Waterford — Nolan Long, who normally lights up radar guns rather than aiming them at other players, carried one with him the other night, standing behind the backstop at Waterford High. The Big Fella, on anyone's list in Lancer Lore and Legend, wore a wry grin as he unpacked his hardware.

"I'm gonna clock cheese," Long, who pitches in the Dodgers organization, said.

Loosely translated, that's baseball-ese for "I'm going to see how hard my cousin is throwing."

His cousin, Robert Zawacki, did the family proud, closing the game for Waterford in the new Connecticut Elite Baseball Association, this summer's replacement for American Legion Baseball, which was cancelled nationwide in April because of COVID-19.

Happily, they are playing baseball again here in our corner of the world. It looks different, what with umpires adhering to social distancing by standing behind the mound to call balls and strikes and dugout members in lawn chairs extending down the lines, at least attempting to stay six feet apart.

Ideal? Hardly. But better than the alternative. And the CEBA may be an unwitting illustration for how high school sports look in the fall.

One idea athletic officials are pondering — not just in Connecticut — aims to (mostly) switch the spring and fall seasons. Baseball, because it adheres to social distancing better than football (as do softball, track, golf and tennis) may be a fall sport in 2020. Football, soccer, field hockey and volleyball may go to the spring. Nothing imminent, of course. But a possibility.

"If they can find a way to get both seasons in effectively, I'd be all for it," Waterford's Payton Sutman said the other night. Sutman, headed to Holy Cross, played football and baseball during his career.

"It would give kids more time, especially in Waterford, to think about if they want to play football. A big thing for me playing football last year, even though I did get hurt, was that an injury would make me miss basketball and baseball. Football in the spring, if you get hurt, there's less risk of missing something after."

Teammate Ryan Bakken, a football/basketball/baseball guy, said, "temperature wise, I'd love it. On the turf when it's 90 degrees, humid and we're in full pads ... not a lot of fun. Then baseball comes and sometimes we're inside because there's snow on the field. I think I'd miss the Thanksgiving Day football game. But this year coming up, if that were my option to get both sports in, I'd switch them in a heartbeat."

There are so many questions here. Examples: Lacrosse, the lone spring sport that does not conform well to social distancing, might remain in the spring. So what of kids who play football and lacrosse? Both in the spring season would force a difficult choice. What if spring sports move to the fall and COVID-19 interrupts the season, thus denying spring athletes two straight years? And roughly 100 other issues, too.

Still, this has legs. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, in a 63-page safety plan, has asked the Michigan High School Athletic Association to move any non-social distanced sport to the spring, meaning football and baseball would switch. The MHSAA will have a decision soon. Several other states are in similar discussions.

Not that anyone asks the kids their opinions about anything, but they say that while social distancing is hard, they'd do anything necessary to play again.

"I don't think about this whole thing when we're playing," Sutman said. "I feel safe. We try to stay socially distanced, but it's a team sport and you want to come together. It's hard to stay separate but we are trying to do our part."

Bakken: "I feel safe. Among our team, it's hard to distance all the time because we drive to games together and warm up together. But we're not shaking hands with the other team. Yes, we touch the same ball, but it's not like I'm licking my fingers between innings."

Again: This is just one idea. Another, as considered at the moment in Virginia (and by the CIAC), moves the entire sports calendar to 2021, thus giving science a chance to tame the virus. Winter sports would be played in January and February, fall sports in March and April and spring sports in May and June. There would be abbreviated seasons — perhaps six football games rather than 10.

Clearly, this requires ingenuity and flexibility. Baseball in the fall would be a natural extension of a summer activity. We shall see.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro