Little League has one thing in common with almost all American sports and business endeavors: nothing succeeds like success.

Things start off well for Bangor – they lead 7-3 at the end of three – and then everything falls apart. In the fourth inning, Hampden scores six runs, most of them honest. Bangor West doesn’t fold, as it did after Matt Kinney was hit in the game at Hampden – the players do not drop their heads, to use Neil Waterman’s phrase. But when they come to bat in the bottom of the sixth inning they are down by a score of 14-12. Elimination looks very close and very real. Mo is in its accustomed place, but Bangor West is still three cuts away from the end of its season.

One kid who did not need to be told to get his head up following Bangor West’s 9-2 loss was Ryan Larrobino. He went two for three in that game, played well, and trotted off the field knowing he had played well. He is a tall kid, quiet, with broad shoulders and a shock of dark-brown hair. He is one of two natural athletes on the Bangor West team. Matt Kinney is the other.

Although the two boys are physical opposites – Kinney slim and still fairly short, Larrobino tall and well muscled – they share a quality that is uncommon in boys their age: they trust their bodies. Most of the others on the Bangor West squad, no matter how talented, seem to regard feet, arms, and hands as spies and potential traitors.

Larrobino is one of those boys who seem somehow more there when they are dressed for some sort of competition. He is one of the few kids on either team who can don batting helmets and not look like nerds wearing their mothers’ stewpots.