“Winning buries a lot of things,” said Kevin McGee, whose son Connor just finished his freshman year playing baseball for Norwich University in Vermont. “If he was a failing coach would they get rid of him?”

McGee has been around baseball his entire life: he grew up in the Cranston Little League, before going on to play for Hendricken and Quinnipiac University. He was the assistant coach on a North Kingstown team that won a state baseball title and coached on another state championship team while the family lived in North Carolina for six years before moving back to South Kingstown as Connor joined the baseball team his sophomore year. McGee watched coaches he described as hard, but fair.