Baseball Review // Bristol Greeners 2, Canton Crushers 6, Breen Field, Naugatuck CT, September 10th 2025 (Connecticut Tristate Fall Baseball League)
When you're in a Fall Baseball League that plays only on Sundays, you have to get clever with making up games if it happens to rain on a Sunday because you may not be able to make them up at the end of the season. The rain this past weekend has made some games week night games, which puts me in a position to see them when I otherwise might not have been able to (such as if they happened on Sunday and I was at the Hammerheads games)
This game between the Bristol Greeners and the Canton Crushers took place in Naugatuck, which is a place in Connecticut I am not exactly familiar with. At first, this game was scheduled to be at Delgobbo Field. I actually went there first, just keeping that in my mind, and it was interesting how I went through these backroads of Wallingford into Cheshire. There were some main road type of sights, but then at a church I turned right.
I drove up what felt like this neverending hill, passing by apartment complexes and just in general places where people live. That is to say, it felt rather residential. Then I came to the end of the road, with only houses and the such around me. I drove to turn around and saw the sign. Up a rocky road, through the trees, was this beautiful field in the middle of a neighborhood. It was pretty wild, but not what I had in store on this night.
After going onto Instagram, I found out that the game was at "Rotary Field", which I googled and saw as Breen Field. I was about five minutes away, so back down the hill which felt shorter going down than it did up, and off to a more centralized place... or so I thought. There are a lot of numbers with routes in Naugatuck and while one of them is Route 8, they also have a Route 63. I usually stick with the Maps app in my phone but I was using Google Maps today and ended up driving over a bridge of Route 63 and was informed I was there.
I was there? I was in the middle of the road. But that's just it. This road, this Route 63, went over the baseball field. As you drive over, you can see the baseball happening down there. I eventually switched back to the Maps app on my phone and after taking one wrong turn at first (oops) I finally made it to where the field was. Only it was also complicated because there was a parking lot, but you had to drive past that, on a little path it looked like you shouldn't be driving on, to get to the field. I was, luckily, following another car and when I saw the umpires I felt relief.
Now that I know how to get there, I'll never get lost going there again, but how neat is it that we have this baseball field down in a valley with a somewhat major road going on up above it, to the point where cars passing by can look out there window and see that baseball is happening down there in that hole, but they might not actually be able to figure out *how* to get down there quite as easily.
This game was between the Bristol Greeners (0-2) and the Canton Crushers (1-1) and had the Greeners won both teams would have been 1-2. The Greeners have lost to the Hammerheads and Beaver Hunters, while the Crushers split a doubleheader with the Twins. So what made this game interesting is that neither team had played the same team yet, so there was no comparison in terms of "Well, this team beat the Twins but the other team lost to them". It felt like it'd be an interesting match up and it was.
Throughout the first three innings of play, both teams held onto a tight ship. There were some baserunners, but not a lot of action offensively. The game was moving quickly and darkness set in just as fast. It was really some kind of odd magic how we went from "I see the sun and it's all pink and blue over there" to "It's dark and I see the car headlights driving by up there" in what must have taken longer but felt like the snap of the fingers.
In the top of the fourth inning, with runners on second and third, Trevor Mays hit a deep shot to right field that was tough for the defense to play (hit it where they ain't) and the two runs scored, putting the Greeners up 2-0. This is when things get tricky with the score, but I'm going to do my best here.
The bottom of the fifth inning started with a leadoff double. This was fun because a player from the Canton Crushers was running from first to second and someone from their dugout yelled that it wasn't a good idea. Then, when the runner was safe, the dugout yelled that it was a good idea and a random "BASEBALL!". From this double, the Crushers managed to get the bases loaded with one out. In what they call a fielder's choice, the runner was out at second in the next play, but a run came home making it a 2-1 game.
With runners on first and third with two outs, the Crushers runner on first ended up in a run down where he was eventually tagged out to end the inning. However, while he was being run down (which sounds more violent than it needs to) the runner on third went home. The Crushers seemed to imply that since the run scored before that third out that it counts, and I think that was what happened in the rules of baseball, so after five innings of play it was tied 2-2.
Regardless of how the runs were scored, the bottom of the sixth inning was when the Canton Crushers won the game. A single, HBP and another single loaded the bases for the Crushers and then a run was singled in. The first out came as a strike out and then a force out at home made it two outs. If the run from the previous inning didn't count and it was now tied then saving that run at home was a really big move for the Greeners.
Another run would score for the Crushers on a dropped ball and then in the final play to seal the inning the ball was hit to the Greeners' third baseman. With bases loaded, instead of stepping on third and ending the inning, the throw went to first not in time so at least one run scored here. By my count, if the run in the fifth counted then the Crushers would have scored 2 in that inning and four in this inning. I have the fifth marked as "one or two", which I'll say 2, and then the sixth as "at least 3" but I think two did score on that final throw to first and that's how it all added up.
The Greeners eventually got out of it, but then they were shut down in the top of the seventh and the Canton Crushers won. So if the Crushers scored two in the fifth, then that means they were already up 4-2 when the play at third happened, which made for two more runs. The good thing about that play at third, for me, was that it made me feel pretty assured that the Crushers were in fact up. But as the third baseman, even if you stepped on the base and got the third out, it wasn't the difference between winning or losing the game.
This felt like a very competitive game with the offense coming out at the end. Both teams played well and it was just all set to this beautiful backdrop. Driving home, I saw the moon which was either full or close to it over the Waterbury Mall, which was interesting, but then eventually as I got closer to home the moon was up above Castle Craig and that was even cooler thing to see, that I might not had seen if not for baseball.
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