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Sports

New Canaan Concludes Its Fall Ball Baseball Season

According to commissioner Mike O'Neill, Fall Ball was more about fun, camaraderie and love of the game than the actual results

This past Sunday, the 2011 Fall Baseball season came to a close.

Fall Ball, as we know it, is much different than baseball in the spring and summer. Most of the kids in town are doing other sports at this time of year and only the true diehards are still involved with baseball after Labor Day. But there’s something nice about Fall Ball. It’s a little looser and for those of us who are involved, the crisp air and the changing foliage makes it all seem appropriate.

Last year, our 12U group only had enough for one team, so this year we expanded it to include 10 year olds and it worked. Twenty players divided by two, allowed us to have two teams who could play each other on a weekly basis. But we still needed coaches. 

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This summer, NC Baseball enacted a new program for college kids to intern in a variety of ways. It worked so well, we decided to keep it rolling and reached out to a handful of high school players. It started with one and led to the next as friends called friends.

Johnny Osterndorf assumed the head coaching role for the Mets and Tucker Radecki took on the Twins. Andrew White and Mike Paladino aligned with Johnny while Liam Bowers, Matt Toth and Dan Rajkowski fell in with Tucker.

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Logistically, we had a small challenge. Only one of the guys had his own car. Liam could carry the big bag of equipment and helmets in his trunk and a dad on the Mets, Gary Russo, offered to carry the other bag and his trunk probably gained an inch of dirt in the process.

The two teams met twice a week for a practice and a game on Saturday. We were able to network with Darien and Weston and managed to play several games, home and away. When teams were short, we combined our efforts, merging both teams and faced the out-of-towners as one unit. 

We took our lumps but what didn’t kill us made us stronger. Of course, the best games were against each other. As so often happens in town sports, the event lures the whole family and people got to know everyone as if it was one big team.

Sometimes the weather cooperated and sometimes it didn’t. Rescheduling became part of the journey and they were the ones to remind me not the other way around. The three of us emailed often, no different than if we worked together. I had them call me by my first name because we did work together and that seemed right. I can’t stress this enough. I looked at them as equals because they were managing this difficult part of coaching as well as how they taught the fundamentals on the field. They communicated.

Throughout the season, I received random emails from parents saying how much funs their kids were having. People told me in person and sometimes when that happens, they say it just to say it and sometimes they really mean it. This time they really meant it. The kids were having a ball. I dropped by occasionally but for the most part they ran their practices and games on their own. They were in charge.

As the final two weeks were nothing but rain and even snow, they kept up their encouraging emails to their players. These guys had their studies to worry about as well as their own high school team games and practices, but they managed to keep it all together. They were there for each other and the players looked up to them. 

The game on Sunday ended and the final score just didn’t matter. The coaches handed out their trophies separately, one group in left and the other in right. The boys rose, shook each hand and sat down again. Then we called everyone to the mound and took one final picture. The final image I had was of each team sitting in a circle around their standing coaches putting off the inevitable good bye.

It was only two months but they will have their memories for years to come. The coaches and players will always be there in the dugout, spitting sunflower seeds, consoling on a strike out, high fiving on a ribbie, encouraging the pitcher to ‘finish this guy’ and calling for the shortstop to make that long throw over to first to end the inning.

I’m so proud of these guys and you should be, too.

My thanks to Emad who runs the Apple Cart food stand with a smile, and to Johnny’s dad, Bill, who helped me put two and two together.

Mike O'Neill is The New Canaan Fall Ball Commissioner

 

 

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