Our corner of the world goes national ... with Menhart and Nats

And so, the World Series begins Tuesday, once again with representation from The Little Region That Could. Who knew, really, that a place of modest geography with so much baseball unfriendly weather could produce the battalion of baseball believers with the capability to go national.

Now go figure: This time, our corner of the world has gone national ... with the Nationals.

Paul Menhart, the former Fitch and New London Legion great, is the Nats' pitching coach, the man whose mantra of "make them feel good about themselves and then get out of the way," helped the eventual National League champs not only cut a swath through the poor Cardinals, but may show the mighty Astros' lineup soon enough that Houston, you have a problem.

Consider the previous paragraphs prologue for a most intriguing phone call over the weekend from a writer who picked up on our region's contributions to the majors over the years: Menhart, McDonald, Davis, Campbell, Carignan, Leone, Fordyce, Schaefer, Harvey, Hahn, Walker, Gardner, Ellils, Wotus and others such as Todd Donovan who came within an eyelash of the majors and is employed by a major league team.

The question: "Is there something in the water there?"

Maybe there's a sociology major out there somewhere who could conjure a better answer. But here's my best swing:

I'm not sure there's another area of the country of the same modest

geography — and certainly with such rotten spring weather — that has ever produced a better stable of coaches than our triangle. By that I mean, loosely translated, the I-395 corridor, extended as west as the Baldwin Bridge and as east to Westerly.

Think about the coaching our kids have received from, in no particular order: Jim O'Neill, Roger Bidwell, Jim Littlefield, Bill Holowaty, Gerry Rousseau, Jack O'Keefe, Gil Varjas, Ed Harvey, George Greer, Bob Schaefer, Billy Gardner, Phil Orbe, John Schiffner and others unintentionally omitted.

That list includes men who have won multiple high school state championships, American Legion state championships, appeared in Legion and the College World Series, managed on Cape Cod and in the majors. It's almost fictional that one modest region could produce, to steal the line from the Bud Light commercial, as many Real Men of Genius.

And they've learned from each other, apparently.

Menhart, who worked his way northward in the Nats' organization, came back to Fitch a few years ago and told the kids on the team the following:

"All the things I've done," Menhart said, "the one thing that always stayed with me was (former Fitch coach) Ed Harvey, who taught me more about baseball than any man ever has. I feel the same about Bernie (Nasser) and soccer. Your high school coach will stay with you forever. It's just that some of you might not realize it until later."

I've learned over the years that nobody ever really takes time to dissect the moment when they're immersed in it. So maybe that's why it hasn't always been obvious why we produce so much baseball talent with spring weather closer to Anchorage than El Paso. But we've truly been blessed with several coaches who shared what they learned over the years and enough kids who absorbed it.

Combine that with God-given ability and some give-adamn ... and poof ... we have the kind of representation in the majors — and now the World Series — that would have many similarly sized regions in the south and west taking notes.

Some might suggest that Menhart's job isn't so hard when your pitchers are named Strasburg and Scherzer. Maybe not. But Paul Menhart has been smart enough over the years to listen to the Ed Harveys of the world. Listen and learn. Learn and listen. Now he imparts similar wisdom.

And who knows if during a trip to the mound this week Menhart's lips may be simply repeating something Harvey once told him? It's nice to be the envy of the universe sometimes. Because when it comes to baseball, nobody does it better than we do. This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro