People are still talking about an incident at a June 29 Senior Babe Ruth baseball game between Newtown and Norwalk that ended abruptly when the Norwalk coach pulled his team from the field. Speculation continues on social media over what exactly transpired and whether or not the issue would be handled appropriately.

Newtown Babe Ruth Baseball President Andy Via and Norwalk Coach Jim Coonan, along with Newtown Coach Greg Horne Jr, agree Newtown’s team displayed poor sportsmanship; it has since been dealt with by Via, and the end result was that a Newtown player was ultimately kicked off the team. Via and Coonan also agree that there are some inaccuracies circulating as parents and others in the community speculate about the causes of the incident that was the subject of two letters to the editor of The Newtown Bee in recent weeks.

Coach Coonan removed his team from the field in the fifth inning — for what he said was fear of a bad situation snowballing into a fight, sparked in large part by a variety of comments made by Newtown players — and not because he was mad after his team made an out attempting to steal third base, as one of the posters on Facebook saw it. A letter to The Bee implying race baiting was also overstated, Via and Coonan believe.

“People see what they want to see,” said Coonan, adding that his decision to pull his team from the field didn’t have anything to do with Norwalk parent Maria Marte’s son being at the plate coinciding with racial slurs being made, .as Marte suggested in a letter

“That had nothing to do with my decision. I had no idea he was at the plate,” he said.

“I was hoping she wasn’t going to send it,” Coonan said of Marte’s letter, adding that he saw it before The Bee received and printed it, and notes that it did not accurately capture what transpired.

“They were saying a lot of hateful things back and across the field to one another. My whole feeling was I didn’t want it to escalate into a physical thing,” Coonan said of the players on both teams, adding that people have blown this into a mainly race-related issue, which it is not.

“There were homophobic and bigoted remarks between the two teams. Why isn’t anybody concerned with that?” Coonan wonders. “Anything said along the racist lines was the smallest part of the equation. There were a lot of things being said — none of them were good.”

Coonan said that his team is racially very diverse and that he did overhear some comments made that may have been perceived as being racist.

“My [team members] talk to each other in the same manner,” said Coonan, not justifying the use of certain words by either side.

“It was not a prominent thing — it was not a racial incident. But it was headed there; it was going to go there,” Coonan sensed.

What Happened

Here’s what happened at the game, held at Newtown High School, as both Coonan and Via explain: Coonan replaced a pitcher with a reliever who hit the first two batters he faced — each time on the first pitch — causing Newtown players to begin complaining and yelling from the dugout. Via, Coonan and Horne all agreed that the batters being hit was not intentional.

A Newtown batter who put the ball into play later in the same inning, stepped hard on the foot of Norwalk’s first baseman, something both Via and Coonan agreed was likely intentional. This sparked a shouting match between the teams, and Newtown’s players began to plan ways of payback, which Coonan could hear clearly, he said, because he also serves as the third base coach and was standing very close to the Newtown dugout.

Coonan acknowledged that the talk went back and forth but said most of it came from Newtown’s dugout, and was initiated by Newtown’s players. Newtown held a 5-0 or 6-0 lead, Coonan recalls, in the fifth inning, at the time he pulled his team.

“The whole incident was flabbergasting to me because they were winning the game,” Coonan pointed out.

It’s not as if no other teams have jawed at one another during the heat of battle, especially after physical contact — intentional or not — has been made, the coaches pointed out. Coonan said in one game his son, the team’s catcher, was run over by a base runner, sparking some arguing between his team and an opponent, for example. The umpire intervened and coaches settled things down and the game continued.

In the Newtown game, however, things kept building.

“It was a heavily-simmering pot that was about to boil over,” Coonan added of the incident. “Nobody ever tried to stop it. That was the problem.”

An Apology

Via said he apologized to the president of the Norwalk Babe Ruth program, as well as Coonan, and spoke to Newtown’s Babe Ruth team members in person to remind them about the importance of good sportsmanship.

