NJ Little League team loses state final due to rain delay

A girls’ Little League team in New Jersey lost the state championship final last week after their game was halted because of a lightning strike and umpires did not allow the players to play the final innings as scheduled the next day, leaving the children and others questioning the fairness of the decision.

The Toms River Little League Majors 12-year-old softball team played its final game against Hanover on Wednesday, but the game was halted before the start of the sixth inning because of the storm.

Tournament officials initially said the game would be rescheduled for the next day, but Toms River coach Brad Bossow received an email the next morning saying the game would not be played and the score at the time of suspension was final.

This was the victory for the team from Hanover, New Jersey, which had been leading 6-4 when the game was suspended due to a possible lightning strike.

Bossow said the president of the opposing team’s Little League district “outsmarted” the team by contacting league officials at 2:30 a.m. and pushing for the change.

“And that’s kind of the sneaky, slimy part of the whole thing,” Bossow, whose daughter is on the team, told the Post.

“In the middle of the night he sent them a message saying that the game had to be played to the end based on these Little League rules and that Hanover had to be declared the state champion.”

This underhanded plea went to the tournament committee at Little League headquarters in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which awarded Hanover the victory.

Bossow said that ruling will most likely stand. “My district representative told me that Little League has never made a change. Once they’ve made a decision, they’ve never backed down from it,” he said.

“It’s just heartbreaking for the girls. They were more upset that they were told something and then nothing happened.”

Although Hanover was ahead when play was suspended, Toms River had scored in both the fourth and fifth innings and hoped to continue to rally to claim the title.

The game, which took place in Clifton, started at 8 p.m. and was adjourned about an hour later.

From then on, the rules began to blur.

“There was lightning in the area, I would say in the third inning,” Bossow said. Tournament officials checked a weather app and concluded the storm was far enough away to allow play to continue, he said, contradicting the decision in a similar situation the night before.

“I found it a bit strange,” he continued. “They didn’t want to stop it on Wednesday night because their local team (Hanover) was leading.”

Hanover won the first game of the three-game series 3-0 on Tuesday. Toms River won the second game 7-0, setting up Wednesday night’s deciding game for the state championship, which included the opportunity to play in the Connecticut regional tournament and possibly the Little League Softball World Series.

If play had been stopped in the third inning on Wednesday when the lightning was first noticed, Bossow said, they would have had to finish the game to comply with the Little League rule that requires at least four innings to be played.

After the players were taken off the field on Wednesday, Bossow and the 12-member girls team waited in their cars to see if the game would continue.

“At about 9:30 a.m. I went to the tournament director and asked, ‘What’s the status?’ And he said, ‘We’re going to try everything we can to make the game happen 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 get it done tonight. We’ll be back tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘No, we’ll get it done tonight,’ because on a good day, the drive is about an hour and 15 minutes. And we had all the momentum, the heart of our lineup was getting back into gear,” he said.

Bossow did not understand the decision as it was not even 10pm yet and the curfew for attempting to resume play began at 1am according to regulations, he was told.

“I said, ‘This is a summer of thunderstorms. They come and go,'” he recalled. “And they said it was out of the question and they had talked to the New Jersey State Little League director and he said we could do it.”

It was the third appearance in the state championship final for the 12-year-old Toms River Little League Majors team. Last year, the team lost in the regional final to Massapequa, Long Island, and went on to win the World Series.

“And we were hoping to go back there because Massapequa is back,” he said. “We were excited about the opportunity because we thought we had a good enough team. Unfortunately, we ran into a team that was pretty good themselves, but we felt better.”