By Michael Letendre
BRISTOL – The Bristol Junior American Legion baseball program is hanging in at 7-6 the season – winners of four of its five past games, which included a 10-8 victory over the squad from Windsor Locks.
When Post 2 dropped a tough 2-1 decision to West Hartford on June 19, the locals fell to 3-5 and were several games back of Zone 1 leaders West Hartford and Simsbury.
But since that time, Bristol has been on complete fire – posting wins over RCP, the Windsor Locks coop, Glastonbury, and Meriden.
Bristol has scored 34 runs over that stretch – becoming a scoring juggernaut as the last couple weeks of the campaign are approaching.
It all started on June 25 as Post 2 sent RCP packing by an 8-4 final.
The following Monday, Bristol dropped Windsor Locks (10-8) but fell against EHM (9-4) from McKenna Field in East Hartford.
Bristol pitching shutout its past two opponents, getting above .500, as the July 4 holiday commenced.
On Thursday, June 30, Post 2 defeated Glastonbury by a single run (1-0) and on the first day in July, Bristol smoked Meriden, 11-0.
Ryan Maglio went the distance against RCP, throwing a 96 pitch, four run, five hit gem as Bristol scored three runs over the first and second frames to secure a 6-2 edge.
Bristol hung on to win by four runs (8-4).
Against the Windsor Locks program, Post 2 used four pitchers as Mitch Crowley (1-1) earned the victory over his 1.1 innings of play.
Isaac Roberge, Michael Roalf, and Rio Fernandez all saw time on the mound for the locals.
Bristol’s one run win over Glastonbury saw Maglio (3-1) win again, needing just 86 pitches.
He zipped up a four hit complete game outing and then against Meriden, Roalf (2-1) threw a one-hitter as Post 2 moved to 7-6 overall.
This coming week, Bristol has three contests to play.
Post 2 travels to battle West Hartford on Tuesday (July 5, 5:30 p.m.), plays Simsbury on Friday (5:30 p.m., Riley Field) and compete against Northeast 17U on Saturday (1 p.m., Riley Field).
As of Sunday, Post 2 is currently four games behind Simsbury (11-2) and three and-a-half behind West Hartford (10-2).
Since going 0-2 to start the season, Simsbury has won 11 straight.
But Bristol isn’t too far behind that mark with several games left to be played.
