Post by bonamaniac on Jan 6, 2009 8:44:45 GMT -5
The father is the coach of the University of Rhode Island, a team better than it was supposed to be this year.
One son is the team’s leading scorer, one of the best shooters in college basketball.
The other is arguably the best player in the Interscholastic League and had 44 points in his first game, and 38 Tuesday night.
And the mother is making a big comeback of her own, now running six miles a day after having heart surgery last February.
The Barons.
The first family of Rhode Island basketball.
Could you make up this script?
Not really.
Certainly it was never planned, maybe as much fate and luck as anything else.
Or as Cindy Baron says, “We could have had two daughters who were into ballet and Jim would have really been left out.”
Instead, they had two boys who grew up with basketball, exposed to it early, going to camps and shooting in the driveway, some of their earliest memories coming from being around their father’s teams. And if they had the advantages of being the sons of a coach, they had the disadvantages too, always in the middle of the spotlight, never allowed to be anonymous, never allowed to be judged solely by who they were.
“You never know,” says Jim Baron. “They grew up around it, but it was their choice. They’re the ones who had to make the commitment. You can’t live their lives for them. It’s got to be them.”
Baron knows.
He’s the one who once used basketball to escape a Brooklyn housing project, on of those tough, blue-collar kids for whom the game was the life raft in a swirling sea of broken dreams and futures that never could get out of the neighborhood.
He was the one who had come of age, not in the East Greenwich of his kids, but in a playground world where one game you played against a wino in a Colt 45 shirt, and the next against a guy who would take the fillings out of your mouth if you let him.
He’s the one who used basketball to get to St. Bonaventure and a life he never could have imagined in that Brooklyn housing project.
It’s the lessons he gave to his kids when they were very young: No one is going to give you anything. Basketball is a jungle where the strong eat the weak, and if you are a suburban kid trying to make it in a city game you better work when there’s no one around.
Jim Baron has talked before about how his father never came to see him play when he was a kid, so “I’m making up for lost time with my two guys.”
So you know this is a wonderful time for him, even if it’s his personality to try to downplay it, to try to switch the conversation to the next game.
But like so many families where the father works a lot of hours, and has a job that often takes him on the road, much of raising the kids fell to Cindy Baron, whom Jim Baron had first met when he was an assistant for Digger Phelps at Notre Dame and she lived in South Bend.
“I didn’t know anything about basketball,” Cindy Baron. “I didn’t even know who Digger Phelps was.”
But she loved sports, and when her two kids were young she spent a lot of time shuttling them back and forth to games, even coaching one of Billy Baron’s AAU teams. As the kids got older she often went around the country to their AAU games, here, there, and everywhere, even putting her own career as an artist on hold for a while, a life spent getting lost on the way to little gyms.
“I had to follow suit,” she says, “but it’s not your typical family life. It’s not always easy. For a while there it seemed as if it was always me and my two boys in the car.”
It takes a village to raise a child?
It takes a village to raise basketball players, too.
On the surface the Barons’ success story might seem easy. Jimmy Baron went to Hendricken, where he was an All-State player, spent a postgraduate year at Worcester Academy, then went to play for his father at URI. Billy Baron is now a star at Hendricken, and will be going to Worcester Academy next year.
But there were no guarantees Jimmy Baron was going to make his mark playing for his father at URI. Just as there are no guarantees Billy Baron is going to be a college player, just because he had 44 against Classical in the first game of this high school season.
“You can’t put the cart in front of the horse,” Jim Baron says. “You got to see how things play out.”
That’s part of his nature, too, the fatalism of a coach. As though you run the perfect play and someone misses the shot. As though you’re right there at the end and someone bounces one in on you and you lose. As though you are amid a great season and you slump down the stretch, like the Rams did last year. Baron knows there are no guarantees.
The Rams’ swoon last year coincided with the heart surgery of Cindy Baron, who was born with an enlarged heart, and was told about a year ago that she was a “a time bomb, a stroke waiting to happen.”
Is it just coincidence that after that Jimmy Baron’s stats weren’t as good after that?
Just coincidence that the Rams slumped immediately afterward?
Or is it just the vagaries of the game?
But here it is almost a year later and Cindy Baron now runs six miles a day, is preparing to run a marathon.
“Every day is a blessing,” she says.
As is the opportunity to watch her kids play.
For she knows that this is not going to last forever, knows that kids grow up and games eventually end, knows that this is a golden time. Knows that when the Barons first came to Rhode Island in 2001 they were just looking to settle into a new place, a place they hoped their two kids would like. Knows that none of this was ever really planned, for how could it have been?
Basketball is full of coaches’ kids who, for whatever reason, never live up to expectations.
But here it is almost eight years later, Jim Baron is still at URI, Jimmy Baron is in the middle of some basketball fantasy, a career no one could have envisioned as a high school player, and Billy Baron is a high school star, everything ahead of him.
