The preseason consensus among the CIAC coaches was that Staples just wasn’t that great this year.
Doubt one of Connecticut’s strongest baseball traditions at your own peril.
In a year when the Wreckers were never considered one of the state’s five strongest teams — in a year when they didn’t even make it past the first round of the FCIAC tournament — Jack McFarland’s program stormed to its third Class LL title in 10 years anyway. Staples defeated Trumbull, one of the teams that was viewed among the state’s elite and the FCIAC champion, in the state title game, Cole Langraff’s eighth-inning RBI deciding a 3-2 thriller at Middletown’s Palmer Field.
“Our kids’ goal every year is to make it to Palmer Field,” McFarland said. “They know exactly where it is, they know all the history of the field. That’s where they want to play. I don’t know if a lot of teams talk about that before the season, but we do.”
