Baseball Review // Hartford's Best Kept Secret:
Dark Twains Shine at Sandlot
Additional photos from the July 26th 2025 game in Wethersfield can be found in an album on Facebook here :::
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1818864372177109&type=3
I liked the idea of having a baseball team called the Hartford Dark Twains as soon as I heard about it. Anyone who is from Connecticut knows that Mark Twain spent time living and writing here, as you can go to Hartford and visit his house. Why not have a team to celebrate that? It's that combination of an author who is easily in my Top 5 of all-time combined with the sport which I love the most: baseball.
The fun part of this is depending on how curious you are (and I very curious) you could go down a rabbithole and find out that not only did Mark Twain himself love baseball but at one point in time he was also a co-owner of the Hartford Senators. So while you could just watch the Hartford Dark Twains and enjoy their look and also have read about Tom Sawyer in high school, there is a whole lot of baseball history with Mark Twain as well that you can deep dive into should you choose to do so.
The baseball itself is played on sandlot rules, which feels like a slightly more organized version of what my dad said he played as a kid. Back at a certain point in time (not to date myself) sandlot baseball was just what the kids did- as my dad would tell me. You'd try to get enough kids together to go and play a game, but if you didn't have enough you made do. But at that time, you just kind of found a place and played.
Now, in the 21st Century, there are different rules for life and one of them is that you have to rent a field to play. This makes the game slightly more organized in the way that you want to make sure everyone shows up to play and you're not wasting your money. But every player on both teams felt like they were there to play baseball and not for some other reason.
When you think about modern baseball a lot of it comes down to money. Players want to make it to MLB to make the most money that they can, so every step along the way seemingly leads them there, hopefully. The two teams playing this game though felt less like the pressure of that and more just like a group of people going out there having a good time and also just doing it for the love of the game.
In between innings, some of the players would switch defensively and there didn't seem to be any rule about not doing that. Normally I'd see a coach or manager go to an opposing dugout and tell the umpire as well about substitutions. But here, it felt like if you wanted to play third base for a bit and then move to oufield it was much more chill.
During this game, Thomas- who founded the Dark Twains- was the umpire but had to leave before the end of the game. For the last two innings or so, each team just called their own balls and strikes. Thomas also told me that they don't have standings. They do keep score though so at the end of the game one team does win, in this case the NHBBS won, but overall I think we're just all winners for getting outside and watching some baseball.
More information about the Hartford Dark Twains can be found here :::
https://www.instagram.com/hartforddarktwains/
An article about Mark Twain's involvement in baseball can be found on the GHTBL site here :::
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