Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking: Fumbles can doom a game plan

In baseball, they say little things make up the difference between winning and losing. It?s true. And there?s nothing more demoralizing in baseball than a baserunning blunder that takes you out of a promising inning.It?s a basic “little thing.” If you run the bases horribly, you?re going to lose games. It doesn?t matter how good you are at everything else. If you try to take an ill-advised extra base, or get yourself caught off second and doubled up because you thought there were two outs instead of one … it can take the air out of your tires so quickly it might take the rest of the game to get them pumped back up. And by then it?s usually too late.In football, the equivalent of bad baserunning — to this writer, at least — is the fumble. There?s nothing more frustrating to a coach, or a fan, than to see your team on a nice drive, and to anticipate a nice payoff for everyone?s efforts, only to have someone put the ball down. Talk about the ultimate buzz kill.Nobody?s suggesting that those who fumble aren?t trying. And nobody?s suggesting that he who fumbles the football is solely responsible for a loss. That?s not true. It takes an entire team to win; and it takes an entire team to lose.But it?s that little bit of extra attention to detail sometimes … that little extra bit of caution to make sure you?ve secured that ball before you try to fight for that extra yard or two. Are you running too high when you hit traffic, and making yourself an easier target for someone to poke the ball out? Or are you exposing too much of it once you start diving and fighting for yardage?Whatever, it?s that ill-timed fumble that?ll keep coaches up at night. Games that end 44-0 are quickly forgotten. Often, those are flukes where one team has everything going for it and the other team has a buzzard fly into its locker room before the game. You hear in basketball that “everything they threw up went in.” It happens.It certainly couldn?t have gone unnoticed that Stevan Ridley never saw the field again after he put it down Sunday (actually he did it twice, but got bailed out by further review the first time). That might not be wise for high school coaches to do, considering you?re dealing with teenagers whose confidence levels can be somewhat fragile. But it does go to show how devastating (in the course of the football game, at least) a turnover can be.The Saugus-Winthrop game that had been scheduled for Saturday at 1 p.m. has been moved up to Friday at 7. The annual night game at Stackpole Field has been a huge success ever since the Saugus athletic department instituted it.The high school season gets off in earnest this week with all 17 of our area?s teams participating. The Manning Field season also opens this Thursday with a doubleheader. English takes on Peabody in the opener (5) and St. Mary?s plays Swampscott at 7:30.Only Swampscott has played a game, losing to Triton Saturday.Finally, Lynn Tech opens up its season Saturday at Northeast Regional (10). This is always a big day on both teams? schedules, and for a long time it served as both teams? final game of the season. When the Tigers committed to playing St. Mary?s the night before Thanksgiving, it forced the game to be bounced around to where it could be fit in. But whenever the two teams play, the game is important.This year, Tech starts off in the lower division of the Commonwealth Conference, as opposed to the upper, and moves to Division 6.But as in all other years, what happens after the game means more than which team wins. After the game, both teams award game MVP trophies named after stars who died tragically in automobile accidents: Rick Drislane of Tech; and Ed Repucci of Northeast. In addition to naming the MVPs, the coaches speak to the teams and talk about being careful, making good choices, and, most of all, how fortunate they all are to be out there playing and living their lives.