Cape Cod Baseball League


The Cape Cod Baseball League is a collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league located on Cape Cod in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. One of the nation's premier collegiate summer leagues, the league boasts over 1,000 former players who have gone on to play in the major leagues.

History

Pre-modern era

Origins

As early as the 1860s, baseball teams representing various Cape Cod towns and villages were competing against one another. The earliest newspaper account is of an 1867 game in Sandwich between the hometown "Nichols Club" and the visiting Cummaquid team. Though not formalized as a league, the games provided entertainment for residents and summer visitors.
In 1885, a Fourth of July baseball game was held matching teams from Barnstable and Sandwich. According to contemporary accounts, the 1885 contest may have been at least the twelfth such annual game. By the late 19th century, an annual championship baseball tournament was being held each fall at the Barnstable County Fair, an event that continued well into the 20th century, with teams representing towns from Cape Cod and the larger region.
In 1921, the Barnstable County Agricultural Society determined to limit the fair's annual baseball championship to teams from Cape Cod. Falmouth won the championship in 1921, and Osterville in 1922. Interest in baseball was growing, as was a movement to create a formal league of Cape Cod teams.

The early Cape League era (1923–1939)

The "Cape Cod Baseball League" was formed in 1923, consisting of four teams: Falmouth, Osterville, Hyannis, and Chatham. Teams were made up of players from local colleges and prep schools, along with some semi-pro players and other locals. One notable player during this period was North Truro native Danny "Deacon" MacFayden, who went on to play for seventeen years in the major leagues.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the composition of the league varied from season to season. Towns did not opt to field teams in every season, and teams from other towns such as Bourne, Harwich, Orleans, Provincetown, and Wareham joined the league. Teams were not limited to league play, and often played teams from towns and cities in the larger region, as in 1929 when Falmouth played an exhibition game against the major league Boston Braves.
The league enjoyed widespread popularity throughout the 1930s, and even engendered competition in the form of the Barnstable County Twilight League and the Lower Cape Twilight League. However, as the cumulative effects of the Great Depression made it increasingly more difficult to secure funding for teams, the Cape League disbanded in 1940.

The Upper and Lower Cape League era (1946–1962)

With young men returning home after World War II, the Cape League was revived in 1946. The league now excluded paid professional or semi-pro players, and for a while attempted to limit players to those who were Cape Cod residents. The league was split into Upper Cape and Lower Cape divisions, and in addition to many of the town teams from the "old" Cape League, new teams now joined such as those representing the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Otis Air Force Base, and the Cape Verdean Club of Harwich among others.

Modern era (1963–present)

In 1963, the Cape Cod Baseball League was reorganized and became officially sanctioned by the NCAA. The league would no longer be limited to Cape Cod residents, but would recruit college players and coaches from an increasingly wide radius.
In 1985, the league moved away from the use of aluminum bats, and became the only collegiate summer league in the nation at that time to use wooden bats. This transition began a period of significant growth in the league's popularity and prestige among MLB scouts, as well as among college players and coaches. This popularity has translated into over one thousand former players who have gone on to major league playing careers, including multiple members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Structure and season

The CCBL regular season runs from mid-June through mid-August. Teams are geographically divided into the East Division and West Division. Each division consists of five teams which each play 40 regular season games, 5 games against each team from within their division, and 4 games against each team from the other division.
During the latter half of the regular season, an all-star game is contested between the all stars from the East and West divisions, and features a pre-game home run hitting contest. The CCBL All-Star Game was played at Fenway Park from 2009 to 2011, but is normally played at one of the CCBL home fields.
Following the regular season, the top four teams in each division qualify for the playoffs, which is an elimination tournament consisting of three rounds of best of three series to determine the league champion and winner of the Arnold Mycock trophy.

Teams

Current teams

Origin of team nicknames

Prior to 2009, six of the ten teams in the CCBL shared their team nickname with a team in Major League Baseball. However, in late 2008 MLB announced that it would enforce its trademarks, and required those CCBL teams to either change their nicknames or buy their uniforms and merchandise only through MLB-licensed vendors.
Three of the teams eventually changed their nicknames. In 2009, the Chatham Athletics became the Anglers, and the Orleans Cardinals became the Firebirds. The following season, the Hyannis Mets became the Harbor Hawks.
The Bourne Braves and Yarmouth–Dennis Red Sox, teams who share nicknames with Boston's two historic professional baseball franchises, chose to keep their nicknames and use MLB licensees for their merchandise.
MLB could not enforce the "Mariners" trademark against the Harwich Mariners because the use of the nickname by Harwich predated the entry of the Seattle Mariners into MLB as an expansion team in 1977.
The four teams whose nicknames were not in conflict with MLB have locally themed names such as the nautical monikers of the Falmouth Commodores and Brewster Whitecaps. The Cotuit Kettleers nickname recalls a legendary local Native American land transaction whose terms of sale involved the exchange of a brass kettle. The Wareham Gatemen are the only team that does not play its home games over the bridge, as the town of Wareham sits on the edge of the mainland, at the "gateway" to Cape Cod. Wareham was considered Cape Cod prior to the construction of the Cape Cod Canal.

Franchise timelines

Origins
Below is a partial list of Cape Cod baseball teams from the 1860s until the formation of the Cape League in 1923.
  • Barnstable Cummaquids
  • Barnstable Osceolas
  • Barnstable Village
  • Chatham
  • Falmouth Cottage Club
  • Harwich
  • Hyannis
  • Orleans Pants Factory
  • Osterville
  • Sandwich Athletics
  • Sandwich Nichols Club
  • West Barnstable Mastetuketts
  • West Falmouth
  • Yarmouth Mattakeesetts


Early Cape League era

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  1. -- Provincetown
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Upper and Lower Cape League era
File:Keith_Field_Sagamore_2019.jpg |thumb|right|200px|Keith Field, in the shadow of the Sagamore Bridge, was home of the Sagamore Clouters from the 1940s to the 1960s.

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  1. -- Brewster
bar:Brewster from:01/01/1948 till:12/31/1951 color:east $LeftIn text:"Brewster, 1948–1951"
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  1. -- Chatham
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  1. -- Dennis
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  1. -- Verdean
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  1. -- Truro
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  1. -- Orleans
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  1. -- Wellfleet
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  1. -- Yarmouth
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Beginnings of the modern era
From 1963 to 1969, the newly reorganized league maintained the Upper Cape/Lower Cape divisional structure, with the championship series played by the winners of each division. Beginning in 1970, the divisional structure gave way to a single combined league, with the top four teams in the league advancing to the playoffs. This combined league structure continued through 1987.

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Present Day
In 1988, the Bourne Braves and the Brewster Whitecaps joined the CCBL as expansion teams and the resulting ten-team league was split into East and West divisions. Since 1988, there have been no changes to the league's franchise composition or divisional alignments.