Massapequa Little League World Series game postponed until Monday

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — The Massapequa Coast team began its Sunday looking to wash the bad taste out of its mouth from Friday night’s 12-0, no-hit, five-inning loss to Hawaii and get its first Little League World Series win in an afternoon elimination game against Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. All it found was frustration.

The biggest source of it came from the weather. A heavy two-hour thunderstorm resulted in a postponement.

Massapequa instead will play at 11 a.m. on Monday.

When the skies finally cleared at about 4:15 p.m. Sunday, the team was headed for a bus ride to see the MLB Little League Classic between the Orioles and the Red Sox at nearby Bowman Field.

“No one has control over the weather. It’s just that when you’re dealing with 12-year-old boys and they’re seeing the break in the rain, a lot of them have the attitude that they’d rather be playing than go see the Major League Baseball game,” Massapequa Coast manager Roland Clark said. “Not taking away from the significance of a major-league game, just they want to play.”

The Massapequa players didn’t even make it to the ballpark, which ended up being another source of frustration. They were heading from the dorms to the field with a 12:45 p.m. report time when they were sent back because the preceding game, between Iowa and Utah, had been halted because of lightning in the area. They were watching on TV in the dorms when the Orioles and Red Sox arrived at Lamade Stadium to spend a couple of hours meeting with Little Leaguers, signing autographs and posing for selfies and even riding cardboard “sleds” down the grassy hill in the outfield.

“The plan was for the players to be interacting with every team,” Clark said. “We had started to walk down and then they had sent us back to the dorms because of the lightning delays. Then, as the kids are watching the game on TV, they’re seeing the major-league baseball players sliding down the hill and signing autographs. These boys became even more frustrated and a little restless.”

Massapequa still was going to get its chance, though, as time was carved out in the big-leaguers’ schedule to meet with the players at the Classic.

“Hopefully they’ll be able to interact and get some of those autographs,” Clark said. “But I think that they were expecting — like some of the other teams were — [to] play Wiffle ball and slide down the hill. We, unfortunately, weren’t able to do that.”

Any chance for the Massapequa game to be played ended when the skies opened at about 2 p.m., halting the Iowa-Utah game a second time.

As for the ramifications of the rainout, Pennsylvania stands to benefit more. It was coming back less than 24 hours after winning a close elimination game and now will have more rest. Massapequa is one of just two American teams that has played just one game in nine days on the World Series campus.

“The boys are just anxious to get out on the field and they want to play,” Clark said. “Get that first hit, get a few more runs and make [it] something of a game instead of what happened the other night with us.”

By Roger Rubin

roger.rubin@newsday.com@rogrubin

Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.