Sport Baseball No. of teams 10 | Founded 1885 Country United States | |
Motto Where the Stars of Tomorrow Shine Tonight Most recent
champion(s) Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox | ||
The Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL) is a collegiate summer baseball league located on Cape Cod in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Many future Major League Baseball players have started there during their college years; MLB has provided financial support to the Cape League for over 40 years. During the 2014 MLB season, 265 CCBL alumni played in the majors; additionally over 1,000 CCBL alumni were playing in professional baseball in 2006.
Contents
The CCBL Hall of Fame is located in the "Dugout", the lower-level of the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum in Hyannis, Massachusetts. The Cape Cod Baseball League is one of 10 leagues in the National Alliance of Summer Baseball.
Teams
The Cape Cod League regular season starts in mid-June and runs through mid-August. The playoffs determine the East and West Division Champions, who then compete for the League Championship.
At one time, six of the teams in the Cape League shared their names with Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. However, in late 2008 MLB announced that it would enforce its trademarks, and required teams to either change their names or buy their uniforms and merchandise only through licensed vendors. MLB could not enforce the "Mariners" trademark against the Harwich Mariners because that team predated the 1977 American League expansion and the entry of the Seattle Mariners into MLB. Three other teams eventually changed their names. First, in 2009, the Chatham Athletics became the "Anglers", and the Orleans Cardinals became the "Firebirds". In March 2010 the Hyannis Mets joined the Anglers and Firebirds, changing their team name to "Harbor Hawks". The Bourne Braves and Yarmouth–Dennis Red Sox chose to use MLB licensees for their merchandise.
Pre-modern teams on Cape Cod
League teams
In popular culture
The Cape Cod League was the setting for the 2001 Hollywood film Summer Catch, directed by Michael Tollin and starring Freddie Prinze Jr. The 2003 documentary film Touching the Game by Jim Carroll chronicled the 2003 CCBL season and explored the league's history.
Baseball by the Beach (ISBN 0-9719547-4-7) by Christopher Price was published in 1998 and discusses the league and its history. In 2002, writer Jim Collins followed the Chatham Athletics (now the Chatham Anglers) for the season and wrote The Last Best League (ISBN 0-306-81418-8) about the team and its players. Baseball on Cape Cod (Images of Baseball) (ISBN 978-0-7385-3508-1) by Dan Crowley has many photos of the early and modern Cape League eras. The 2004 novel Slider (ISBN 0-06-058033-X) by Patrick Robinson takes place in a Maine summer league, but is actually based on the Cape League. In 2005, Beach Chairs and Baseball Bats (ISBN 1-4196-0508-9) by author Steve Weissman and Cape Crusaders (ISBN 1-4137-6232-8) by author Mike Thomas were published. The latter focuses on player interviews, while the former goes behind the scenes of a typical Cape League season.
There are also several active blogs that follow the Cape League, including Right Field Fog and CodBall.