IS ON THE TRADE RUMOR TRAIL
Eagles defensive end Chris Clemons scared teammates and coaches when trainers had trouble bringing down his his body temperature, after Clemons left the morning workout with dehydration symptoms. Clemons eventually left Lehigh's A. Haigh Cundey Varsity House, where the Eagles dress and train, in the back of a white-and-blue City of Bethlehem Emergency Medical Sevices ambulance, which arrived with lights and siren running a little after 11:10 a.m
.Eagles officials forbade photographers and TV cameramen from shooting footage of Clemons being loaded into the ambulance, which was not running its siren when it departed at 11:27 a.m., preceded by a black unmarked police car. Clemons seemed to be conscious and sitting up on a stretcher, hooked to an IV, as he entered the ambulance, though reporters were kept about 40 feet away, across a road from the entrance to the fieldhouse.
Eagles coach Andy Reid and team security director Butch Buchanico followed the ambulance in a white SUV.
It wasn't oppressively hot during the morning session of Eagles training camp -- officially, temperatures were in the low 80s, under bright sun -- but at least a few players seemed to experience cramps or dehydration, Clemons most dramatically.
Clemons left the field on a motorized cart, with a tan ice-filled cooling cap on his head. When the cart got to to doorway of the fieldhouse, Clemons needed a trainer under each shoulder to get into the building. Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb theorized that Clemons, 26, a free agent signee from the Raiders, was unaccustomed to the brisk pace of Eagles workouts.
"We're kind of adjusted to it," McNabb said at his scheduled news conference, minutes after Clemons was whisked away. "This is his first go-round."
McNabb said he knew little about the situation, beyond the fact that when McNabb came in from the field, Clemons was "just sitting there, they were throwing some cold rags on him."
Les Bowen has covered the Eagles for the Daily News since 2002. Before that, he spent nearly 13 years covering the Flyers. It took Les only a few seasons after the switch to figure out that there was no penalty box at the Linc, and that the time really wasn't his, despite what Andy Reid kept saying. Les came to Philadelphia and the Daily News from Charlotte in 1983. In the intervening years, he has pretty much lost track of NASCAR, and his accent. He, his wife Barbara, and their two sons live in Haddon Township, New Jersey.
Paul Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982. He has spent most of his 27 years at the paper covering the Eagles and pro football. For the last 10 years, he’s been a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A native of Wilkes-Barre and a graduate of Wilkes University, Domo came to the Daily News from the Fort Worth (Tx.) Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually wa s boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose two sports coats to blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley, a University of Oklahoma grad and very dangerous to be around following a Sooner loss, have been married 29 years and have raised 2 terrific daughters – Allison, 26, a lawyer and graduate of Boston University School of Law; and Amy, 23, who graduated from Clemson and works in marketing and sales for a professional baseball team.
