It was a fantastic evening for baseball on Thursday, April 14th. The Connecticut Twilight League brought a big contingent of our players to face off against the new Atlantic League independent minor league team, the New Britain Bees. The Bees, a new team in the Atlantic League were playing in their first spring training game for their Franchise. The Bees are filled with former A, AA, AAA, and MLB players that caught on with the team in the offseason. The starting pitcher for the Bees was Josh Zeid, former Astros pitcher, who was dominant in the 3 innings he pitched. Chris Barsa came to the game, leading this CTL squad comprised of his whole Indians team, plus delegates from almost all of the other Connecticut Twilight League teams. The Indians team started the game and after a few innings the other teams players were subbed in. The CTL players in many cases hadn’t had much preseason training leading into the game, and in many cases this was their first time able to get on a field in 2016. Regardless, the CTL guys did their best to compete with the pros in the other dugout. CTL Batters didn’t fare well against the overpowering pitching of the Bees, but the CTL pitchers did perform admirably well in the game, striking out 10 Bees batters. Albert Pienkowski got the start on the mound and pitched very well, striking out 2 and only allowing 1 hit and baserunner. Following Albert, 8 other pitchers took the mound (Mike Cookson, Earl Oakes, Chris McGrath, Zach Graves, Nico Spouches, Matt Spence, Eddie Dickman, and Adam Michaud).

Here is the box score put together by former league president… Rob Roberts (thanks Rob, good to see you and thanks for the work on this).

Boxscore of Bees vs CTL (PDF) Boxscore of Bees vs CTL (Excel)

Here is an article, written from the Bristol Knights players perspective…

Bristol Knights’ players have chance to face New Britain Bees

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Here is a link to all the photos from the game:
CTL vs Bees PHOTOS

Here is a link to all of the videos from the game:
CTL vs Bees VIDEOS