One of the (many) crappy things about COVID-19 is that it cut short the athletic careers of high school seniors, who were unable to play their spring seasons.

That’s something you can’t get back, ever, and for 12th graders who aren’t headed to college on a scholarship, their competitive future is now “intramurals, brother,” as the great Dan Hawkins once said.

The good thing is that New Jersey high school coaches and baseball people are attempting to pull off a 156-team uber-tournament to give senior baseball players one final go before heading off to wherever they’re going next.

Details via Joe Zedalis at NJ.com:

Organizers prepared prospective tournament dates and a format for a tentative field of a whopping 156 teams – 80 from North Jersey and 76 from South Jersey – teams made up of high school players – in some cases, coached by their high school coaches.

But this is not officially high school baseball, and it’s not officially happening – not just yet.

…

The tournament will not begin without expected guidelines from the NJSIAA and the New Jersey Department of Health, (St. Joseph Head Coach Mike) Murray said.

On May 30, Gov. Phil Murphy cleared the way for high school sports to return as early as June 30 under to-be-determine NJSIAA protocols.

This would be cool if they could pull it off. Pool play is tentatively scheduled for July 7th, 8th, and 9th, with single-elimination rounds in mid-July. Then you have finals and a title game between North and South Jersey near the end of the month. There is no “Central Jersey” represented in the tournament, because Central Jersey does not exist, or so we’ve been told.

Anyway, nice gesture for the kids who didn’t get to play their senior seasons. Kudos to the organizers.