By Michael Letendre

BRISTOL – The Bristol American Legion Baseball team showed a bit of rust at the plate over its 6-3 win against Naugatuck on Saturday.

Bristol has only played twice in the great month of July as Post 2 had nine days off between games.

Since the start of July, Bradley International Airport nearly saw seven inches of rain – creating havoc in terms of schedule around the state.

And even though Post 2 wrapped up 10 hits against Naugatuck, the most since the program tallied 11 against Simsbury on June 24, the swings were a bit off after the week-plus layoff from active competition. 

“It did look like we haven’t hit in a week,” said Bristol coach Jerry LaPenta of the Naugatuck game. “I thought our swings were a little long and slow except for Ryan Fradette.”

Fradette was the one player who swung the bat like he hadn’t skipped a beat.

Against Naugatuck, Fradette was slotted into the third position in the batting order, went a slick 3-of-4 and probably should have been perfect at the plate.

Only a dropped ball in left, which could have gone for a sacrifice fly in the third inning, did not allow Fradette a 3-for-3 performance.

But his efforts supplied two RBI to go along with three singles.

“He’s really come up with some huge two-out, two-strike hits,” said LaPenta of Fradette. “He’s done a really good job.”

And then off a tremendous effort by Mike Lorenzetti on the mound, which saw the big man zip up 12 Ks in 5.2 innings of action, Roberto Cruz could have closed out the game.

While a botched pickoff attempt took the save out of play, Cruz ended up winning the showdown as he nabbed four Ks over 2.1 innings of work.

Cruz chucked only 35 pitches and will be eligible to pitch Monday against Newington if LaPenta so chooses.

“My plan was to pitch him Monday and I wanted to keep him under forty-five” pitches said LaPenta of Cruz. “But I said if he’s gone, I’m going to go for the win today and worry about” Newington on Monday.”

“I thought Roberto did a great job.”

If everything goes to plan, Bristol is back in action Monday at Newington, Thursday for a huge showdown at West Hartford and against Berlin on Friday.

That week comes to pass, starting on Monday, if Mother Nature allows it.

“Who knows, with all the rain, it may get rained out on Monday,” said LaPenta. 

Race for Zone 1 heats up

Bristol’s win against Naugatuck on Saturday put Post 2 into a tie with Meriden for second place in Zone 1.

“It was a huge win,” said LaPenta of the Naugatuck victory. “They’re a good club. They have a bunch of games coming up. They’re knock some people off.”

Meriden (6-2, .750) has a better winning percentage than Bristol (8-4, .667) for the second-best ledger in the zone.

The locals have played 12 total Zone 1 games to date, three more than any other squad in the division.

West Hartford is 7-2 and in first place but has several games that must be made up.

Post 2 is just a half-game behind West Hartford for the Zone 1 lead.

“For us to stay where we are and not have five losses” is critical said LaPenta. “We have to take care of business tomorrow against Simsbury. And then we have a huge game against Newington on Monday. So there really aren’t any breaks.”

Post 2 can simply keep winning games as the rest of Zone 1 picks each other off – one game at a time.

However, Bristol isn’t going to take any opponent lightly.

That includes winless Berlin (0-9) who invades Muzzy Field on Friday.

“I’m not looking forward to playing Berlin either,” said LaPenta. “They are 0-9 or whatever but when they have all their guys, they’re not a bad team.”