BETHEL — Watching from behind the fence near home plate at Crescent Park ball field, Maranda Koskela jokingly yells to the umpire, “You will be walking home.”
He had called a ball which favored the Bandit’s, the opposing team. Koskela explains that her teenage son Hunter is the umpire and her younger son, Grayson, is playing for the Western Maine Thunder, one of the two AAA minors teams in Bethel.
This season they play for fun and to gain experience. “Next season they get more or less ‘serious.'” said Thunder coach Josh Fortier of Bethel. In the AAA minors there are no playoff games so the wins and losses don’t matter. Fortier coached this season with assistants Mike Patten and Ryan Gagnon.
The Thunder played six rotating pitchers this spring, partly to give the younger players “coming up” from Minors AA some experience. Fortier said he had a mix of older and younger kids.
Asked to recall a highlight from the season, Fortier said at one game player Aiden Ames took a ball to the face in warm-ups. Despite the setback, he ended up pitching, striking out a few batters and before the game was over, hit an in-the-park homerun.
Abe Crooker, from left, watches Charlie Luetje make the catch with Wynn Mendenhall, on right. Rose Lincoln/The Bethel Citizen
Nate Crooker coaches the other AAA minors team, the Western Maine Bandits. Crooker also manages all the baseball and softball teams in the recreation department league. “To see our boys finish the season really strong, to see them picking up their level of play. All the progress they are making is the highlight,” he said. Greg Luetje is Crooker’s assistant coach.
Playing under the lights in Oxford was a highlight for all the players.
Between the two teams their ages range from eight to twelve years old, with third graders up to seventh graders potentially on the same team. For both teams their home and practice field is at CPS with boys from Bethel, Woodstock, Hanover, and Greenwood.
The teams have competed against each other three times. At a recent match-up the catcher for the Thunder was low-fiving the Bandit’s players as they crossed the plate.
Then the ump called a ball that favored the Thunder. His mother yelled to him, “OK you can have a ride home now.”
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