Eastern Connecticut State University

Thomas E. Reynolds began his Eastern baseball career with the ultimate individual feat and capped it with the ultimate team accomplishment. In between, the Thomaston native hit for average and power as one of the program’s premier clutch hitters, and used a discerning eye at the plate to draw over 100 walks and strike out only 35 times in a career that culminated in the program’s first NCAA Division III national championship in 1982. Despite an injured shoulder sustained in the first game of the 1982 regional, Reynolds batted .459 with 12 RBI and eight runs scored  in eight post-season games that year. The 5-foot-9 inch left-handed hitter shouldered the offensive and defensive loads in the 1982 NCAA Division III Northeast Regional Tournament by batting .643 with nine RBI and five runs scored, and handling six defensive chances without an error en route sharing the tournament MVP award. In the second game of that regional, he drove in five runs with four hits, including a three-run home run, and his two-out RBI single in the eighth inning drove in what proved to be the winning run of the championship game. In the nationals, he reached base safely 11 times with eight hits and three walks and handled 21 defensive chances at third base without an error to power the Warriors to four straight elimination wins.  As a sophomore leftfielder in the first night game at Alumni Field on April 18, 1980, Reynolds became the first Eastern batter to hit a home run under the home lights in an historic 11-10 upset of North Carolina. The result of Reynolds’s first career at-bat in the 1979 season-opener served as an omen when he unloaded a pinch two-run home run on the team’s opening southern trip. Reynolds left the program as the all-time leader with 102 career walks, was fourth in RBI (135), seventh in hits (185), and tied for seventh in home runs (17). Soon after his final collegiate at-bat, Reynolds was drafted in the 25^th round of the First Year Player Draft by the Atlanta Braves.