An excerpt from my family travel journal. Cape Cod was one of the stops on our thousand-mile New England road trip. Summer league baseball won’t seem relevant to your marketing and advertising, unless you look deeper.
Every summer, the best college players from across the country come by invitation to play in the Cape Cod Baseball League. I have been reading about the league since a Marc Setty at James Hardie turned me onto the book, The Last Best League: One Summer, One Season, One Dream
After returning from an afternoon of vacation beach time on the cape, I settled in to watch The Red Sox hammering the Astros back back home in Houston’s Minute Maid Park. Ironic, eh? But, the clap of a bat and sound of applause outside my window lured me onto the porch. The glow of outfield lights above the treetops behind our hotel confirmed my suspicion: it had to be a Cape Cod League game.
It was an out-of-body thing: On went my Tevas. Grab the camera. Scamper across the parking lot. Follow the sound and lights. Emerging through a row of Field of Dreams hedges I found the Hyannis Harbor Hawks in the top of the 8th inning against the Wareham Gatemen. The 9-5 score told me the game was pretty much in the bag for Hyannis. The play-by-play announcer, pictured here doing the Internet broadcast, pretty much confirmed that. But, in baseball, as in life, it’s not over till it’s over. So, I stayed for the remaining inning-and-a-half.
The men pictured here are watching closer than most. They’re professional scouts looking for talent. Chances are some of the players they’re watching will next play in major league baseball.
These are the stakes for the talented young men chosen to spend a summer playing baseball on fields like the one behind our Cape Cod hotel. It’s also proof of what can happen for all of us when we squeeze the trigger and ride the bullet. When in doubt, play ball!
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