Foreword: Cape Cod Baseball League: From College Stars to Big League Futures, by Peter Gammons

As Erstad came out, he stopped for a handshake. “I know you’re presenting Buck Showalter to the Cape League Hall of Fame in November,” Erstad said to me, “so could you do me a favor? In your speech, could you tell everyone that before helping the Angels beat the Giants and win the World Series, (Erstad) was thinking about Arnie Allen?”

Allen was a longtime worker for the Falmouth Commodores in the Cape Cod Baseball League, a special-needs survivor who did anything and everything for the Falmouth team, and who during the season had been diagnosed with cancer. Indeed, the Angels went on to win that night, their one World Series title. It was another link in the relationship between Erstad and the community.

In 2002 players held jobs; Erstad worked at a department store named Bradlees in Falmouth and in his time earned a plaque for “Employee of the Month,” setting a record for sales at the store. At the University of Nebraska, he was an All-American baseball player (and eventually the first player in the MLB draft) and in football was a punter, defensive captain and later listed by Nebraska coach Tom Osborne as one of his favorite all-time players. Showalter, who 50 years later still had the all-time Cape record for single-season batting average with a wood bat, was touched. “Erstad embodies the Cape Cod League,” he said.

If you’re lucky enough to go to a Cape Cod League playoff game between Orleans and Chatham – the Yankees-Red Sox on the other side of The Canal – be there by midafternoon. Starting at noon, fans of both franchises are setting up their lawn chairs.

I remember a year the field was covered by those lawn chairs for the league’s 1994 all-star game with expectations for the annual home run hitting contest with Sean Casey and Mike Glavine the favorites, on a damp, windy day. The contest was won by one homer by an Orleans player who did not homer in the regular season – Todd Helton, who eventually was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and the day after that induction drove his family to Orleans to celebrate. Later that November, he was inducted into the Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame.

One of the highlights of this writer’s home run derbies was seeing each Murton brother, Matt and Luke, win a contest. Matt Murton for years was the last player to bat .400, for Wareham, and when he went to play in Japan he broke Ichiro Suzuki’s single-season hit record.

Mike Flanagan, who was the 1979 Cy Young Award winner for the Orioles after a notable college career for the University of Massachusetts, pitched for Falmouth. One night he was caught laughing with a UMass teammate on the bench, watching a third college teammate pitching against Falmouth. His Falmouth manager, Bill Livesey, was outraged and told Flanagan and friend to go to the outfield where they proceeded to shag flies in the dark after the game. Livesey was a legend in baseball, especially as a scout, and one night when he was ejected from a game, he went to the parking lot and let the air out of the umpires’ tires.

I remember watching the championship game of the 1992 playoffs, won by Orleans – which had Aaron Boone at third base and Nomar Garciaparra at shortstop. The game ended with Boone barehanding a topped roller and making a perfect throw to first, complete with a broad smile on Boone’s face. I remember watching Virginia first baseman Brian Buchanan play for Hyannis. When he was the first-round draft pick of the Yankees and back playing in Hyannis, he was invited to go to the Yankees clubhouse at Fenway Park to meet their manager, Buck Showalter, and Derek Jeter introduced him to the Yankee players. Later, Buchanan married John Havlicek’s daughter.

I remember watching Buster Posey playing shortstop. I remember Hall of Famer Billy Wagner striking out the side in the 1992 all-star game – and no one even fouled off one of his 10 pitches.

Wagner might have been the pitcher in 30 years that I most remember seeing for the first time. The player? No doubt, it was Evan Longoria with Chatham in 2005. He was clearly the best player in the league, but one afternoon a couple of scouts complained that he was “cocky” the way he dragged his bat behind him walking to the plate. I argued that he wasn’t cocky, he was comfortable in his own skin, that he didn’t worry about going 1-for-15, his at-bats were one pitch at a time. He was the Rookie of the Year with Tampa Bay, won three Gold Gloves and hit 347 homers. He ended his career at 37 with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and after they defeated the Dodgers and Phillies and reached the World Series, Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen said Longoria so impacted the younger players and was a major factor in reaching the Series.

Those warm summer nights in Cotuit and Brewster, Bourne and Chatham, are baseball at its purest. You may see someone you’d never heard of and eventually will never forget.

One June 1997 night, I stopped on my way home to watch a Bourne Braves game. I watched a tall, athletic left-handed pitcher I hadn’t heard of. His delivery was so consistent he seemingly landed in the same spot on every pitch. He also made two sensational defensive plays. By the seventh inning, a scout told me that his name was Mark Mulder, and that he threw only 32 innings his sophomore year at Michigan State because he was a star hitting first baseman.

The next day the Bourne coach Kevin Sullivan and pitching coach Brian Bridges sat Mulder down and told him his hitting days were over and he was going to concentrate on pitching. He started the Cape all-star game. The next June he was the second player chosen in the MLB draft, by the Oakland Athletics. He was a 20-game winner and started a major-league All-Star Game. He finished runner-up for a Cy Young Award.

That first night I saw Mark Mulder pitcher in Bourne, I was so excited by what I saw that I called Billy Beane on the drive to my house and told him, “You have the second pick in the draft next June – I found him.” The next day Beane called to say the A’s didn’t have a scouting report on him (because he was a hitter).” He was the second pick in the draft. I stopped to see a Cape League game and got to see someone I’ve never forgotten.

That is the Cape Cod Baseball League.

PETER GAMMONS has written about baseball for more than 50 years for outlets such as The Athletic, the Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN. In 2005, Gammons was recognized with the BBWAA Career Excellence Award for outstanding baseball writing and honored during the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown, New York.