Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

Pitchers and catchers are due to report to major league camps in Florida and Arizona in about four weeks, but the Newtown Sandy Hooks vintage base ball club is already preparing for the 2007 spring and summer campaign.

The preparation will begin by putting the search on for additional players – so, anyone, 18 years of age and older, looking to experience the vintage game can contact Michael Paes at buldog5151@aol.com or 270-0853.

Vintage base ball is essentially categorized in three eras – 1860s, 1870s and 1880s – with each featuring different rules and equipment etiquette. The two-year-old Sandy Hooks will be a predominantly (but not exclusively) 1860s team, which means underarm pitching with no gloves and unusual fielding rules (i.e., fly balls caught on a bounce are outs).

The new season promises to be an exciting one with games against the Simsbury Taverneers, the Hartford Dark Blues, the Waterbury Connors, the Brooklyn Atlantics and the fledgling Bridgeport Orators. Tournaments in Waterbury, Bethpage (New York), Pittsfield (Massachusetts) and Westfield (Massachusetts) are also planned as is a match at a Civil War Reenactment in Woodbury.

The season – currently with 12 dates on the calendar – is slated to open April 21 and will run through the end of September.

Give Mike a call or drop him an email. The team will hold another informational meeting in a couple of weeks.

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Let me tell you, Newtown High School head coach John Quinn is alright.

One moment I’m blathering in this space about wishing Kevin Troy had dunked on Joel Barlow in a key South-West Conference contest and a week later, late in a key contest with rival New Fairfield, he designs an in-bounds play that frees up Troy for an uncontested dunk.

Now, that’s cool.

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It seems kind of odd to be doing this, but the fans in the student sections at the Newtown-New Fairfield boys’ basketball game last Friday deserve some props.

They were loud, they were boisterous, and they were behind their teams through 32 minutes of action and while the Newtown group rode the New Fairfield group, and vice versa, things never really degenerated to a point where any of the security guards or police officers had to get involved (once, a certain “cheer” had to be stopped and, once, a fan in another section had to be quieted down).

It was a great atmosphere for high school basketball.

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I know I’m getting old when this thing about teenagers wearing their pants halfway down their hips and showing off their boxer shorts is really starting to bother me. When is that going to go out of style, huh?

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When did a two-year contact actually come to mean a one-year contract?

There was some speculation, after the late season collapse and early exit from the playoffs, that New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin – who had one year left on his contract – would be fired. But the Giants wanted him back, at least for another year, and so they extended his contract.

Why?

Well, apparently it has become common wisdom that a coach working in the final year of his deal is, essentially, a dead man walking. And common wisdom also says that a coach – despite making an exorbitant amount of money – certainly won’t try hard if he is in the final year of his deal. After all, what incentive does he have to try and succeed if he knows he will probably be fired at the end of the season?

So, because there is little integrity left in sports teams are forced to pay a coach two years salary for one year of effort. Essentially, the Giants extended Coughlin by a year knowing full well they will probably can him if the Giants fail again.

Jeez.

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You know, there are thousands upon thousands of lawyers in this country highly trained in the field of contract law yet, in college football, contracts are not worth the paper they are printed on (in triplicate).

A college football coach can, essentially, leave a school in the middle of his contract without any ramifications whatsoever. Schools can’t force a coach to stay because why would they want a coach who doesn’t want to be there?

Nick Saban left the Miami Dolphins to take the head coaching job at the University of Alabama, signing an eight-year, $32-million deal. Essentially, what that means is Saban signed eight one-year contracts at $4 million per.

The funny thing is, coaches can just up and leave with no ramifications, yet if Alabama – which has no guarantees that Saban isn’t, even now, courting another job somewhere else – were to dismiss Saban tomorrow they would still have to pony up the $32 million (or some buyout number somewhere in between $0 and $32 million).

Things are definitely out of whack.