IT IS so different when you see a hardened hood on trial.
There’s a disconnect, something alien that tells you the villain is different than you and me.
But there is something tragically familiar in the “Rink Rage” drama in a Massachusetts courtroom.
I’ve seen Thomas Juntas all over Queens and Long Island.
Like most parents, I’ve gone through the rite of passage called Little League syndrome.
I didn’t want my boys growing up to tiptoe through the tulips with a violin, and they had a lot of fun in Little League.
But I was determined not to become the crazed Little League pit bull that invariably stems from a father living out his own unrealized ambitions through their kids.
Everybody put on a pretty good show in this ugly case, which started as an innocent kids’ hockey practice in July of 2000.
Thomas Junta did the whole bit, head in hands, tears.
His lawyer, Thomas Orlandi, actually portrayed his 270 pound client as “a gentle giant.” Give me a break.
“He didn’t intend to kill anyone the day he went to that rink,” Orlandi told the court.
OK, I’ll give him that much.
But both Junta and the victim, Michael Costin, had trouble with their tempers before.
And their kids’ hockey practice was the perfect tinder box for the 160-pound Costin to end up dead.
Prosecutor Sheila Calkins portrayed Junta as a hulking thug, which could be a bit of a stretch.
Fact is, Little League syndrome has to be replaced by the message that sports for kids is for fun, for health, to build character.
My younger kid was 8, playing soccer, and he had a young friend who was a natural-born athlete.
But his father was a nitwit, screaming, bullying and swearing from the sidelines. In the end, the kid almost had a nervous breakdown, and quit the game.
Look, I’ve had my days of acting like an idiot after taking stupid pills.
But I was never going to have to have one of my kids take the witness stand in my defense, as happened with Junta.
As the jurors retired for deliberations yesterday, they may have done so having learned an important lesson.
Little League syndrome is so epidemic, it may have even visited the households of some of the jury members.