Snowman On Fire

Livingston American Little League has made it to the championship game of the Mid-Atlantic Regional. This is a Very Big Deal. The AL team first won the NJ District 8 championship, going undefeated in winning the Essex/Hudson/Union county bracket of about a dozen teams. From there it was on the Section 2 championships, where they emerged as one of the four state finalists, and then a long weekend in Neptune, NJ crowned them state champions. The Americans lost only one game along the way. Because the tournaments up to state level are double-elimination, one loss doesn’t end your run. From Neptune, it was Bristol, CT, the home of ESPN and the Mid-Atlantic championship.

They went undefeated in the Mid-Atlantic pool play, going 4-0 to earn a top seed in the semi-finals. Friday night the Livingston team won again, setting up Monday night’s championship game. The winner gets on a bus to Williamsport, PA.

Sixteen teams end up in Williamsport, PA for the Little League World Series. Eight of them represent the United States; eight represent the other regions around the world and this year include teams from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Curacao. They are the best 11- and 12-year old teams — not individual players, but teams — from around the world.

Why the excitement? Livingston has two Little League charters — American and National Leagues. My son has played in, and I have coached and served on the board of, the National League. But once June arrives, and the tournament starts, our allegiances merge if one of our teams advances. Think about this from the perspective of my son’s 7-grade classmates: They’re playing on ESPN on Monday night, opposite a Major League Baseball game on national television. They have the hearts and minds of a town of 35,000 behind them, and a state of 8.6 million boasting Jersey pride. For a few weeks in August, our local boys are more popular than the Yankees and Mets combined.

This is what Little League is supposed to be about, the feeling that baseball is about having fun and playing hard and representing your town. I’m proud that our town is represented all the way to Connecticut, and hopefully, all the way out I-80 into next weekend.

Apologies to the Byrds, but there is a season for every time and a time for every purpose in the season. Shared ice practice, full ice practice, off-ice training, non-league games and a league schedule, all neatly wrapped up in spreadsheets and calendars. I attended my first New Jersey Youth Hockey League scheduling meeting yesterday, sorting out the weekends for the next seven months for about half of our youth Devils teams. It was the kind of morning that makes me proud to be associated with youth sports: delegates from every club, in a hotel in central New Jersey on a Saturday morning before 8:00 AM, ready to help everybody but themselves.

Hockey starts in just 8 days. Our little Devils will warm up the ice for the big Devils, who start camp only a week or so later. A new season with its own time.