Baseball Review // Record-Journal Expos, 3 Vernon Orioles, 5 May 27th, 2025 Frank J McCoy Field, Vernon CT (GHTBL)

Additional photos can be found in an album on Facebook here :::

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1768523727211174&type=3

Official Box Score :::

https://ghtbl.org/event/record-journal-expos-vernon-orioles 

This game began with a nice tribute to Steve “Crash” Krajewski.   

One of the farthest trips to take during the GHTBL season is to Vernon.  I don't know what it is, but even South Windsor seems closer somehow.  So rather than waiting for a Sunday or Monday night later on in the season, it was probably better to have this game be the official Opening Day for the GHTBL, as all of the games prior to Memorial Day were rained out.

There are some new faces on the Record-Journal Expos this season.  Tristan Ciarlo, Dante LaRosa and Tyler Casey rounded out the lineup, while veteran Hector Gonzalez played first base.  (No Sebby and Will for those scoring at home)   The Orioles weren't without their changes though, as they seem to be missing Jimmy Titus this season.

The pitchers for both Record-Journal Expos and Vernon Orioles were returning players.  JD Tyler was on the mound for the Expos for the full six innings of play, still striking out Orioles up until the end.  The Orioles had Matt Curtis on the mound as a starter and if you consider the Orioles to be the best team in GHTBL (because they won the Championship last season) than the only person who might be competition for best pitcher in the league next to Matt Curtis is his teammate, Jason Ray. 

While the Orioles didn't quite outscore the Expos by as much as the last time I went to Vernon, it felt more evenly matched in pitching.  The biggest thing working for the Orioles on their offense was that they just kept putting the ball where the defense players weren't.  This is a great strategy if you can do it, but it just felt like every other hit an Oriole would just drop the ball somewhere that took a little bit to field, thus base runners advanced and runs scored.

Vernon is also known for their announcer who comes with a P.A. system that plays music.  Sometimes this music can be less than desired when the genre is country and the theme is domestic violence.  During the third inning of this game, the P.A. started failing and even though I've heard worse drive-thru speakers I very much wanted to say "Caller, please turn down your radio".   If you had more than one syllable in your name, one of them was bound to get cut off.

In an interesting aside from the game itself: Frank J McCoy Field sits inside of a complex and as such has a basketball court almost directly behind it.  Right away in the first inning a foul ball went back and dropped, then bounced on the basketball court.  There is a building over there which looks like some sort of storage and one of the kids picked up the baseball and proceeded to chuck it over that building and into a more grassy area where the Orioles player had to go search for it.   I don't know why the kid didn't just give it back but that was odd series of events.

Though the Orioles went up 3-0 quickly, Luis Delgado would drive in two runs with the bases loaded in the top of the fourth, making it 3-2 and it felt like the Expos were right back in this.  This was a close game in that way- it never felt like the Expos were out of reach but they were always trailing.  This was a good game because it was competitive and as far as Opening Day games go, it was definitely a game I'm glad I went out and saw.

This is only the first game of the season and as the weather here in Connecticut has been going from the 80s to the 50s, this was also a game where it felt okay going to it but by the end it was getting cool.   So not only will there be more baseball ahead, hopefully there will be some warmer weather as well.