Play Ball!

Minor league teams show there’s more to baseball in CT than Red Sox/Yankee rivalry

By Jack Coraggio

Special to Metromix
May 8, 2008

• Email
• Print View
• Share
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Furl
  • Google
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • Yahoo
• Add To Favorites
• Add to playlist

Imagine a professional baseball stadium in which a militant Boston Red Sox fanatic sits next to a rabid New York Yankees extremist, both cheering harmoniously for the same team. As terribly improbable as it sounds, it actually happens all the time, at any of the alternate universes that house Connecticut’s three minor league baseball teams.

Indeed, all three of these teams—the New Britain Rock Cats, Connecticut Defenders and Bridgeport Bluefish—reach deftly across the proverbial foul line that divides the Nutmeg State’s most bitter athletic rivalry. In the process, they provide wholesome, family entertainment for a state without one prominent professional sports team (sorry Connecticut Sun fans, but it’s true.) Here is a breakdown of the teams.

First at bat: the New Britain Rock Cats