After nearly two decades, Tri-Town Player/Coach Dan McCarty still plays for love of game

Tri-Town Trojan player/coach Dan McCarty has guided his team to three straight Tri-State Baseball League championships.

Copyright Peter Wallace / For Hearst Connecticut Media /June 12, 2024

LITCHFIELD –For true believers, baseball is a game that grabs you and won’t let go no matter the heartbreaks until your body finally says it’s time to leave. The Northwest Corner’s Tri-State Baseball League has its share of such talented lifers, along with an equal share at the other end of college and high school players with high hopes of catching on in the MLB draft. Nine straight years saw Tri-State players drafted, but nobody exemplifies the pure satisfaction of playing in the league, with or without a call from MLB, better than Litchfield’s Tri-Town Trojans and player/coach Dan McCarty. The Trojans started in 2005 when the long-running Litchfield Cowboys had no openings. “Ryan McDonald gathered a group of home-grown guys and we’ve been a team ever since,” said McCarty between games of a Trojan doubleheader at Litchfield’s Community Field.

Not just any team, as it turned out.

The Trojans, with additions and subtractions along the way, have made it to 10 Tri-State playoff series finals in the last 13 years, with five league championships including the last three in a row in a league that was 19 teams strong pre-Covid and now stands at 12 highly-competitive organizations. McCarty himself, at 36, is a prototype player. A graduate of Litchfield’s Forman School, he was a smooth-fielding shortstop and two-time prep school league batting champion sought after by Avery Point. When he reached a broader audience as an integral member of Torrington’s 2005-’06 American Legion State finals team, the University of Hartford and CCSU showed interest. “I should have gone to Avery Point,” he now says. Appropriate ambition led him to Division I Central Connecticut instead as a walk-on with no scholarship. Central’s pitching Coach Jim Zioga stood in his corner, but the other Blue Devil coaches had their scholarship guys, along with a bitter lesson for McCarty in the business of DI college athletics “I lost my passion for the game,” he says. Coming home for summers, he found it again with a group of friends in the Tri-State League playing for the Trojans. After he moved back from New York state, McCarty took over player/coaching duties from McDonald in 2017 and the Trojans have been on a tear ever since.

The Cowboys folded after Covid, but McCarty, still often responsible for game-winning hits, has had to turn down a most of a steady stream of Trojan applicants. “Along with some significant recent additions like (former Oriole minor leaguer) Willie Yahn and (Padres and A’s major league pitcher) Evan Scribner, we’ve had the same team for the last six years,” he says.“We’re a proven success. “I’m an old school guy. Baseball is becoming more offensive-minded but I live by pitching and defense. Those things keep us in the game and we don’t make stupid mistakes. “Baseball is a chess game,” he says. “You have to think two innings ahead, like when you’re at the bottom of the order – who do you run, when do you bunt. You have to know what you’re going to do on every play.” All of the Trojans have played through at least the college level, so, when McCarty does find a spot, the decision isn’t necessarily based on talent alone. “We’re friends playing together, so personality and confidence count. If you’re not included on the team, it’s not necessarily because you’re not good enough. It’s just that you’re not one of our guys, sometimes meaning you’re arrogant. “We all know what we’re doing and our former pros lead by example We’re playing with our family and we’re playing for fun.

“Willie (Yahn) doesn’t have to hustle like he does. (Former Oakland minor leaguer Mike Fabiaschi) just comes and does his thing.” McCarty himself, at 36, still has the lightning quick hands that made him a prep school batting champion, along with the kind of focus that comes with experience. “I’m mentally checked in and pressure doesn’t exist,” he says. “I’ll keep playing as long as I can hit a fastball.” In Saturday morning’s first game, the formula was all present and accounted for. Veteran pitcher Bobby Chatfield dueled with a talented young New Milford Kraken pitcher Riley Corgan to a 0-0 tie by the bottom of the seventh and final inning.

Willie Yahn laced a Kraken pitch into deep left center field, literally flying into third for a triple. A McCarty sacrifice fly brought him home for the walk-off win. Tri-State legend Miles Scribner, who many think might have had a long MLB career of his own, waited patiently on the Trojan mound for game two and another group of young hopefuls to come to bat. “I’m not going anywhere but I still play for the love of the game,” says McCarty, hustling off to submit another all-star Trojan lineup.