On a Cape Cod summer evening, on many a high school baseball field, you can enjoy our national pastime of yore for free. You will find packed bleachers, a small snack shop cooking up burgers and hot dogs, and picnic blankets and beach chairs ringing the area. Local community volunteers run the whole thing- from welcoming folks at the entrance to fundraising to hosting players in their homes. The coach and trainers get a stipend, but other than that, no one gets paid. It is all done for the love of the game.

We witnessed the culmination of the season-ending playoffs of theCape Cod Baseball League between Harwich Mariners and the Bourn Braves. The Mariners won in the rubber match in the three game series. I have been persuaded to write about the Cape Cod League by the avid baseball fans in my midst and I am channeling John here because , as many of you know, I am not much of a baseball fan!

The Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL or Cape League) is a collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league. One of the nation’s premier collegiate summer leagues, thousands of players have spent a summer on the Cape before later donning a big league uniform. That includes Hall of Famers like Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell and former stars like Nomar Garciaparra, Thurman Munson, Barry Zito and Jason Varitek. Current stars- including Aaron Judge, Pete Alonso, Chris Sale and George Springer- all wore jerseys for Cape Cod Summer League.

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.

Players in the Cape Cod all live with host families who live on the Cape, becoming members of those families along the way. Hosts often refer to them as their “summer sons”.

“The league has enabled people to come together under the auspices of baseball, and build deep and abiding relationships,” says Boston Globe journalist Christopher Price, author of Baseball by the Beach: A History of America’s National Pastime on Cape Cod. Price’s grandparents met at a Barnstable game in the 1930s. “The game connects generations over time. That’s a legacy that any sport would be proud of.”