993 minor league baseball came back to Delaware after its longest absence since the game was introduced to the state some 110 years earlier. More than forty years had buried past failures and disappointments before new optimistic owners. The Blue Rocks were back on the field. The new Wilmington nine played to near-capacity crowds in its inaugural season and won five division and four league titles before the decade was out.

Horse racing came back in the First State as well, but not on its own. It was called in Legislative Hall the Horseracing Redevelopment Act but the people of Delaware knew it as legalized gambling. The state’s three remaining horse racing tracks - Delaware Park, Dover Downs and Harrington Raceway - were permitted to install video lottery slot machines and the profits would be sliced up among

the casino, the state, the vendors and horsemen. The one-armed bandits made their debut on December 29, 1995. More prize money and better horses materialized as promised. Crowds as big as decades before? Not so much.

Professional soccer was reintroduced with the formation of the Delaware Wizards in 1993, playing as one of 43 teams in the more localized U.S. International Soccer League. The Wizards, like the Wings of the 1970s, bore a heavy Delaware flavor. On their opening roster the Wizards had 21 players, more than half of whom played either high school or college soccer in the state.

The Wizards finished 11-8 in the Atlantic Division, making the playoffs in their first year where Delaware lost to Greensboro, the eventual league champion. The Wizards pulled 3000 fans to each game at Glasgow Stadium and the team earned recognition as a model franchise in the USISL in the first two years as a farm team for the New York/ New Jersey MetroStars. By 1997, however, attendance was diminishing and the franchise slipped across the border into southern Chester County. The Wizards would not see the new century.

There was also news in the 1990s from another keystone Delaware sport that had not been in the headlines for many a year: bowling. James “JJ” Johnson had been drawing kegeling notoriety at Bowlerama and Holiday Lanes and First State Lanes and Blue Hen Lanes since his junior bowling days, accumulating a record 67 perfect games certified by the United States Bowling Congress.

Johnson was the finest bowling talent Delaware had seen since commercial artist and semi-pro baseball player Robbie Robinson busted his knee in a play at the plate and took up the sport in the 1960s. Robinson rolled on the Tour and won the prestigious Hoinke Singles Amateur Tournament in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1988 Johnson joined the Professional Bowling Association and in Portland at the Hollywood Bowl in 1997 he became the first Delaware-born PBA winner when he downed Hall-of-Famer Pete Webber 232-197. Before leaving the tour in 2001, Johnson earned over $176,000 in 142 tour events.

But alas, there was still no world-class trapshooting competition in Delaware.

Delaware Special Olympics 

The first International Special Olympics Summer Games were held in Chicago in 1968 with swimming and track and field events. The Delaware Special Olympics organized its first track & field competition in June 1971 with 100 athletes gathered at Wilmington High School. In its early years the chapter grew to include basketball and bowling and soccer and participation ballooned to over 400 athletes.

In 1989 the Delaware Summer Games found a new permanent home at the University of Delaware. There would eventually be some 4,000 athletes competing in 20 sports and training in Special Olympics programs statewide. At competition time more than 3000 volunteers assisted in the seasonal sports festivals with winners advancing to national and international meets.

In 1997 Renee Baldwin Kalokitus became the first Special Olympics athlete to be inducted into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame. In 15 years of competition Renee had participated in swimming, long- distance running, softball, cross-country skiing, basketball, volleyball, track and sailing. She competed in two World Games in the 1990s and excelled at aquatics. Her performances in the 100-metre individual medley and 200-metre freestyle earned her recognition as the United States Olympic committee’s 1991 Outstanding Female Athlete of the Year and the National Swim Coaches Association Female Aquatics Athlete of the Year -- both firsts for a Special Olympics athlete from any state.

First State Sports Hero of the Decade: Delino DeShields 

When Montreal Expos general manger Murray Cook announced the selection of Seaford’s Delino DeShields as the 12th overall pick in the 1987 Major League Baseball draft he called the second baseman “the best athlete in the country.”

He certainly had the resume, beginning with two state championships with the Nanticocke Little League in 1981 and 1982. At Seaford High School he was an All-State defensive back as the Blue Jays won a Division II state championship. He was an All-State infielder and won a state championship in baseball in 1986. And basketball was his best sport, where he set a school record with 1,751 points.

DeShields was such a dynamic basketball player that Rollie Massamino, still basking in his 1985 NCAA championship, offered the Seaford star hi one available scholarship to play for Villanova University. DeShields committed to Villanova and planned to pursue both sports but after his first taste of minor league baseball he concluded that he absolutely had a future in the major leagues. He rescinded his scholarship to concentrate on baseball and was right.

DeShields, known as “Bop,” was in the Expos starting line-up in 1990 at the age of 21. He was part of one the finest core of rookies ever assembled, along with Marquis Grissom and Larry Walker. DeShields batted .289 in hit debut year and finished 2nd in the Rookie of the Year race. Two years later he was 16th in MVP voting. The young Expo core would produce 94 wins in 1993 and a baseball-best 74-40 in 1994 before the season was cancelled. For good or ill, Deshields was not in Montreal for that disappointment.

After the 1993 season DeShields was dealt to Los Angeles for a rookie pitcher named Pedro Martinez. The move would work out poorly for the Delaware star on both ends. While he struggled through the three worst years of his career with the Dodgers Martinez became of the greatest pitchers of all-time. Once out of Los Angeles, finished out the decade batting .295, .290, .264 and .296. Always possessing a good eye at the plate he was among the league leaders in ob-base percentage among middle infielders.

Delino DeShields wrapped up his playing career in 2002. He had come to the plate in a major league game 6,652 times - far more than any Delawarean. He was ranked in the top 50 of all-time for career steals with 463. Fewer than 50 players ever played more major league games at second base.

In retirement DeShields started the Urban Baseball League which barnstormed with ex-big leaguers in urban communities to promote the game and in 2009 he got back into the professional game as a batting instructor for the Billings Mustangs in the Pioneer League. He became a manager for the Dayton Dragons in the Cincinnati Reds organization in 2011 and has worked his way up to be manager of the Triple A Louisville Bats. He also coached his son Delino DeShields Jr. who broke into the majors as an outfielder with the Texas Rangers in 2015. And also his daughter Diamond who was a two-time Miss Georgia Basketball in 2011 and 2013 and stars in the University of Tennessee backcourt.