Crossing the Bridge: When Teams and Players Went Off-Cape

The famed Sagamore Bridge overlooking Keith Field, home of the Sagamore Clouters, was one of the two bridges leading to Cape Cod (the Bourne Bridge is the other). It provided access to the Cape for baseball, as well as the route off the Cape for baseball players who took their talents to other ballparks. Featured in the photo is Cape League Hall of Famer Tello Tontini. (Courtesy of Tello Tontini)

 

The Cape Cod Baseball League, as its name suggests, operates within a limited geographic area – a tiny corner of New England. And let’s face it: If you had the opportunity to live and play baseball on Cape Cod over the summer, you probably wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.

Still, the Cape Cod League has a short but eventful history of games being played in neutral locations off-Cape, ranging from big-league ballparks to the island of Nantucket. This article provides a short history of notable Cape Cod League “road trips,” involving some of the future major leaguers who passed through the league.

(Technically, Cape League teams play off-Cape on a regular basis, since Wareham, one of the league’s longstanding host communities, is not on Cape Cod. For the purposes of this story, we’ll consider Wareham to be on-Cape; when we say “off-Cape,” we mean “outside the league’s geographic footprint.”)

Cape League all-star teams have played in major-league ballparks for many years, with nearby Fenway Park the most frequent. The league’s all-stars made their first Fenway appearance on July 21, 1975, as a crowd of 300 fans – including about 40 big-league scouts – saw the Cape League stars defeat a similar team from the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League, 1-0. Noteworthy participants included future Baltimore Orioles infielder Glenn Gulliver for the Cape Leaguers and future Seton Hall University coach Ed Blankmeyer for the Atlantic Collegiate team.1

All-star visits to Fenway continued throughout the ensuing decades.2 In 1977, Steve Balboni, playing for Yarmouth-Dennis, impressed talent evaluators by belting two three-run homers there.3 Balboni went on to hit 181 homers across 11 big-league seasons, including eight at Fenway Park.

In July 1981, it was Orleans Cardinal and future Cincinnati Red Wade Rowdon’s turn to go deep in an all-star game at Fenway Park, the first game played there since the start of the major-league players strike on June 12. Rowdon’s first-inning homer matched his total across five big-league seasons.4

After a 22-year break, all-star games between teams from the East and West of the Cape League returned to Fenway in 2009.5 Players the following season included Orleans second baseman Kolten Wong, later an 11-season major leaguer.6

Cape League teams have also visited Fenway for “scout days” in which they show off their speed and fielding and hitting skills in a series of drills. A news story from 2014 captured Wareham Gatemen players in awe of the legendary ballpark – except for Kyri Washington, who belted six home runs in batting drills, including one over the Green Monster in left field and onto Lansdowne Street.7 Washington was a 23rd-round pick of the Red Sox in the June 2015 amateur draft and played four seasons in the minors, hitting 16 home runs for Class-A Greenville in 2016.

Yankee Stadium was also a destination for Cape League all-stars at least as early as 1970.8 In July 1973 a Cape team beat a team of Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League stars, 13-7, at the Stadium, then in its last few months of operation before it closed for a two-year renovation. The game’s Most Valuable Player was future big-league manager Jim Riggleman, who hit a grand slam.9

The 1984 all-star game brought Cape Cod stars to Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium – a cookie-cutter ’70s park, the virtual opposite of quirky Fenway – with Harwich pitcher and future National League ERA leader Joe Magrane the starter and winner. The Cape beat the ACBL again, 7-3.10

One of the most notable off-Cape road trips occurred in 1988, when a Cape League all-star team traveled to the Kansas City Royals’ spring-training complex in Davenport, Florida, for a tournament against stars from three other summer leagues. The Cape Leaguers lost their first game but won the tournament. Team members included Jeff Bagwell, Tim Salmon, Mo Vaughn, Chuck Knoblauch, and Eric Wedge.11

At the time this article was written in the summer of 2025, a team of Cape League all-stars had recently defeated an all-star team from the Major League Baseball Draft League, 10-6, in a game played at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. Only time will tell whether the outstanding performers in that June 30, 2025, game – such as pitcher Kaden Echeman of the Falmouth Commodores, who struck out the side, or second baseman Jarren Advincula of the Cotuit Kettleers, who homered – will follow previous Cape League all-stars to the big leagues.12

In the 2010s and 2020s, the league made efforts to connect with fans in two of New England’s largest cities – Hartford, Connecticut, and Worcester, Massachusetts.

The Wareham Gatemen and Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox inaugurated Cape League play at Hartford’s Dunkin’ Donuts Park – the home of the Double-A Hartford Yard Goats – with a game in July 2018.13 The game provided a homecoming for Wareham’s Nathan Florence, a pitcher for the University of Hartford, who worked four innings in a 5-0 Yarmouth-Dennis win.14 The Cape League continued to play single games in Hartford through 2023.

