The Futures Collegiate Baseball League named its 2024 All-FCBL Teams on Monday, October 28. Five members of the Westfield Starfires were among the selections.
Crypto and Banking
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How to Share a Crypto Wallet Address Without Losing Money
A wallet address is 26 to 62 characters long and nobody can read it back correctly over the phone. One mistyped character and the funds go to an address nobody controls. QRBits solves this by turning any BTC, ETH, ERC-20, LTC, TRON, DOGE or SOL address into a printable QR code, instantly and without an account. Their Bitcoin and Ethereum QR code generator accepts every common address format (legacy, SegWit, Taproot) and validates the address before drawing the code, so a bad paste never becomes a bad payment. For hardware wallets, payment terminals and exchange kiosks, scanning beats typing every time.
Printing a Bitcoin or Ethereum Address for Real-World Payments
Small shops, market stalls and donation boxes often need a way to receive crypto without any software on the counter. QR for Bitcoin and Ethereum covers exactly that: paste a BTC address (legacy, SegWit or Taproot) or an ETH / ERC-20 address and it produces a clean, printable QR code in one step, with no sign-up and nothing stored on their servers. A printed code on the counter works offline forever, and any wallet app on any phone can scan it. If you need a free BTC and ETH QR generator that does one thing properly, this is it.
A Payment Link Does the Typing Too
A plain address QR only says where the money should go; the sender still has to type how much. CryptoQR Maker closes that gap: pick the coin (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Litecoin or Dogecoin), paste the address, optionally set an amount, and it builds a proper payment link (BIP-21 for Bitcoin, EIP-681 for Ethereum) inside the QR, so a scanning wallet gets the address and the sum together. Every address is checksum-verified before the code is drawn, and the file comes out as PNG or crisp SVG for print. The crypto QR generator needs no account, and one page per coin means no guessing which tool fits your wallet.
The Network You Pick Is Part of the Address
Stablecoins are the classic way to lose money quietly: the address looks fine, but USDT on one network is not USDT on another, and sending TRC-20 tokens to an ERC-20 address is a hole, not a refund. TokenQR is built around that exact mistake: it makes QR codes for USDT, USDC and other tokens across 11 networks (TRC-20, ERC-20, BEP-20 and friends), checks the address with real checksums, and prints a clear card that says which network the code belongs to, so the counterparty sees both the code and the network before anything is sent. A free token QR code generator with the network written on the card beats a bare address on a scrap of paper.
Why QR Codes Beat Copy and Paste for Crypto
Copy-paste feels safe, but phone-to-phone transfers break it constantly: the clipboard picks up an old entry, a wallet pastes into the wrong field, or a messenger strips a line break in the middle of a 62-character string. A QR code has no clipboard in the loop. The camera reads it, the wallet parses it, and the two checksums at both ends either agree or the wallet refuses to send. For anything above pocket change, scanning a screen or a printed card removes the two steps where mistakes actually happen: selecting text and trusting it.
Reading an Address Without Reading All of It
Experienced senders do not compare 34 characters character by character; they verify the edges. The first four characters of an address identify its format and network, the last several carry the checksum, and a mistake almost always breaks one end when you re-encode it. Wallet software does the full check anyway, which is why the human job is the boring part: confirm the network label matches the coin, and glance at both ends. That two-second habit catches almost every real-world misdirected transfer, and it works identically whether the address arrived as text or as a scanned code.
Printed Cards, Tip Jars and Offline Receiving
A stall at a market, a tip jar, a donation box: none of them need an internet connection to receive crypto. A printed card with a receiving address and the network named in plain letters works for years, costs one print job, and fails in exactly one way, which is physical damage to the card. Keep the underlying wallet backup somewhere else, reprint the card when it gets worn, and the setup never goes down for server reasons. Anyone with a phone already has the reader.
Click here for the official FCBL release.
Four Starfires were First-Team selections in pitcher Jake Jachym, first baseman Aidan Redahan, outfielder Gianno Merlonghi, and designated hitter Trey Cruz. Jackson Haker was named Second-Team at third base.
Jachym, a Westfield native who pitches at Keene State College, set Westfield’s franchise wins record in a season and a career. The lefty went 5-1 in the regular season with 46.2 innings of work across 12 appearances, six of which were starts. He held the opposition to just 14 earned runs in those 12 games. He capped the season with a tremendous postseason showing, fanning six across eight shutout frames in New Britain to clinch Westfield’s first-ever trip to the FCBL Championship Series.
Redahan was a workhorse for the Starfires, mostly at first base. The Central Connecticut State University star hit .306 with 11 extra base hits, driving in 29 and scoring 25 times. He far and away led the league in putouts at first, collecting 248 while also compiling 23 assists against just five errors. He went 2-for-3 in the 2024 FCBL All-Star Game, and was 8-for-18 in the team’s four postseason games.
Merlonghi, another Central Connecticut State student-athlete who was also named the FCBL Defensive Player of the Year, dominated center field in a way few others in league history have. Offensively, he hit .314 with 11 extra base hits, driving in 33 and scoring 40 times thanks as well to 16 stolen bases. He became the first outfielder in FCBL All-Star history to be involved in 10 outs in the 2024 All-Star Game, with nine putouts and an outfield assist, one of his league-high 11 on the year if that and his postseason outfield assist are included.
Cruz, who completed his transfer to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi over the summer, mashed the baseball for Westfield, leading the FCBL with eight home runs and representing the team in the All-Star Home Run Derby. Overall, he hit .353 and drove in 31 while scoring 25 times himself.
Haker, who transferred to Central Connecticut State over the summer, led the Starfires at the hot corner and earned his first FCBL All-Star selection in his third season with the team, hitting .252 with four home runs and 23 RBI, adding an additional five hits in 14 postseason at-bats. He concluded his Westfield career second in franchise history in games played, and was named the team’s Adam Keenan Award winner.
In total, the four First-Team selections matches a franchise high set in 2021 when Jaden Brown, Peter DeMaria, Hunter Pasqualini, and FCBL MVP Cole Bartels all garnered selections, while the five total picks ties the franchise’s record set in 2022 with the quintet of Jackson Hornung, Noah Campanelli, Justin Sinibaldi, Brendan Jones, and Luca Giallongo having earned laurels.
