By Rich Chrampanis
TRENTON – New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy got to experience the sounds of baseball in the summer from the crack of the bat to even some boo birds. Murphy was able to attend a number of games during the Last Dance World Series, a 222-team high school baseball tournament that culminated with the championship game July 31 in Trenton.
Murphy threw the ceremonial first pitch prior to the title game between Jackson Memorial and Cranford. The governor stood in front of the mound and his toss was low and bounced to home plate as boos came from the crowd of 500 at Arm & Hammer Ballpark, the home of New York Yankees affiliate Trenton Thunder.
Murphy took in games at Count Basie Field in Red Bank, TD Bank Ballpark in Somerset, FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood and the championship game in the state capital that was won by Cranford. The three-week Last Dance World Series was seen as a precursor to the return of high school fall sports. The three-week event saw two teams forced to exit due to positive COVID-19 tests during the tournament and a couple of teams that departed prior to the start of the tournament. Even so, the tournament has to be considered a success with three weeks of games around the state.
“It’s a great moment to be able to get out, play sports in the midst of this awful pandemic and I just take my hat off to everybody,” Murphy said. “I’m really hoping that we’re able to learn from this and extend it into the fall sports season.”
While the debate continues about students returning to the classroom, the NJSIAA has pushed back the fall sports season to October with the hopes of playing a six-week regular season and two-week playoff schedule that would have the season wrapped up before Thanksgiving.
“When you have organized sports in a structured environment with professionals coaching, it gets done right,” Bergen County state Sen. Paul A. Sarlo said. “We’re finding it’s after the organized structure where kids are getting reckless and that’s where we need to stop. In order to play high school sports, they have to stay with their team and be compliant and not reckless off the field.”
Murphy sees indoor gatherings with no masks as the culprit for the rising cases of COVID-19 in recent weeks.
“There are red flags and most of it is due to indoor activity,” Murphy said. “Indoor parties on top of each other with no face coverings, that’s a recipe for disaster. When you’re outdoors, it’s structured. You have real coaches and institutional sport. My personal view is that we’ll get there.”
The final two weeks of the Last Dance World Series were held at minor league ballparks around the state leaving ample room for the crowd, capped at 500 people, to spread out and watch games. The governor feels the same can apply to high school sports using the same 500-person limit. When pressed by reporters on whether high school sports can happen if the state is entirely in remote learning, Murphy did not want to address hypotheticals and ended his remarks with, “I want high school sports back.”
Seven states across the country have already announced moving fall sports into the spring with Maryland being the latest to reboot high school sports Jan. 1, 2021.
When the Cranford Cougars piled on top of each other in celebration of their championship last Friday night, it marked the end of three weeks of exciting high school baseball action. Now, everyone waits to see when we will see high school sports again.
The article originally appeared in the August 6 – 12, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
