SACCO: Fort, Spotts win with handshake and smile

By Jim Sacco

Published: May 22, 2008

Forget Turner Ashby and those other baseball teams up north that decided to jump ship, form their own district and give it a cool name.
Forget those days, they’re gone. Close your eyes tight and wish with all your might. They ain’t ever coming back. There’s a new heated rivalry in town that doesn’t involve Knights, male turkeys or those who blaze new trails into the Shenandoah Valley.
Good bye streaks of blue.
Hello, Indians.
Take a seat, grab a dog and watch the new latest and greatest rivalry to ever hit a five-team high school baseball district.
And, in the third meeting of this rock-‘em-sock-‘em slug fest, Fort Defiance finally got the win. The Indians were finally able to hold on. No seventh inning collapse, no walking off the field hanging heads.
Nah, this time it was the grey mustachioed Vic Spotts, Fort’s longtime skipper, who got the best of Waynesboro’s Jim Critzer, thanks to his boys getting the best of the Little Giants.
Who says the we-want-that-trophy mentality only rests between the ears of the players on the field? Certainly not Spotts or Critzer.
The guys standing outside the dugout (and in the third-base coach’s box, like Critzer and Spotts do) have just as much at stake. They want to beat each other just as badly.
And this rivalry that spans New Hope, along Dam Town Road and onto U.S. 11 (as the crow flies, or so they say) is done the best way possible.
“It’s always hard fought,” the grandfatherly Spotts said after watching his Indians sneak out of the River City with an 11-9 win in the Southern Valley title game. “And it’s always done with a handshake and smile.”
It was Spotts who was smiling more. A smile of relief, maybe? On May 2, he watched his Indians cough up a 4-2 lead in the top of the seventh at home to Waynesboro. With the bases loaded and one out on Thursday, he might have been expecting the same thing.
“We didn’t rest on the six runs we had,” he said, looking at the scoreboard that still showed back-to-back three-run innings (the second and third). “It’s a good thing. Because we needed them.”
Yep, in this rivalry every run is another full clip, every hit is another in the chamber. The Indians needed all the ammo they could get. Because Spotts, much like the fiery Critzer — who spent his time after the game in an animated discussion with his team out in left field — isn’t a spectator. These two are participants in the game. Scratch that.
“These are battles,” Spotts said.
Don’t ask Spotts if he wants to beat Waynesboro every time. He’ll look at you like there are spiders crawling out your eyes and throw some down-home words of advice your way.
“When you apply for a job, you want it,” he said. “When you ask a girl out, you want her to say yes. Otherwise, why apply for the job, why ask the girl out.”
Why show up for the game? He could have added. Why practice all winter and spring? Why leave your sweat on the field?
“Recreation? That’s Sunday afternoon church softball league,” Spotts said, watching his Indians hold up the tournament trophy, their parents closing in with point-and-shoot cameras a blazing. “This is competition.”
On Thursday, Spotts won that competition. He’d love to face Waynesboro again. Because he knows it would be another war, he knows he’ll get to coach against his good friend again.
“And,” he added. “That means we’d both be doing well.”