“I will remind them that they represent Newtown Babe Ruth, and they will have to work hard to repair the damage that was caused at an event that was supposed to be fun for all. Norwalk was our guests and you do not treat guests that way,” Via said in an e-mail to The Bee on June 30.

In a letter to the editor, Norwalk parent Ellen Freebairn mentioned “ignorant, racist, homophobic and bigoted spew coming from their mouths.”“The Woeful State Of Sportsmanship In Newtown,”

Coonan noted that his team has players who make questionable remarks during games and that it is not well received by some opponents, while others let the comments roll off their backs.

Via acknowledged that distasteful remarks should not have been made, but he, along with Coonan and Horne, agree that the words were not made for any reason other than to be mean and try to get under the skin of the opponent.

“If I call you a jackass, I’m not calling you a donkey,” said Via, explaining that words sometimes are taken literally when they shouldn’t be, but that it doesn’t justify saying them.

As part of his talk to the team, Via said he mentioned to the players the importance of using good sportsmanship, representing the town, and also alluded to the fact times seem to be changing.

“I told them we live in a society where everybody is really sensitive and things are taken literally,” Via said.

As for the player being removed from the team, this only happened after he was given a warning and got into an argument with an umpire in the next game.

“I said ‘I’m going to throw you off this team, but I’m going to give you a chance to change my mind,’” Via said. The player argued that the umpire made bad calls, and that didn’t cut it with Via.

“We want to send the message to every other program in the league: if you behave this way, you’re going to get thrown off the team,” Via said.

“I felt bad that I had to do this — I didn’t want to do this. I wanted him to behave himself,” Via added.

Via said the Babe Ruth board decided unanimously to remove the player from the team, while allowing him to continue his position as an umpire for younger leagues. Via noted that the player/umpire has never had any issues while umpiring.

“Obnoxious And Arrogant”

Coonan thought Newtown displayed poor sportsmanship from the time the teams took the field. He said players on opposing teams typically interact with opponents but that Newtown’s players ignored his, and didn’t even acknowledge when Coonan credited a player for making a nice play.

“They were a very obnoxious and arrogant team even from the warm-ups,” Coonan said.

Coonan said some of the Newtown players went up to the Norwalk players in the parking lot after the game and apologized for the incident, and the Norwalk coach recognized that it wasn’t an entire roster of Newtown players causing the problem. Coonan did, however, add that nobody tried to get the Newtown players to stop.

“We did display poor sportsmanship but I don’t think the actions of one player define our team,” said Horne, who acknowledged that boys becoming young adults, in this age range, are going through a lot and often lack self-control, allowing for a chain-reaction to occur. Senior Babe Ruth teams host players between ages 16 and 19. Horne is in his early 20s.

“You have to watch what you say. You have to be respectful,” Horne said is what his team members learned from the incident. The coach added that he personally can view this as a learning experience as well.

Horne, who has played baseball for 15 years, and was a member of this team until two years ago when he started coaching the squad, doesn’t believe the fact he is so close in age to his players, should impact how they respect him.

“When we’re on the field, I’m the coach, they’re the players — and they understand that,” said Horne, adding that there haven’t been any incidents since the roster shakeup.

Coonan noted that he has coached the Norwalk program for 15-plus seasons, and serves as Norwalk Babe Ruth commissioner. His teams have played in Newtown multiple times. Coonan said there had never been any issues until a fall league game last year, then this most recent incident, which he said was a significantly worse situation.

As for a future matchup between the teams, it remains to be seen what will unfold. Newtown was scheduled to visit Norwalk and Coonan said he reached out to more than one Newtown Babe Ruth official in hopes of discussing playing the game, but did not get any responses.

Norwalk was invited to participate in a state tournament in Newtown, beginning July 11, because of an opening when a team from Westport backed out. But the Norwalk team parents, because of their frustration over what had happened, voted to not do Newtown the favor of filling the spot, Coonan said.

Coonan said he would need some assurance that there wouldn’t be an issue. Via said his job as president of Newtown Babe Ruth Baseball is to make sure an issue like this doesn’t happen again.

“I would leave the door open to playing again. Everybody has to be on the same page,” Coonan said.