And the Barons have become the first family of Rhode Island basketball.
One son is the team’s leading scorer, one of the best shooters in college basketball.
The other is arguably the best player in the Interscholastic League and had 44 points in his first game, and 38 Tuesday night.
And the mother is making a big comeback of her own, now running six miles a day after having heart surgery last February.
The Barons.
The first family of Rhode Island basketball.
Could you make up this script?
Not really.
Certainly it was never planned, maybe as much fate and luck as anything else.
Or as Cindy Baron says, “We could have had two daughters who were into ballet and Jim would have really been left out.”
Instead, they had two boys who grew up with basketball, exposed to it early, going to camps and shooting in the driveway, some of their earliest memories coming from being around their father’s teams. And if they had the advantages of being the sons of a coach, they had the disadvantages too, always in the middle of the spotlight, never allowed to be anonymous, never allowed to be judged solely by who they were.
“You never know,” says Jim Baron. “They grew up around it, but it was their choice. They’re the ones who had to make the commitment. You can’t live their lives for them. It’s got to be them.”
Baron knows.
He’s the one who once used basketball to escape a Brooklyn housing project, on of those tough, blue-collar kids for whom the game was the life raft in a swirling sea of broken dreams and futures that never could get out of the neighborhood.
He was the one who had come of age, not in the East Greenwich of his kids, but in a playground world where one game you played against a wino in a Colt 45 shirt, and the next against a guy who would take the fillings out of your mouth if you let him.
He’s the one who used basketball to get to St. Bonaventure and a life he never could have imagined in that Brooklyn housing project.
It’s the lessons he gave to his kids when they were very young: No one is going to give you anything. Basketball is a jungle where the strong eat the weak, and if you are a suburban kid trying to make it in a city game you better work when there’s no one around.
Jim Baron has talked before about how his father never came to see him play when he was a kid, so “I’m making up for lost time with my two guys.”
So you know this is a wonderful time for him, even if it’s his personality to try to downplay it, to try to switch the conversation to the next game.
But like so many families where the father works a lot of hours, and has a job that often takes him on the road, much of raising the kids fell to Cindy Baron, whom Jim Baron had first met when he was an assistant for Digger Phelps at Notre Dame and she lived in South Bend.
“I didn’t know anything about basketball,” Cindy Baron. “I didn’t even know who Digger Phelps was.”
But she loved sports, and when her two kids were young she spent a lot of time shuttling them back and forth to games, even coaching one of Billy Baron’s AAU teams. As the kids got older she often went around the country to their AAU games, here, there, and everywhere, even putting her own career as an artist on hold for a while, a life spent getting lost on the way to little gyms.
“I had to follow suit,” she says, “but it’s not your typical family life. It’s not always easy. For a while there it seemed as if it was always me and my two boys in the car.”
It takes a village to raise a child?
It takes a village to raise basketball players, too.
On the surface the Barons’ success story might seem easy. Jimmy Baron went to Hendricken, where he was an All-State player, spent a postgraduate year at Worcester Academy, then went to play for his father at URI. Billy Baron is now a star at Hendricken, and will be going to Worcester Academy next year.
But there were no guarantees Jimmy Baron was going to make his mark playing for his father at URI. Just as there are no guarantees Billy Baron is going to be a college player, just because he had 44 against Classical in the first game of this high school season.
“You can’t put the cart in front of the horse,” Jim Baron says. “You got to see how things play out.”
That’s part of his nature, too, the fatalism of a coach. As though you run the perfect play and someone misses the shot. As though you’re right there at the end and someone bounces one in on you and you lose. As though you are amid a great season and you slump down the stretch, like the Rams did last year. Baron knows there are no guarantees.
The Rams’ swoon last year coincided with the heart surgery of Cindy Baron, who was born with an enlarged heart, and was told about a year ago that she was a “a time bomb, a stroke waiting to happen.”
Is it just coincidence that after that Jimmy Baron’s stats weren’t as good after that?
Just coincidence that the Rams slumped immediately afterward?
Or is it just the vagaries of the game?
But here it is almost a year later and Cindy Baron now runs six miles a day, is preparing to run a marathon.
“Every day is a blessing,” she says.
As is the opportunity to watch her kids play.
For she knows that this is not going to last forever, knows that kids grow up and games eventually end, knows that this is a golden time. Knows that when the Barons first came to Rhode Island in 2001 they were just looking to settle into a new place, a place they hoped their two kids would like. Knows that none of this was ever really planned, for how could it have been?
Basketball is full of coaches’ kids who, for whatever reason, never live up to expectations.
But here it is almost eight years later, Jim Baron is still at URI, Jimmy Baron is in the middle of some basketball fantasy, a career no one could have envisioned as a high school player, and Billy Baron is a high school star, everything ahead of him.
And the Barons have become the first family of Rhode Island basketball.
