Do The Right Thing

Time to do what's right.

It's imperative that Birmingham Groves and Birmingham Roeper honor their retiring coaching legends the appropriate way.

I'm talking about Groves naming its baseball field Jim Crosby Park and Roeper naming its basketball floor Ernie Righetti Court. This is something that has to be done. And NOW!

These are the plain and simple facts: Crosby WAS Groves baseball and Righetti WAS Roeper basketball for longer than the majority of the people reading this have been alive on this earth. They embodied their programs, both bastions of character, integrity, hard work and dedication, and their respective programs were proud reflections of the men who led them. Oh, yeah, they were also both members of the 700-win club.

Crosby is leaving Groves' baseball program after 46 years, the past 42 as skipper. Righetti is departing the Roeper hoops program after 32 seasons, the majority of which were spent as boys and girls bball coach as well as the school's athletic director.

Their collective absence will be felt throughout the city of Birmingham, Oakland County and the whole state of Michigan for that matter, in the years to come, their winning touch and devoted mentoring dearly missed in the community. Their former stomping grounds, their "classrooms of life," need to bare their names. There would be nothing more fitting.