-
Countdown
-
Subscribe to our Podcast
-
Recent Posts
- Team USA Takes 6 from Cape League Rosters
- UCLA Looks Like a Cape League All-Star Team
- Random “Hot” or “Not”
- Former Orleans Announcer Now Voice of the Crawdads
- Yawkey Grant Money to Chatham and Harwich
- A Natty New Ballpark
- Orleans Fails to Net a Grant
- A new look in Falmouth
- Gordon Beckham Off to a Hot Start
- Letter to Commissioner Bud Selig
-
Categories
-
Archives
-
Baseball Links
CCBL Links
- Beach Chairs and Baseball Bats
- Cape Cod Baseball League
- Cape Cod Sports Report
- Cape Cod Times CCBL ‘07 Coverage
- Cape Cod Times: Sports
- Cape League Insider Blog
- Cape Prospects - Scouting Reports
- Cape.com Live Game Webcasts
- CCBL on Wikipedia
- MyFox Boston: CCBL
- Pappas Productions
- Right Field Fog
- Touching the Game DVD
CCBL Team Sites
Mar
18
Wareham To Play 2 in New Bedford
Posted by Dave | Filed Under News |
According to the revised schedule, Wareham will be playing two “home” games in New Bedford this year. As noted previously, Wareham will host Bourne at Walsh Field on Friday, July 11. Orleans will travel to New Bedford to play the Gatemen on Monday, June 16. The Cardinals may be making the longest “road trip” in the history of regular season CCBL games. Not sure how many nautical miles teams traveled when they played on Nantucket a few years ago!
I thought that was a typo when I first saw that on the Wareham website. I just did a Google map lookup for the additional miles that Orleans will travel and it is only 15 miles longer; about 15-20 minutes I would guess; really not that bad.
This will be a real test for New Bedford in their effort to attract a CCBL franchise. They have drawn really well for the past 2 seasons but you can attract a crowd for an “event”. Two games is a different story. One thing going against them is that the first game is a really early season game and those first few games don’t really draw that well anywhere on the Cape.
It will be interesting. Fans have come out in decent numbers the last couple of years for the well-publicized single game in New Bedford. Will they come out for two games ? Would they support a team of their own for 22 games ? I don’t know, but my guess is that there will be more people in attendance in New Bedford on June 16 than there would be if that game was played at Spillane Field. On June 16, schools will still be in session so there won’t be a lot of people vacationing in Wareham, Marion, Mattapoisett, etc., who might go out to a game. Some of those games in Wareham are sparsely attended the first two weeks in June. Schools will be in session in New Bedford too, but there are more people there to draw from.
Having said that, when looking at the bigger picture, I still hope that the league does not expand. It’s good to play a game in Brockton, and another on one of the islands. Play a game or two in New Bedford. That’s OK. I just don’t want to see expansion for two reasons. I don’t want to see the league spread out geographically. Also, as of now there is a very good balance with every team playing the teams in their own division six times each, and the teams in the other division four times each.
I think expansion is inevitable and another off-Cape team or two is a good idea. We’ve discussed this on this site before but you can actually reduce travel for many teams if the new teams were in Plymouth and New Bedford. The Western Division would play more games against Western Division teams and play the other division only twice…home and away. Bourne, for example, would only travel to Orleans once.