Moshier: Whitestown Post wrongly denied?

Whitestown Post’s American Legion baseball team had a District V playoff berth in its sights with only days left in the regular season. That’s when longtime coach Paul Engelhart had to tell his team it was going to have to forfeit six of its wins. That ruling, made apparently because Whitestown had used an ineligible player, knocked Engelhart’s team out of playoff contention.

 

What a way to go. What a shame. Engelhart, one of the most respected coaches in Oneida County American Legion baseball, shouldered the blame, even though anybody who knows him would realize his intentions were good. Did he make a clerical error, and file paper work too late? Perhaps. I’m sure he’s not the first coach to do that. If that is what happened, league officials should have notified him of the error before the first pitch was thrown, so it could be corrected.

 

OK, so rules are rules. But Engelhart, Whitestown Post’s head coach for 11 seasons, is one of those guys who make Oneida County American Legion baseball something special. It’s hard to believe he was intentionally trying to “get away” with something. It would be a shocker if that was the case.

 

So, then, did the league and state’s punishment fit the crime? Certainly not. You don’t want to see any team’s season, not to mention the American Legion careers of so many area players, end like this. If Oneida County ran a tighter ship, and a preseason list of checks and balances was followed, player-by-player, team-by-team, maybe honest mistakes like this would not happen.

 

There’s a good chance this miscue could have been avoided, long before it came to this, an emotional coach trying to explain to his players why their post-season hopes have been dashed by a mere “technicality.” Unhappy endings like that should never happen, not to Whitestown Post or to any other team, and certainly not to a coach as near and dear to his players as Paul Engelhart. Maybe it’s the system that needs fixing, before something like this happens again.