“We want more, we want more, if you really like it you want more.”
If you have seen this AT&T commercial, you know the girl is not talking about baseball. However, if you have met me, you know I could not imagine why anybody would not apply such a thought to the sport.
College baseball is the best of the college sports to follow because there is something for everyone to enjoy. It showcases the best aspects of the sport, and there is so much of it that you do not have to be left wanting more.
One of the biggest reasons I love baseball is because it is played so often, no matter the level. It is impossible to dwell on one game because the next comes so quickly. Even college teams can play as many as four games a week, keeping my mind off of bad losses and providing a general distraction from life.
The college baseball season can start as early as February and lasts until the end of June. At the beginning of the season, college sports fans may be watching basketball or hockey, but by the middle of April baseball is able to take the spotlight.
In addition to more than thirty games that a team may play in a season, baseball continues into the summer with the Cape Cod Baseball League and other summer leagues. From the beginning of June to the middle of August, baseball is the only college sport being played.
While the Cape Cod League is made up of the best players from the regular college baseball season, it provides a very different view of the sport. The more relaxed environment allows fans to enjoy baseball more than they can enjoy any other sport.
During any regular season, it is easy to get caught up in wins and losses. For sports such as football, basketball and hockey, there is so much riding on the regular season that it is hard to take a step back and simply enjoy the sport itself. College baseball fans have a chance to go all out rooting for their team to win during the regular season, and then can follow summer leagues however they want to.
The Cape Cod league brings fans closer to baseball than they can come to any other sport. Teams play on high school fields, so it is common to walk by a field and have no idea some of the best players used that field the night before.
The home field for the Chatham Anglers is right next to a playground — one that I went to with my family for years before realizing the field I loved to run around was once home to Mike Lowell, David DeJesus, Evan Longoria and countless other Major Leaguer Baseball stars.
It is easy to think college sports can only be enjoyed if they are on TV all the time, but college baseball — and the Cape Cod League in particular — can benefit from being under the radar. My favorite part of the league is that it manages to showcase stars without the fanfare or commercialization TV broadcasts usually bring.
College baseball rivals can become teammates over the summer. The power hitters who make college fields look like Little League fields are challenged when their metal bats are replaced by maple or ash. The potential monotony of a longer season is gone because the teams and players have to adjust for their own sake in order to prove they really are the best of the best.
College sports may seem to end as classes and final exams wrap up, but the best sport of them all goes deep into the summer.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
