Kids from two intense high school rivals show us the way ... again
T he concept of "and the children shall lead them" isn't merely poetic license taken from a Biblical verse, but often written for effect, reflecting the spirit of a larger point.
Like how many times kids, without neither enough experience nor wisdom, manage to show us, even if unwittingly, a light for the way.
The children led us again on a baseball field on the other side of the state earlier this week, once again illustrating a perspective for sports too often lost on their elders.
The scene: North Haven and Amity, two Rockefellers of state high school baseball, learned their conference tournament semifinal game would be rained out Tuesday afternoon. There's not much more disappointing for a kid than arriving at the field in your uniform ready to go, only to learn all over again that nature is a mother.
But before the teams left, they decided to play a game anyway.
They "decided" their playoff matchup with a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors at home plate.
A kids' game to decide a kids' game. It went 11 rounds. Smiles all around.
Two intense rivals showing all of us that, yes, sports are for win or lose, not life or death.
Happily, GameTimeCT.com, the state's hub for high school sports, was there to capture the event. Pete Paguaga, there to cover the baseball game, instead provided a detailed account of Rock-Paper-Scissors. If he doesn't win some kind of award for
it, there should be an investigation.
We can all wax poetic about the innocence and purity of high school sports. But this was a living, breathing example.
Nothing that has happened in high school sports all year is as important as what the kids from Amity and North Haven showed us. A primer on the schools: Amity is the state's preeminent program at the moment. The Spartans recently accomplished something that may never get duplicated: four straight Class LL baseball titles. Look at it this way: It's hard enough to win once in Class LL, the state's most competitive division. It's hard enough to win once in baseball, where one hot pitcher — even on a mediocre team — can derail an entire season. And Amity won four straight. The author: coach Sal Coppola, a really good guy, who has some history with our corner of the world. Before Coppola was winning titles, he was dreading the thought of playing Norwich Free Academy in the playoffs. That's because in 2003 and 2004, Coppola and Amity ran into NFA right-hander and future major leaguer Andrew Carignan, who ended Amity's season twice in the state tournament, including the 2003 state championship game.
Coppola was nothing but a gentleman in defeat.
North Haven is coached by one of the all-time greats in Connecticut: Bob DeMayo, a win shy of 900 in his career. North Haven, a multiple time state champion, has ended two Fitch and one East Lyme season in the last five years, a tribute to DeMayo's brilliance.
My first job out of college was at the weekly in North Haven covering DeMayo's team. I loved the guy. Colorful and earnest. He was very much like the great Gil Varjas at New London. They could turn a walk, hit batter, three bunts and two stolen bases into a 13-run rally. He's still doing it all these years later.
Maybe it's no surprise that two of the good guys like Coppola and DeMayo coach a bunch of kids that, despite the inherent pressures of high school sports today, still get it to the degree that they could play Rock-Paper-Scissors after a rainout.
This just in: Rivals don't always behave that way, surely not now in the macho world of sports, where any sense of humanity degenerates into signs of softness and weakness.
Go figure: a bunch of kids playing a game when they couldn't play a game.
They remind us all over again of the role sports and competition play.
It's only the best story of the whole year.
Maybe there's hope for us after all. This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro