By Michael Letendre
WALLINGFORD – The Bristol Greeners of the Greater Hartford Twilight Baseball League just completed its second season in the summer outfit.
The Greeners finished 5-20 overall and navigated the tough waters of the GHTBL.
Bristol had a new coach in 2022 as Trevor Mays took over the reins of the program and did a credible job as the first-year mentor for the program.
“I definitely learned a lot,” said Mays. “There were things that I definitely gained a lot of knowledge about running a team in general. [There’s] a lot of behind the scenes stuff and situational baseball. You would think when you’re playing that it’s going to be easy to manage because you can manage from the bench.”
“But then you actually get into that situation and it’s a lot harder.”
Bristol’s Shawn Mirmina was the original coach of the program when the Greeners entered Tri-State Baseball League play in 2009.
The team did extremely well over that first year, a squad that was extremely young but was hungry and looked to leave its mark in Tri-State play.
Bristol won 11-plus games in each of its first five seasons of summer ball, getting outstanding pitching from a rotation that eventually included the likes of Mat Niedzwiecki, Justin Tacinelli, and Geoff Pierce.
The 2013 season (19-7 overall) was the program’s best showing to date, falling one game short of making the Tri-State World Series after taking a 1-0 lead over Tri-Town in a Northern Division best-of-three showdown.
In 2015, Jon Griffin took over the program but one season later, Mirmina was back at the helm for a final campaign.
A.J. Lorenzetti became coach soon after and led the team into GHTBL play for the 2021 season after the pandemic wiped out the 2020 Tri-State season.
And then this year, Mays became the fourth ever coach for the franchise and faced all the challenges every summer league coach has to endure.
Elements like just getting nine players for every game can be a real chore for any baseball coach.
“There’s a lot of little things to manage that you don’t realize that you’re going to have to manage with the players,” said Mays. “You’re trying to put the best team on the field every day.”
After 11 years in the Tri-State League, the Bristol outfit moved on to the Greater Hartford Twilight Baseball League – following in the steps of the Bristol Merchants who were outstanding in the GHTBL for over a decade to open the 21st century.
In 13 seasons of summer ball, the Greeners have gone 110-161 overall between the two leagues and look to make its third year in the GTHBL the best ever in 2023.
“The competition is the best anywhere I think,” said Mays of the GHTBL. “There’s a couple former minor leaguers playing in [the GHTBL] and a lot of guys that played college baseball.”
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