By TERRY NAU

Sports editor

PAWTUCKET – The Rhode Island District II Little League Major Division playoffs continue this week, without a city team remaining alive in the double-elimination tournament. This is not a new trend. The last Pawtucket team to win a district title was the 2000 Darlington American squad.
Since then, Portsmouth has won five District II titles and Barrington has taken the other three. Darlington American’s program still draws a lot of players but very rarely  contends in the All-Star tournaments. This year, it won one game and lost two on its way to an early exit.
Darlington National quit Little League, Inc. for the Cal Ripken league a few years back. Pineview did not participate in the District II tournament this year, choosing to send its team of mostly 11-year-olds to the Riverside Friendship Tournament where it will be guaranteed six games of competition.
The final city league, Fairlawn, bowed out of District II all-star competition earlier this month after losing its two games by narrow margins.
There are reasons why the youth baseball programs in Pawtucket have assumed a lower profile in recent years. Plenty of children still participate. Perhaps the emphasis on winning is not as intense as it was 25 years ago. But there is also a sense that the world has changed for today’s youngsters. It’s a computer world today and children start learning this necessary instrument at an early age. Computers compete with recreational interests and often win the battle for a kid’s time.
When television moved into our living rooms in the 1950s, it was feared that the device would  have a negative effect on youngsters. And perhaps it did. But it was the computer age that started to pull kids in another direction during the 1990s, keeping many of them home, riveted to a screen as they played video games and learned important skills that would serve them well in the new world they would enter as young adults.
“Kids today have a lot more options,” Pineview Little League President Ray Johnston admitted on Wednesday afternoon when asked to comment on the impact of computers on the games children play in today’s world. “When I was a kid, we played baseball in the summer, football in the fall and basketball in the winter. The kids today might just play one sport all year round, like soccer. Or they will play AAU baseball.
“Some of the kids stay home and play video games,” Johnston added. “It’s a video age. But in the nine years that I have been President of our league, the enrollment is pretty much the same. It fluctuates from year to year. I think we had around 277 kids when I started and this year we might have around 345 between the ages of five and 18. We’ve been as high as 402 and as low as 280 over the years.”
Johnston and other league officials have the best interests of their players at heart when they make decisions, especially tough ones like foregoing the District II Major Division tournament.
 “We only had two 12-year-old players,” Johnston admitted. “We probably would have been two-and-out in the district playoffs. We decided to enter the Riverside Friendship Tournament instead. Riverside guarantees us six games, and those extra games will pay off for our all-star team next year.”
Pawtucket has a great Little League history, peaking in 1980 when Darlington American went to the Little League World Series. The city at one time fielded five Little League programs – Darlington American and National, Woodlawn, Fairlawn and Pineview.
Does the lack of youth league championship teams mean the talent level in Pawtucket has fallen off? Tolman and Shea were rather mediocre this past season and St. Raphael Academy finished just a little above .500 in Division I action.
“I don’t know,” said Johnston, whose son Raymond III finished a stellar career at SRA last month and will play college baseball at CCRI beginning in the fall. “There’s definitely an issue with the amount of talent playing ball right now. If kids aren’t playing sandlot games -- pickup games -- then they’re not playing as much baseball as we did when I was growing up.
“But the world has changed,” Johnston continued. “My parents rarely locked the doors to our house when we were kids. But you can’t ask a kid today to walk from Broadway down to Daggett Avenue to play baseball. Parents keep a closer eye on their children. And the parents are busier, too. They might be working two jobs to make ends meet. It’s just a different society, I guess.”
Pineview and Darlington American are competing in the Junior and Senior Divisions of Little League tournament play. The two leagues have merged programs for the older divisions. The Senior team will meet Barrington tonight in a 5:45 p.m. game at the Daggett Avenue sports complex.
“We have combined with Darlington American for our junior and senior teams,” Johnston admitted. “That has worked out well for everyone.”
Perhaps a merger of Pineview and Darlington American would strengthen the city’s Little League franchises. The fields are only one mile apart. One mile in today’s world, though, is a lot longer than it was back in the day when Ray Johnston and his buddies would ride their bikes to a pickup game, carrying just their gloves and bats with them.
“I think the time might be coming for us and Pineview to merge,” Darlington American’s John Duffy admitted. “Enrollments are down all over the city. We have about the same numbers as Pineview. We’re around 270 children. I think Pineview is counting our kids in the Junior and Senior programs when they come up with their number.
“The difference for Darlington American is we used to have eight Major Division teams and now we are down to four. We don’t have the depth of talent to draw from that we did in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Duffy is an alumnus of the league, having played Little League for DALL in the early 1980s.
“Darlington American was once known as the gem of the state when it came to Little League,” Duffy said. “We lost a group of people who guided us during those days. That’s why I brought Jimmy Mello back into the league. Jimmy played for Darlington American back in the 1980s. He knows what the old system was, and is teaching that to our all-stars. But we just don’t have the depth we used to have.”
“We still want to win,” Duffy admitted. “But kids today have a lot more options. It seems like there’s a carryover in every sport. Hockey players are playing summer hockey. Baseball carries over to the fall league. More kids are playing just one sport. And yet the smaller communities like Lincoln are busting at the seams when it comes to youth baseball. Lincoln is a town of 23,000 people and they have eight major division teams to our four. And Pawtucket has over 70,000 people.”
Lincoln is now the model program for leagues around the state, along with two-time defending state champion Cranston Western. Darlington American is a shadow of its former self. There’s no shame in that. It’s just the way things are right now.