“Baseball, to me, is still the national pastime because it is a summer game. I feel that almost all Americans are summer people, that summer is what they think of when they think of their childhood. I think it stirs up an incredible emotion within people.”
– Steve Busby, former Kansas City Royals pitcher
Summer was hot and humid and fun, but not terribly interesting in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky. But for two weeks every July, we packed up the van and headed north. Once we passed over the bridge and into Cape Cod, summer was a little bit magical. The beach and the twilight that seemed to last forever, and everything in between.
And there was baseball, a game nearly every night in the Cape Cod League, where college players spend their summer. From the bleachers behind home plate or the hill in center field, we watched future stars, getting autographs and remembering names. It’s always tempting to wax poetic on America’s Pastime, but it feels especially right on Cape Cod. It’s baseball that feels familiar, even if you’ve never seen it before.
For me, the magic of a childhood baseball fascination stuck around, and I started writing about the Cape League at rightfieldfog.com. Along the way – after a move to Rhode Island – I found more baseball that felt a little magical, at Cardines Field in Newport and Old Mountain Field in South Kingstown. I read about the amazing Midnight Sun Game in Alaska, the talent in the Northwoods League, the tradition in California.
Summer collegiate baseball, I realized, is part of the fabric of America’s Pastime – and a unique part. It’s a small-town game full of Big League dreams, the crack of the bat on a summer night, a passion that draws in so many people for no other reason than the passion itself.
And it’s time to tell a few of those summer baseball stories.
This summer, I’ll be weaving my way through the summer baseball landscape for the book Summer Nine. The nine is for nine days, the lens through which the stories will be told, from the Cape to Alaska and a lot of places in between. Two stops on the journey are already down, with seven more to go.
The words on a page are a ways off, of course, but you’ll be able to follow along here and on Twitter @Summer9Book. And Right Field Fog will still be going strong, as well.
Let’s find some summer magic, shall we?