Baseball Review //
Connecticut Tristate Fall Baseball League Opening Day:
Hammerheads, Beaver Hunters and Greeners!
August 31st 2025
Bill Lee Field
Bloomfield CT
Photos from both games can be found in an album on Facebook here :::
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1849389892457890&type=3
Though it seems like there has been a Fall League in Connecticut on Sundays for a few years now, this is my first year going and I plan to make the most of it. Connecticut is such a weird state when it comes to the weather (Welcome to New England) because I can tell you that I have memories as a child of going out trick or treating in the snow and when it was fairly warm out. While most leagues have come to an end, the Tri State Fall League just started on Sunday at Bill Lee Field in Bloomfield.
Bloomfield is the type of place where you drive and think "Oh, what a pretty and expensive house" and then five minutes later see a man urinating outside of KFC. At one point during these games I saw someone walking on the road that backdrops the field and I swore he was a baseball player. He looked like he had those white pants tucked into his socks, a hat and he was carrying a bag which looked like it was full of gear. But as I zoomed in I noticed it was actually a black trash bag. Bill Lee Field definitely lives up to its name and I love Bill Lee.
These two games couldn't have been more different in terms of how they went down. The first game saw the Burlington Beaver Hunters (who use some form of those words in their name usually) took on the Hartford Hammerheads, with the Hammerheads at home. The Beaver Hunters looked like they were taking batting practice and having fun doing it. The Hunters put up double digits in runs in the second inning and this one got the mercy rule after four innings.
I'm not always in favor of the mercy rule and sometimes you can at least comeback and lose 12-7 instead of 12-0 (the Hunters scored 15, for the record) but being that there was a second game for the Hammerheads, it was definitely the right call to just regroup and focus on the next game against the Bristol Greeners.
At one point during this first game I heard the coach for the Hammerheads tell the umpire "It's not the pitching, they're just hitting it where we're not" and that really did sum up the game. It wasn't that the Hammerheads were playing badly, it's just that sometimes in baseball you get those hits down the third base line that are a double and just cannot be fielded. The Hunters were getting hits like that nonstop and there isn't really a way to play defense against them.
As the Bristol Greeners began coming in for their game, you had to feel it in the air. The Hammerheads were subject to the mercy rule in the first game. This either meant that they could easily be beaten again, and the Greeners were going to have a good day, or that they have some rest, time to regroup and are more determined now to win. Well, as we all know, sharks keep moving.
With the Greeners as the home team, the Hammerheads put up two big runs right in the first inning. The Greeners answered back with one, but as it stayed back and forth like this for a bit, the Greeners just never seemed to catch up. The Hammerheads were just always putting up more runs each inning and they just seemed to get away from the Greeners.
One of the highlights of the second game for the Hartford Hammerheads saw Michael Almote (who has played in the GHTBL for the Record-Journal Expos) hit not one, not two but three homeruns is as many at bats. That's not really something you see happen very often, but if someone out there was to make a baseball for every game (like Topps Now) we'd definitely have a card to represent that accomplishment.
This league has five teams, so three of them were at these two games. The other two teams are the Terryville Twins and Canton Crushers, who split games elsewhere, so right now the league standings would be the Beaver Hunters (1-0) in first place, the Bristol Greeners (0-1) in last place and everyone else tied in the middle 1-1. I'm not sure of all of the individual weekends, but the Hartford Hammerheads have their schedule up on their Facebook and every week the Tri State page itself shares all of the games for the week.
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