By Michael Letendre
BRISTOL – The Bristol American Legion baseball team’s showdown against West Hartford this past Wednesday was a bit of a state tournament preview.
And with a 3-1 victory over Post 96, Bristol (16-6 overall, 14-5 Zone 1) earned another signature victory.
“That’s just a huge game,” said Bristol coach Jerry LaPenta. “It was a real good team win and put us in a good spot.”
The triumph over West Hartford on Wednesday saw a surprise start for Bristol’s Andrew Lozier who was just eligible to throw again after his 104-pitch victory over Naugatuck last Friday (14-7).
Roberto Cruz was in line to start against West Hartford but was not available for the game.
It was next man up for Bristol and Lozier (7 IP, 6 hits, 10 strikeouts, 103 pitches) was the man of the hour and came through like a champ.
“I felt really good,” said Lozier of the win. “I actually wasn’t even supposed to pitch today. Roberto was supposed to pitch. He wasn’t feeling well so I was like ‘all right, I guess I’m on the mound.’ I went in and did my thing.”
Lozier zipped up his fourth victory over the winning effort and is perfect this season (4-0) with two complete game efforts over 29 innings of action.
And even going the distance against West Hartford, Lozier will be eligible to throw in Bristol’s first state tournament game despite the pitch count rules.
Bristol is the Zone 1 leader…and looks to finish there
Bristol is ready to seize another Zone 1 title as the regular season comes to a conclusion.
“We pretty much set ourselves up to be first place in the zone and get a great seed” in the Connecticut State American Legion tournament said LaPenta. “We can get home games [in Bristol] for the first two rounds. So today was a huge, huge [win against West Hartford].”
A loss would have positioned Zone 1 with three squads tied with six losses apiece.
Except West Hartford (10-7 entering Saturday) fell to surging Berlin on Friday, dropping a 8-2 decision, as the team squandered a chance at a first place finish in Zone 1 after a fast start to the campaign.
A tie of sorts still could be in the cards if someway, somehow, Post 2 loses its game at Simsbury on Sunday (11 a.m. from Memorial Field).
Currently, Avon entered Saturday 12-6 in Zone 1 play.
“Right now, we’re in the lead in losses,” said LaPenta. “We have one more game against Simsbury.”
Meriden is 11-5 and it’s yet to be determined if the team will make up any of its remaining Zone 1 games.
The reality is that Bristol will never get its rubber match against Meriden – splitting the season series against the program (1-1).
“It’s probably not going to be made up,” said LaPenta of Meriden.
