A New Jersey girls’ Little League team lost the state championship final last week, after their game was suspended by heavy rain and officials refused to let the players complete the final innings the following day as planned. The call left the kids and others questioning the fairness of the decision.
The Toms River Little League Majors 12-year-old softball team played their final game against Hanover on Wednesday, but play was suspended before the start of the sixth inning due to the storm.
Tournament officials initially said the game would be played the following day, but Toms River’s coach Brad Bossow got an email the next morning, saying it would no longer be played, and the score that stood when play was stopped was final.
That gave the win to Hanover, New Jersey’s team, which had been leading 6-4 when the downpour began.
Bossow suggested that the opposing team’s Little League district’s president “pulled a fast one” by contacting league officials at 2:30 a.m. pushing for the change.
“And that’s sort of the sneaky, slimy part of it all,” Bossow, whose daughter is on the team, told The Post.
“In the middle of the night, he sends out a message to them, saying that based on these Little League rules, the game should be completed and Hanover should be announced as the state champion.”
That underhanded plea went to the tournament committee in at Little League headquarters in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which awarded Hanover the win.
Bossow said that ruling will most likely stand. “My district representative told me that Little League has never made a change, once they decide something, they’ve never gone back on it,” he said.
“It’s just gut-wrenching for the girls. They were more upset over the fact that they were told one thing and then it didn’t happen.”
Although Hanover was in the lead when play was suspended, Toms River had scored in both the fourth and fifth innings, and was hoping continue rallying to earn the title.
The game, which was held in Clifton, began at 8 p.m. and play was suspended about an hour later.
That’s when the rules started becoming blurred.
“There was lightning in the area, I would say in the third inning,” Bossow said. The tournament officials checked a weather app and determined the storm was far enough away that play could continue, he recounted, which was counter to the decision in a similar situation the night before.
“So I felt that was a little peculiar,” he continued. “They weren’t willing to stop it Wednesday night, because their hometown district team [Hanover] was winning.”
Hanover won the first game of the three-game series 3-0 Tuesday. Toms River took the second game 7-0, leaving the rubber match Wednesday night to determine the state championship, which came with the opportunity to go on to the regional tournament in Connecticut and potentially the Little League Softball World Series.
If Wednesday’s game had been stopped in the third inning when the lightening was first noticed, Bossow said, they would have had to complete play to comply with Little League’s rule that at least four innings be completed.
After the players were pulled from the field Wednesday, Bossow and the team of 12 girls waited in their cars to see if it would resume.
“At about 9:30, I went up to the tournament director and said, ‘What’s the status?’ and he said, ‘We’re going to try and do everything we can to get the game in tonight,’” Bossow recalled.
Fifteen minutes later, he was called into the Little League office, along with Hanover’s coach.
“They said, ‘It doesn’t look good to finish tonight. We’re going to come back tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘No, we’re going to finish it tonight,’ because it’s about an hour-and-15 minute ride on a good day. And we had all the momentum, the heart of our lineup was coming back up,” he said.
Bossow didn’t understand the ruling because it was not even 10 p.m., and the curfew to attempt to restart the game was 1 a.m. as per regulations, he was told.
“I said, ‘This is a summer of thunderstorms. These happen all the time, and they end,’” he recalled. “And they said it’s not for debate and that they talked to the New Jersey state director of Little League and he said we could do that.”
It was the Toms River Little League Majors 12-year-old team’s third trip to the state championship final. Last year, the team lost to Massapequa, Long Island, in the regional finals, which went on to win the World Series.
“And we were hoping to get back there because Massapequa is back as well,” he said. “We were excited for the opportunity because we thought we had a good enough team. Unfortunately we ran into a team that was fairly good themselves, but we felt we were better.”
