It has been suggested — and it’s probably somewhere on a T-shirt now — that sports reveal character more than they build it. Hard to argue, really, especially if you’ve been to a competitive sporting event.

I didn’t like what was revealed earlier this week at a high school baseball game between Montville and Waterford, the region’s two best programs. What was revealed: the kids showing more composure than their elders, whose years and wisdom ought to produce behavior to emulate, not satirize.

Here is what happened:

Following six innings of chirping from both dugouts and the gallery, the bottom of the seventh arrived with Waterford leading, 2-1. With two outs and a runner aboard, Montville senior TT Bowens, the league’s best hitter, was facing Waterford’s Mike Burrows, the league’s best pitcher.

This should have been a few minutes to behold. Instead, it became another example of how too many people who should know better still sit on the low side of the learning curve.

With the count 0-2, Burrows induced a check swing. Full disclosure: I thought Bowens offered. Base umpire Leo Bawza gave the “safe” sign, indicating Bowens had not. Considerable barking ensued from the Waterford dugout and rooting gallery. Home plate umpire Kevin Moreland ejected an assistant coach. More debate followed.

And yet I found my eyes locked on Burrows, who stood calmly at the mound, waiting for the circus to reach intermission. All he wanted to do was pitch. All he needed was one more strike to end the game. This why-we-watch-sports moment, the best vs. the best, was being hijacked by all the self-serving blather.

Burrows ended the game a few minutes later, throwing one pitch.

Alas, the Waterfords should have been thrilled. One-run win on the field of the blood rival. Strikeout to end the game. All good. And it was with the kids.

Sadly, Moreland didn’t take two steps before a Waterford fan began serenading him with everything he’d done wrong all game. It was not profane. But it was excessive. Embarrassing. The idea you could just be happy for the kids who just won a great game? Nah. Sports have this knack of revealing the irrepressible desire in some people to be uncivil.

It wasn’t just one offending party, although this guy brought home the trophy for the day.

Remember this one: If enough people act boorishly, the town, school and most of the all the kids get a reputation they don’t deserve.

I caught up with Moreland and Bawza after the game. Bawza on the check swing:

“In the two-man (umpiring) system, I’m in the worst spot on the field to make that call,” he said, alluding to his viewpoint, which, essentially, was in front of Bowens, not off to the side as a first-base umpire would have been. “I think he swung. But I can’t end the game there on an ‘I think.’ I have to be sure. I wasn’t.”

Later in our conversation, Bawza said, “I’ve never suffered abuse like that from fans as we walked off the field. And that’s after they won.”

And so I ask: Is this ever going to stop? I mean, if the kids playing the game acted like some of the people watching and coaching them, they’d be in detention. Maybe this is where we should enact some form of adult detention. All they did Tuesday was delay the end of the game, get in the way of two elite baseball players deciding the outcome on the last at bat and then start yelling like hyenas at two veteran umpires after the game.

Bawza and Moreland, two of the Eastern Board’s best, have been assigned to Monday’s game between Waterford and East Lyme. Waterford will probably enter unbeaten. East Lyme may be winners of 13 straight by then. Burrows will likely pitch. Should be an entertaining game between two neighboring rivals.

I’d like to think we are a country of second chances. So here is the itinerary:

Arrive at between 5:30 and 6 p.m. at Flanders Fish Market, the eatery all but on school grounds at East Lyme. Have a nice dinner. Take a cup of decaf to go. Get there in time for the first pitch at 7. Root for the kids. Understand Bawza and Moreland just want to do their job and then go have a few lemonades. It’s a baseball game. Shut up and enjoy it.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.