Minor-league baseball returned to Worcester in 2021 with the arrival of the Boston Red Sox’ Triple-A affiliate, and the Cape League quickly moved to add a game at Worcester’s Polar Park.15 The Bourne Braves and Wareham Gatemen did battle at the park in 2022 and 2023.16 (The choice of Wareham for the Polar Park game seems mildly ironic in retrospect, as the Gatemen and the “WooSox” had briefly been embroiled in a dispute over a perceived resemblance between the teams’ stylized W cap logos.17 )

Reviews of Cape League schedules and schedule announcements in 2024 and 2025 indicated that the league did not return to Hartford or Worcester in those seasons, and future engagements there were uncertain.18

While sources like Dan Crowley’s Baseball on Cape Cod make no specific mention of modern Cape League teams playing on Martha’s Vineyard, one interesting crossover from the very early days of Cape Cod baseball – before the official founding of today’s Cape Cod League – is worth including here. In 1919 Falmouth was unable to afford to field a team on its own, so the ballclub was shared between Falmouth and the Vineyard community of Oak Bluffs.19 One of the players who played for the team in both communities was Massachusetts native Pie Traynor, later a Hall of Fame third baseman with the Pittsburgh Pirates.20

In the modern era, teams have also gone to the smaller island of Nantucket. The first known Nantucket game in the league’s modern era took place in July 1992, when the Brewster Whitecaps and Bourne Braves traveled to the island via ferry. Bourne won, 7-4.21 The games at Nantucket High School’s baseball field continued at least through 1994, but – like Hartford and Worcester – Nantucket was not destined to become a permanent site for off-Cape games.22

KURT BLUMENAU grew up in the Rochester, New York, area, following the Mets and the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. He works in corporate communications in the Boston area. He has a strong interest in the minor leagues, particularly the New York-Penn League, and also enjoys watching college games.

 

NOTES

1 Francis Rosa, “Cape Stars Ride the Sun to 1-0 Fenway Win,” Boston Globe, July 22, 1975: 27.

2 Dan Crowley, Baseball on Cape Cod (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2004), mentions all-star teams appearing at Fenway Park in 1977, 1981, 1983, and 1987. Richard A. Johnson, Field of Our Fathers: An Illustrated History of Fenway Park (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2011), mentions 1979, 1985, and 2010.

3 Ray Fitzgerald, “Pro Scouts Were All Eyes,” Boston Globe, August 2, 1977: 21.

4 “Cape Cod All-Stars Tie, 4-4,” Boston Globe, July 21, 1981: 41.

5 “SportsLog,” Boston Globe, July 24, 2009: C2.

6 Ally Mielnicki, “Cape’s West Stars the Best,” Boston Globe, July 29, 2010: C6.

7 Adam K. Ellis, “Gatemen Enjoy ‘Day Off’ at Fenway,” Cohasset (Massachusetts) Mariner, July 25, 2014: 18, https://archive.org/details/CohassetMariner20140725_ppml/page/n17/mode/2up .

8 “Sports Today, Tomorrow,” Boston Evening Globe, July 20, 1970: 18.

9 Judy Walden, “Riggleman’s Grand Slam Paces Cape Star Nine Past ACBL,” Boston Globe, July 24, 1973: 35.

10 Corky Simpson, “Wildcats Put On Baseball Clinic in Massachusetts Summer League,” Tucson (Arizona) Citizen, July 25, 1984: 1D; “Best Bets,” Boston Globe, July 12, 1985: 66; Crowley, Baseball on Cape Cod, 85. Magrane led the NL with a 2.18 ERA in 1988; he played eight major-league seasons between 1987 and 1996.

11 Crowley, Baseball on Cape Cod, 92.

12 Julian Guilarte, “MLB Draft League Beats Cape Cod League in Inaugural All-Star Game at Citi Field,” WorldBaseball.com , posted July 1, 2025, https://worldbaseball.com/cape-cod-beats-mlb-draft-league-in-inaugural-all-star-game-at-citi-field/ .

13 NBCConnecticut.com, “Cape Cod Baseball League Coming to Dunkin’ Donuts Park in Hartford in July,” posted May 15, 2018, https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/cape-cod-baseball-league-coming-to-dunkin-donuts-park-in-hartford-in-july/14255/ .

14 “Nathan Florence, Zach Hart at Home as Cape League Ventures to Dunkin’ Donuts Park,” Hartford Courant, updated December 6, 2018, https://www.courant.com/2018/07/24/nathan-florence-zach-hart-at-home-as-cape-league-ventures-to-dunkin-donuts-park/ . Florence went on to play a single season in independent ball.

15 According to Baseball-Reference, Worcester had last hosted affiliated minor-league baseball in 1933, though the city had been home to independent and summer college-age teams since then.

16 Katie Siegle, “Cape Cod Baseball League Comes to Polar Park in “Cape Cod Classic,” MiLB.com, posted July 20, 2023, https://www.milb.com/worcester/news/cape-cod-league-comes-to-polar-park-monday-in-cape-cod-classic .

17 Zach Spedden, “Wareham Gatemen Threaten Lawsuit Over WooSox Logo,” BallparkDigest.com, posted December 2, 2019, https://ballparkdigest.com/2019/12/02/wareham-gatemen-threaten-lawsuit-over-woosox-logo/ .

18 “2024 Cape League Schedule Announced,” Cape Cod Baseball League site, accessed July 2025, https://ism3.infinityprosports.com/ismdata/2012030201/std-sitebuilder/sites/201201/www/en/news/league/?article_id=3434 ; “2025 Cape League schedule announced; Opening Day June 14,” Cape Cod Baseball League site, posted January 15, 2025, https://www.capecodleague.com/news/2025-cape-league-schedule-announced-opening-day-june-14 .

19 Christopher Price, Baseball by the Beach: A History of America’s National Pastime on Cape Cod (Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts: On Cape Publications, 1998), 9. Price dates the event to 1918, but Cape Cod Baseball League historian Mike Richard indicates that 1919 was the only season when the two towns shared the team.

20 Albert J. Woodlock, “Oak Bluffs Had a Formidable Team, Made Up Almost Entirely of Greater Boston Players,” Boston Globe, September 6, 1919: 7. This article misidentifies Traynor, whose given name was Harold, as “Hal Trainer.”

21 Crowley, Baseball on Cape Cod, 100.

22 Jeff Taylor, “Cape League Returns to Nantucket on Sunday,” Nantucket (Massachusetts) Inquirer, June 23, 1994: B1.