Cheshire Legion Has Potential Victory Ripped Away, Forced to Forfeit Game Against Trumbull

The Cheshire American Legion baseball team was six outs away from taking a 1-0 lead in its best-of-three series with Trumbull when the potential victory was ripped from its clutches Wednesday afternoon.

Cheshire Post 92, the Zone III champions, was leading Trumbull 8-2 when it took the field in the top of the eighth but all that changed in an instant.

The Trumbull coaching staff alerted the umpires that Cheshire had used an ineligible player that attended the Quinnipiac Summer Showcase earlier in the day at Quinnipiac University in Hamden. The umpires then notified the players and coaches that the game was over and Cheshire was forced to forfeit.

According to national American Legion rules, players cannot participate in any other baseball activity besides Legion baseball during the postseason.

Cheshire's Adam von Fischer was reportedly at the Quinnipiac showcase in the morning and the Trumbull head coach Brett Conner is also the pitching coach at Quinnipiac.

Ken Lipshez of the Meriden Record-Journal reported that the Trumbull coaches had proof that von Fischer was at the showcase because they had the lineup card with his name on it. Von Fischer is now ineligible for the remainder of the postseason.

Cheshire coach Bill Robertson was adamant that he didn't know that one of his players had attended the Quinnipiac camp, telling Dave Phillips of GameTimeCT.com, "Of course, I didn't know about it."

"They called me over and they had the lineup cards out and said there was an illegal player," Robertson said to Phillips. "I thought they were telling me they had an illegal player. They said no, it's yours."

Robertson was most upset with Trumbull's timing, down six runs with six outs to go.

Zone III chairman Dana Murphy was at the game as the site director at Cheshire High and told the Record-Journal that he could see why Cheshire was upset and "they have a right to be."

"Why did they wait until now?," Murphy said to Lipshez after the game. "But (Cheshire) should know. When situations like this come up, you have to straighten them out and get them solved before they (surface)."

According to the Record-Journal, the Trumbull coaches said after the game that they didn't want to ask for the forfeit but were pressured by superiors to do it, including general manager Anthony Vinci.

When contacted by GameTimeCT.com Wednesday night, Vinci said, "The rules are the rules and we're trying to understand everything that happened. Apparently, the rules were broken."