What a great day of baseball at the home of the Hartford Yard Goats

What a fantastic day of baseball… great weather, no rain, but it was hot. Five games of baseball played in 12 hours in the best stadium in Double A Baseball, Dunkin’ Donuts Park. This day is the jewel of the CTL Schedule, and the day most looked forward to by all of us in the league. This day isn’t possible without the fantastic staff behind the scenes at Dunkin’ Donuts Park and with the Hartford Yard Goats. Huge thanks to all of you that worked with us (Conor, Jess, and all) and those who worked during the event making it so special to all the players and spectators. Support the Yard Goats… its a great place to watch some great baseball!

Next, we really want to thank the local Connecticut Brewing Community and especially these 4 Breweries that stepped up to support us and local baseball in Connecticut by helping us lower the cost to our players. Huge thanks to the Fat Orange Cat Brewing Company in East Hampton for sponsoring our first game of the day between the Aftershock and Brewers. In addition they also partnered with our league in the preseason to sponsor our new team, the Brewers (formed from the combined East Hampton Royals and Loco Perro Expos). Game 2, between the Singing Surgeons and the Ridges was sponsored by the amazing Willimantic Brewing Company. They also stepped up in a huge way this year to sponsor our Willimantic team, the Ridges this year. The Ridges are the oldest continually running team in our league (and possibly the whole state), being founded in the mid 1940s. This year they united with one of Connecticuts best and longest running independent breweries, Willibrew! Our third game, the rematch of last year’s championship series between the Orioles and Indians, was sponsored by the great Rocky Hill spot… Still Hill Brewery. It our first time working with them and we hope to more in the future. Our 4th game of the day between the Bristol Knights and Elmer’s Angels was sponsored by the amazing Southington brewery, Kinsmen Brewing Company. Kinsmen also decided to sponsor both the Bristol Knights and the Southington Aftershock teams this season and will be the location of our joint team party after the season and hopefully many more get togethers. Our 5th game between the Dodgers and Pirates didn’t have a local independent brewery sponsor, but we hope to continue this tradition in coming years and work with more in the future.

Another huge thank you goes out to our PA Announcer for the entire day… James Clark. James… you are AMAZING behind the microphone. You definitely have a career doing this or something similar with your voice it you choose. Whenever we mentioned that the guy doing that was a teenager… people were floored. You have a great voice and did fantastic! You are welcome anytime to come announce at any of our games. James also often broadcasts the Wethersfield Dodgers games in our league, in addition to events for Wethersfield High School.

Also… this game and the running of our league wouldn’t happen without the hard work and enormous amounts of time and commitment of the CTL Board (Scott Dickens, Don Fodaski, Chris Barsa, Brian Timmes, Todd daCunha, and Ken Cook). For this event alone, many many hours were spent in the leadup and then many more during that day organizing various aspects of keeping it running smoothly. Thanks!