Torrington Thunder has bright future – despite all the rainouts!
Youthful Torrington Thunder squad making noise in sophomore season in Tri-State league
By Peter Wallace, Correspondent July 10, 2025 Hearst Media/Register Citizen
TORRINGTON — The Torrington Thunder baseball team is one of the new kids on the Tri-State Baseball League’s 13-team block.
With most of the Thunder’s team members 23 years old or under, it’s the latest examples of what to do next if other age-restricted options like American Legion Baseball (19 and under) have played out, but a love for summer baseball still needs a feed.
“We just wanted to keep playing baseball and keep it fun,” said 20-year-old catcher and team leader Kyle Green, one of the catalysts for the team’s founding last year, along with his dad, head coach Kevin Green, and general manager Misti Doherty. “Torrington has always had a Tri-State team and we said, ‘Why not?’,” said Doherty in a brief meeting at Fuessenich Park last week following a rainout.
Like so many others, Green caught the baseball fever along with a cluster of Torrington friends beginning with T-Ball at age 5. Green went on to captain Wolcott Tech’s baseball team and earn all-conference honors in his last two high school years, then spent a year playing at Western Connecticut State University.
Summer baseball came with the Torrington P38s U17 American Legion team and the Smack Factory travel team based in Oxford. School and baseball paths show a man who knows what he wants to do and pursues it. “I went to Wolcott Tech because I wanted a trade to fall back on,” says Green, who chose the manufacturing specialty at Tech. After a year at WestConn without much playing time on the Wolves’ freshman team, Green took a job as head of manufacturing for a small Cheshire company named Tater Baseball. The company makes baseball bats and apparel. It’s exactly what he wanted to do.
No wonder he and a cadre of guys he grew up with found a way to keep playing baseball. The first year was a huge test in a league that’s full of current and past college players with the same ambition — whether it’s improving their skills for a chance to go further or just staying in the game. There’s no better benchmark for a new team than the four-time reigning champion Tri-Town Trojans. Last year, the Trojans beat the Thunder, 20-0. “It’s a steep learning curve,” says Green. This year, the score was 3-0 against Tri-Town.
Ryan Green (no relation), a rising senior at Albertus Magnus College, matched Miles Scribner, last year’s league Cy Young Award winner, with 11 strikeouts apiece. “They scored three runs in the first inning and that was it,” said Green. “We took it as just another game.”
As of last week, the Thunder’s record was 4-7, already a distinct improvement over last year. “You get lots of experience in this league,” Green said, but it also takes money. General Manager Doherty figures that the annual team cost is $8,000 and they’ve organized a raffle to help meet the expenses of umpires, equipment and field rental. “Hopefully, we’ll get more people to come out for the team and in the stands,” says. Green. The team schedule and more information about the league is on the Tri-State website,
As for the Thunder, a budding writer on the team coined the phrase “every thunderstorm needs a little lightning.” So far, the love of summer baseball is all it’s taken to make some noise.