Anticipation of Tri-State Baseball League a sign of spring in Northwestern Connecticut

By Peter Wallace,  Correspondent March 28, 2025 Register-Citizen

For sports fans, it’s the nearness of basketball’s March Madness; closer to home, it’s the crack of high school softball and baseball bats or the sound of a starter’s gun on a high school track.

Reach further and you get the delight of a late spring/summer day at a smattering of baseball fields and parks in western Connecticut constituting the homes of the Tri-State Baseball League, tracing its adult baseball origins to 1937 and still going strong. Nobody’s better at rushing to meet the season than Tri-State’s Eddie Gadomski, the league’s commissioner since the turn of this century. While deeply embroiled as union president for Waterbury Hospital, the Thomaston resident finds time to announce last year’s league award winners along with excitement over this year’s possibility of a history-making year for the Tri-Town Trojans, based in Litchfield.

The Trojans have won four straight titles since 2021 and seem equipped to go for a fifth this summer, beginning in the middle of May through Tri-State’s World Series starting in the middle of August. “For summer league players, this is their major league and they take it seriously,” Gadomski says. They have a right to do so. Among the current 12 teams ranging geographically from Amenia, New York to New Haven this year after a peak of 19 teams before Covid’s 2020 disruption, the teams are filled with high school and college stars and alums as well as a smattering of former pros. Tri-Town alone has Mike Fabiaschi and Willie Yahn in its infield, both of whom made a serious run in the minor leagues, along with perennial league Cy Young winner Miles Scribner, whose brothers Evan and Troy hit the majors. Miles, who many league opponents think should have gone with them, now in his mid-30s, won the pitching award again last year as a key part of the Trojan onslaught. Over another long winter, domination by Tri-Town and Scribner in the past four years gives dozens of other stars more determination than ever to prove to their fans, much less wives and families, that they too could have made it.

Chief among them is the Bethlehem Plowboys, who celebrated their team’s 100th anniversary in 2023 and played against the Trojans in the World Series for the past three years. If the idea of serious country baseball is appealing, try Bethlehem’s team slogan on for size. “Plow for life” might say it all. The Plowboys have played in 14 league World Series since 1996, beating the Trojans in 2010 for their latest championship. In a history-minded league, the Trojans have reached the championship round 11 times in the last 13 series (the league didn’t play in Covid’s 2020). Just two other teams have matched them in championship strings. Amenia’s Monarchs did it from 1982-1985; Torrington’s Rebels won it all from 1992-1995. Amenia has 10 league championships over the years. Winsted’s Whalers have six. Eleven different teams won championships from 2007-2019. Team names and locations are subject to change in a league where families and day jobs sometimes catch up to replace the baseball dreams, but this summer, you can still hear the crack of serious wooden bats up and down the league’s highways and country roads.

The New Haven Ravens, last year’s Wallingford Twilight League and Nutmeg League Champions, are the latest big threat to topple the Trojans’ goal of standing alone in league history with five straight titles. Others in the contender mix include the Burlington Hunters, Waterbury’s CT Sliders, the Wolcott Scrappers, Canton Crushers, Valley Kraken (New Milford), Naugatuck White Sox and Torrington Thunder. Last year’s major award winners were league MVP Jon Wilson, a Thomaston native playing for Bethlehem; Chad Lavelle, the Silver Slugger from Burlington’s Hunters; and Scribner, who comes from Washington to pitch for the Trojans.

Several of the teams are already working out, Commissioner Gadomski reports.

In Connecticut, late spring and summer never come too soon for most of us.

March 28, 2025

Peter Wallace