By MONTE DUTTON

The first time I heard Asher Goss was injured, Tori Patterson told me about it before a Raider game. I thought, what a shame. I had no idea it was life-threatening.

It could be that Tori didn’t know, either. Conditions apparently deteriorated quickly, but Goss pulled through, some dour possibilities didn’t become realities, and he is on a clear path to recovery.

The Laurens baseball team turned to a little-known arithmetical ploy: addition by subtraction. The Raiders wound up advancing all the way to the Class 4A Upstate finals and got better and better till the bitter end.

More than the school rallied around team and fallen player. When Clinton visited Ed Prescott Field, the Red Devils warmed up in tee shirts emblazoned “#AsherStrong.” Goss came back to throw out the first pitch at a later home game.

This was one great year for Laurens County baseball.

When half the crowd was out on the field after Clinton won the state 3A championship, I’d talked to Sean McCarthy, I’d talked to Zach Fortman, and I couldn’t find anyone else to whom I wished to speak. Many were posing for pictures. Some were rounding up the equipment they’d discarded and attempted to place in earth’s orbit. A few were still ‘rasslin’ and crashing on the ground. As my father used to say, “Chaps love to play.”

I happened upon Clovis Simmons, the esteemed Clinton tennis coach.

“I just automatically assumed, if there was a state championship celebration around here, it was gonna be one of your teams,” I said.

This year her boys just made it to the Upstate finals.

“Oh, isn’t this wonderful? Isn’t this unbelievable?” Clovis had a look of wonderment in her eyes, the same as any of the high-school girls cavorting about.

Everyone in town wasn’t there, just all the ones I knew and knew me and didn’t have to work.

The whole Clinton athletics program is as unified as the country is divided. What’s more, the school board can even agree to elect officers.

What’s that sportsmanship message broadcast over the public-address system at K.C. Hanna? Let the coaches coach and the players play …

It’s time to take that seriously, and quite possibly beyond the confines of the playing fields and courts. Sportsmanship theoretically breeds civility and statesmanship.

Too many citizens are just Bob Knights. They demand discipline in others but show none of it themselves.

Rant about the crazy kids all you want. They’re made of sterner stuff. They couldn’t possibly screw up the world as much as my generation did. They’re not perfect. Oh, Lord, neither was I. The world is vastly different, and mine was from my father’s, and his from his grandfather’s, and so on. The kids of today are products of the way things are. It’s why every generation thinks the next one is mad as a hatter, or, as the English say, daft.

My judgment is that, at this moment, the entire District 56 community is being positively influenced by the kids who represent the school, and the kids who represent District 55 are being hindered by the community around them.

It could change tomorrow, and it changed in the past five years. Success and failure are both fleeting.

The Raider baseball team is doing its part. It’s the Pride of Laurens.