Groton — Scene I: High school baseball game. The man operating the scoreboard the other day at Fitch High, Todd Valentine, partook, even if unwittingly, of the game's everlasting charm: idle chatter between pitches. Valentine, while trying to keep the correct count and watch his son, Donte, the Fitch second baseman, seemingly had a story about all of Donte's teammates, too, from Todd's days coaching them in Little League.

Scene II: Last week, Mystic Business Park. Building 1, Unit 3. Hardly distinguishable from Building 3, Unit 1. But inside, there was Dave Franco in this rented garage, now this modest looking baseball academy, where many of the kids in town come to hit and learn the game. Together.

There is no overt connection between either scene, except to say they actually run together like a current, one depending on the other. It's the whole point of local sports. The dads teach them early. The kids ascend until they're together in high school, using their experience, knowledge and camaraderie to perhaps raise the hardware one day. Or at least be fodder for between-pitch chitchat — and all the stories, memories and inside jokes that come with it.

It doesn't necessarily work this way anymore, what with allure of travel teams and AAU interrupting the sense of community. Which is why Franco, plenty busy a husband, dad and as a Server Engineer for Yale/New Haven Health System, rented the Mystic unit in the first place. With baseball's appeal teetering and travel teams poaching the kids left, what happens to baseball in our towns without the unspoken commitment of whomever remains?

"After a Fitch game, I went down to Calvin Burrows Field (the de facto home office of Groton youth baseball) and it was less than I expected," Franco said. "Not talent wise, necessarily. So I decided to get back involved. Ant (Anthony, a Fitch grad and freshman baseball player at Mitchell) is in college now and I have some time. We can get this whole town program back to the gold standard it used to be."

The difference between a town and a community has several layers, not the least of which is this: In a town, parents are committed while their kids are playing. In a community, parents are committed long after their kids have moved on.

And this is why Dave Franco is the Coaching Coordinator for Groton Little League, running the baseball facility with Fitch graduate Shawn Nadeau (the winning pitcher in the 2012 state title game), former Fitch player Mike Evans and Jake Romanski, a Groton police officer who made it to Triple-A with the Red Sox.

"The goal of Coaching Coordinator is to teach the coaches, so things are uniform and consistent," Franco said. "That way, when the kids get to high school, they have all been taught the same thing, the same way."

The goal, really, is to teach everybody. And that includes the very real difference between winning and development. It might be cynical to suggest they are mutually exclusive. But experience teaches that winning at youth levels tugs at the true rhythms of baseball.

"Baseball is not immediate gratification," Franco said. "We keep reminding the parents almost more than we remind the kids. It's a progression. It's hard getting through to parents sometimes because they want to win right now. But it's a culture shift.

"I have my own version of 'wins.'" Franco said. "It's not all Ws and Ls. It's development first. You can't grow as a player if you're not developed properly. High school is where it's time to win."

Ah, the rub: But what happens in high school if they're either opting for lacrosse or travel baseball? Even at Fitch, a program with deep tradition (four state titles), there are but four freshman players in the program this season.

"Look at other sports," Franco said. ''In lacrosse, there are more kids on the field and they kind of play in shifts. In baseball, they sit the bench. There's got to be a better way to develop those guys, getting them reps so they all stay competitive."

Franco, Romanski and Nadeau parlayed the cage work with some recent clinics that drew more than 60 kids. Hey, it's a start. We've got to have something to discuss between pitches at the high school game, right?

"You've got to keep driving. Anything worth doing is worth doing 100 percent," Franco said. "The goal is to keep marrying the feeder system from Little League to high school and beyond."

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro