Talk about class: Rutgers, Housy athletes set an example

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Ahh, baseball in the snow. You’d think the sight of the bulldozers clearing snow drifts from Jacobs Field in Cleveland would shut the global warming crowd up for a little while, no?

I like to draw sweeping conclusions from limited data as much as the next guy, so, based on the weather of the last four weeks, I hereby declare global warming over, and announce, with suitable hysteria, the beginning of an evil and sinister global cooling phase.

You watch — if we don’t do something about global cooling right now, in 10 years you’ll be able to strap on a pair of cross-country skis in Charleston, S.C., and head straight to Reykjavik.

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Southington’s Carl Pavano, who occasionally takes a break from things and pitches for the New York Yankees, is back on the disabled list. I have lost track of how much time he has spent on this list, but it dwarfs the amount of time he has played.

And I find it difficult to feel sorry for the man. He signed an enormous contract to do nothing, and while I am sure he’d rather be pitching and winning and being a star of the most-recognized franchise in all professional sports, I suspect depositing the weekly paycheck takes the sting out a bit.

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Back in real life, the Housy boys lacrosse team took on the Masuk Panthers, a pretty good team from Monroe, Conn., Saturday morning in a driving, chill wind.

The Mountaineers lost, rather convincingly, 20-5, but that’s not the story.

The story is that when they were down, the kids never gave up.

Coach Mark Gouldy says that for many of the players, lacrosse is a new sport. "We try to infuse them with enthusiasm for the game — the fastest game on two feet, by the way."

And he points out how accessible lacrosse is to the non-enormous player.

"You don’t need to be 6’4" and 280 pounds. You can be a regular athlete."

To make the state tournament, Housatonic must win seven of 16 games. The Mountaineers are 1-2, with two tough road games coming up.

Lacrosse is one of those games where the refs blow a whistle for no reason that is apparent to me; I am (so far) immune to the sport’s finer points.

But the basic setup is similar to soccer or hockey — and it’s easy to tell when a team is disheartened.

I saw no sign of that Saturday. And that’s a mark of character — something that doesn’t always show up in the standings.