SANFORD — Less than an hour from their boyhood home, Bryce and Brady Afthim of Windham are sharing an all-star summer of baseball playing for the Sanford Mainers.

For Bryce Afthim, 21, a pitcher at the University of Southern Maine, playing in the wooden bat New England Collegiate Baseball League is a significant step up in competition. The NECBL is considered one of the best summer collegiate leagues, just a notch below the Cape Cod League. Most of the hitters Afthim has faced this summer are Division I college players. With his four-pitch repertoire and what Mainers Coach Nic Lops calls a “no-fear” approach, Afthim is 3-1 with a 1.33 ERA in 33 2/3 innings. Opponents are batting .190 against him, and he had a stretch of 20 consecutive scoreless innings.

Sunday, he’ll be the starting pitcher for the North Division in the NECBL All-Star Game on Martha’s Vineyard.

“It means a lot. I definitely wasn’t expecting it going into this summer,” Afthim said.

Younger brother Brady, 19, coming off a solid freshman season at the University of Connecticut, was chosen by North Division coaches as the all-star team’s closer. Through his first 24 innings this summer, all in relief, he did not allow an earned run and struck out 44 hitters, picking up five wins and two saves.

“It’s got to be sweet for them,” Lops said. “I don’t know if they even realize how unique this is and how special this is.”

While his older brother looks to get ahead in counts, keep hitters off balance and induce weak contact, Brady’s approach on the mound is to feature his mid-90s fastball.

“I’m more of, I come in and ideally strike everybody out. It’s just two different approaches to the same goal,” Brady said while shagging flies during batting practice prior to Wednesday’s home game at Goodall Park.

Twice this season, the brothers have combined for shutouts, with Bryce throwing the first six innings and Brady working the final three.

When the brothers last played together, in the 2019 high school season, Bryce was the team’s standout pitcher, earning Varsity Maine all-state honors. Brady, then a sophomore, was drawing rave reviews as a catcher.

At that point, Bryce says, he had no idea his younger brother would become a pitcher, “but he always had an arm.”

Brady Afthim didn’t begin to fully focus on pitching until the summer of 2020 after verbally committing to UConn. As a senior at Windham, he dominated the competition en route to being named the 2021 Varsity Maine Player of the Year, Gatorade Maine Player of the Year and Mr. Maine Baseball.

“I remember playing them in high school and they were very competitive.” said Quinn McDaniel of Eliot, the Mainers’ all-star middle infielder and two-year starter for the University of Maine. “They look 10 times better now and they still have that competitive edge. They work hard. And it’s showing. They’re dominating.”

On Wednesday, Brady Afthim’s competitiveness got the better of him as his season-long success story took a sour turn against the Upper Valley Nighthawks.

Coming on in relief in the seventh inning with a 4-2 lead, he gave up his first earned run of the season. After striking out the first two hitters, he issued a two-out walk, and then a 370-foot wall-ball double by Ryan Ignoffo. Afthim was visibly frustrated, banging down the resin bag and shouting into his glove.

“I shouldn’t be walking guys with two outs and then Ignoffo, who is like the best hitter in this league, I started off with a breaking ball that I think gets a lot of the plate and I don’t get the call,” Afthim said. “So it’s 1-0 and I’m throwing the best hitter in the league a fastball that he’s pretty much sitting on, and he just absolutely drilled it. Which is the first earned run I’ve given up all year. So that frustrated me.”

It got worse in the eighth inning.

With a runner at third and one out, Afthim hit a batter with a pitch, then threw wildly to first on a pick-off attempt to bring home an unearned run. When another ball-strike call went against him, Afthim issued a profanity and was ejected.

“Obviously, just not use the words I did, but even more, just not to take the frustration (from the seventh inning) out there to the mound with me the next inning,” he said. “It just all kind of boiled over. That’s the overriding lesson I learned from this game.”

For the vast majority of the NECBL season, the Afthim brothers have had nothing but positive feedback as they work to progress their pitching careers.

“I really want to develop my curveball more,” said Bryce, who led USM with a 2.36 ERA this spring while going 4-3 with three complete games and still has three years of eligibility remaining. “I probably threw it 10 times all season (for USM). It’s come a really long way. I want to have both my curveball and my slider just to have more options.”

Bryce said he’s also looking to add a bit more zip to his fastball, which usually registers in the 87-88 mph range, and strength and flexibility in his lower body.

In 20 innings over 22 relief appearances for UConn, including a 1 1/3-inning scoreless stint against Stanford in the championship game of its NCAA regional tournament, Brady showed that his 93-94 mph fastball plays against top competition. Like his brother, he’s working on adding a pitch – a change-up in his case – and to show he can pitch multiple innings. In each of his six appearances prior to Wednesday, he had pitched at least three innings, including a five-inning, 12-strikeout effort.

“Hopefully I come back to UConn with a chance to start, so hopefully if I come back with a fastball, the slider staying good and a good change, I could have a shot to do that,” Brady said.

Both Afthims are enjoying pitching to batters using wooden bats instead of the metal bats used in college games.

“With a metal bat, you might get right in on someone’s hands and they’ll still get it over the infield, where with the wood bat, they’re going to crack it and it’s going to be a rollover,” Bryce said.

Both have broken a few bats this summer.

“Oh yeah. That’s very satisfying,” Bryce said.

For Phil and Shelly Afthim, having their boys playing together close to home at Goodall Park has made for “a fantastic summer,” Shelly Afthim said.

“We used to come to these games when they were kids just to watch,” Shelly said. “For us, we know the history of the park. It is truly one of our favorite places to watch a game, and for us, to have your kids be able to be a part of this history, it’s amazing.”

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