Groton — The main event was still a few minutes away Sunday, the sunny weather befitting the occasion, when many of Roger Bidwell's former players passed the time through giggles.

Some of them took bets on which of Bidwell's favorite words from his days winning 1,007 games, the words you can't say on television, would appear in the upcoming speech.

Some mimicked the Bidwellian voice and hand gestures. Even Bidwell himself sustained his friend Charlie Miller's line about how Roger would have to emcee his own roast because there's nobody funnier.

"If they ever did an investigation into me," the once and future king of UConn Avery Point said, "they wouldn't be doing this."

The "this" to which Bidwell referred is the day his old employer immortalized him. The sign on the scoreboard at Washington Park reads "Roger Bidwell Field," dedicated at noon Sunday before a few hundred well-wishers.

"I appreciate that this isn't named 'Roger Bidwell Memorial Field.' Always nice to enjoy these things while still living,'" Bidwell told the crowd, his sense of humor still like his American Express Card. He never leaves home without it.

And now thousands of kids will play baseball forever on the field named after the man who made the World Series six times as Avery Point's baseball coach and athletic director. Public address announcers will welcome fans to Roger Bidwell Field, a name that represents the best of our corner of the world.

Bidwell is a beacon for all of us in many ways, not the least of which is this: You don't need to do it on the grand stage to be grand. Find what you like. Where you like it. And then do it so well that you, even if unwittingly, make everybody else feel better about themselves. Bidwell could have coached baseball anywhere. But he stayed here. Among us. Of us, for us, by us.

And now he gets the greatest compliment of all: The field named in honor of the man whose owns the little voice inside the heads of his former players, the one that makes them smile, laugh, think and always push them toward the better choice.

"Thank goodness Roger stayed," Avery Point graduate and former Major Leaguer John McDonald of East Lyme once said of Bidwell. "I didn't need Avery Point. I needed Roger Bidwell. I needed the environment he created. He made me believe. I didn't think I was good enough to be a Major Leaguer. He told me I was. He believed in me. He told me he'd get me to a place where I'd realize my full potential. I needed that guidance. I bet hundreds, maybe thousands of kids now have gotten that same guidance."

Rajai Davis, another former Major Leaguer who played for Bidwell, was in attendance Sunday. And yet Avery Point was always about more than McDonald, Davis and Pete Walker. It was never so much about baseball as it was about humanity. How to treat people. Motivate them. Cajole them. Teach them. Entertain them. And somehow give sports daily metaphorical usefulness as life starts to happen.

"Imagine his sales pitch to a recruit: I have no scholarships. No budget. Bad weather. Mandatory study halls. No dorms, so you'll have to rent for seven months," former Fitch baseball coach and Avery Point graduate Jeff Joyce once said. "And yet you read the Avery Point baseball program and look at the hundreds who have played at the next level. Add up the scholarship money his players have accumulated. Look at the tax returns for his players who have gone to the majors. Why come to Avery Point? It's simple: Roger Bidwell."

And maybe that's why the best of Sunday came in those little moments around the field with all his former players giggling. It's the best way to honor a man who is effortlessly entertaining. We all know successful coaches whose egos either inflated to the size of a passenger's side air bag or who have the people skills of celery.

But then there's this man who always used gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) humor to educate his kids. They all left the program armed with their Bidwellisms, which they remember now way more than any bunt coverages or how to grip a changeup.

Our region's No. 1 after dinner speaker has a field named in his honor now. He was born here, grew up here, played here, stayed here, won here. He's our friend and our treasure.

Roger Bidwell Field.

Sounds perfect.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro