Leah Rogers: Coordinating Interns for the Hyannis Harbor Hawks of the Cape Cod League

Leah Rogers (second from left), with son Jeremy, Kevin Plawecki, daughter Emily, and husband Mike Rogers, at Citi Field, New York, April 2016. (Courtesy of Leah Rogers)

 

Offering free Cape Cod Baseball League games to the public takes a great deal of work. It is not something that can be done casually and without serious organization.

Leah Rogers, with help, led a team of 52 interns for Hyannis in 2024, their names all listed in the team’s Gameday Book program. She was one of nine directors or committee heads working with the team’s Executive Board. The interns came from around the United States, mostly from colleges and universities. Some 38 different institutions were represented. Numerous states were represented, including California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas.

Interviewing and bringing on board all these volunteers for a summer of Harbor Hawks games on the Cape is the responsibility of Leah and two others. It’s a task that begins months in advance. With a season that starts in June, most of the interns are brought on board very early in the year. In early February 2025, she said, “We’re pretty much done at this point. If you haven’t sent your information in by December, you’re probably behind the eight ball.”1 General manager Nick Johnson interviews the Baseball Operations and Analytics interns; Austin DeCouta interviews those applying for media-related positions.

Leah herself – with her husband, Mike, a firefighter – first spent years, starting in 2010, as a host family housing players for Hyannis. How did this all begin? She was born in Connecticut, but her parents had summered on the Cape and in 1978 moved there and opened an art gallery.

“Growing up on the Cape, Cape League games are just part of your culture here. I grew up in Cotuit and it was a short walk through the woods to actually go to a Kettleers game. We did it all the time. I remember going as a kid, age 10-ish. My best friend at the time was Sara Mycock. Her family was very involved with the Kettleers; her great-uncle Arnold Mycock was the GM for decades. I remember going to games with them.”2

Leah later married Mike Rogers – who rose in the ranks and in 2025 became deputy chief of COMM Fire (Centerville Osterville Marstons Mills). They had two children – Jeremy and Emily. In 2010, she recalls, “My son was 11 and was just starting to get into baseball. We thought it would be fun to house a player. We had an extra room in our house and we asked Cotuit if we could house for them. We ended up housing for Hyannis. The next year, I was asked if I could do the merchandise. I had experience in retail, with my parents having the gallery. I started doing merchandise for the Harbor Hawks in 2011.

“My children were batboys and batgirls for the team. Since 2011, I think we’ve housed 14 players, three coaches, and one broadcasting intern – who is now the Hyannis GM, Nick Johnson. He stayed with us for several summers.” They often housed two players at a time, which had its own benefits – among them that the players entertained each other.

“I became a board member of Hyannis, and then I became a board member of Cape Cod Baseball. I got knee-deep in involvement with that, and had a lot of fun doing that. And then in 2016 – the kids weren’t really that interested anymore – so we decided to take a step back from the team. I took a couple of years off. I still maintained relationships with people and was asked to come back and help, The intern coordinator at the time – Laurie Pfeifer – was cutting back and they asked me if I would help out a little bit. This [2025] will be my fourth summer.”

Prospective interns apply directly to the individual teams, not through the league itself. The league does have interns of its own. The number of interns has grown over time. Laurie, who was a kindergarten teacher, had about a dozen interns when she first started. The number of interns has ballooned. “With the importance of social media now, you need the photographers, videographers. The writing obviously is not just print anymore. We have writers for Instagram and Facebook. … Some of the more creative interns have created their own podcasts to get their names out there, too, while creating interest for the Hawks.”

The interns are not paid, but a number of them do receive college credit for the work they perform. “At the end of the summer, I will write a letter or fill out the necessary paperwork. A lot of them are here for that reason.”

Leah is very cognizant of the costs involved to come to the Cape and live for the summer. It’s become so expensive. “It’s one of the first questions that I ask when I set up an interview: ‘Do you have housing here?’ Some of them will say, yes, they have a grandparent who lives here, or ‘My parents summer on the Cape’ or ‘I have a friend.’ I tend to look at those people first.”

The players, of course, hope to be seen by scouts and drafted by a professional team. But building a résumé is important to interns, too. Working in Social Media or Broadcasting, in Analytics or Baseball Operations, can offer clear career-path possibilities.

Gameday Operations might only consist of working home games, and might just be for a very few hours, but the Cape League has become so well known that it still can look good on a résumé, maybe catch an eye or help kick off a conversation. The occasional intern will stand out and be invited back in another capacity the following summer.

In the Harbor Hawks program, it says “dozens of our interns have gone on to secure jobs with MiLB and MLB organizations.”

“Most of the time – I would say 99 percent of the time – teams work well together. We try to help each other out, but there are situations where that doesn’t always happen. It’s gotten to be … the Cape League has gotten to be …how do I say this? … a very competitive business.”

If an intern later finds a position with a major-league club, the team will note that on Instagram or other social media.

Leah Rogers herself manages Osterville Hardware store, then makes her way to games after work. At the beginning of each new season, she and Mike host all the interns for a cookout. “They do a meet-and-greet at the beginning of the season. My husband always says, ‘You have no idea who is sitting in those stands. So make sure you’re on your best behavior when you talk to people and make connections, because there are people there who are incognito but who could do amazing things for your careers.’”

They have kept in touch with many of the players they once housed. “There’s just so many volunteers that put in time on and off the field, all year round. This is a wonderful organization in that sense. The whole purpose is just the love of baseball.”

“When we housed the players, my husband and I … the philosophy was that they were living with us for 2½ months, they became our family. We tried to do as much as we possibly could as a family together. We weren’t just giving them a bed.”

“We fed them every night. We celebrated holidays together. We’ve taken them to the Barnstable County Fair. My husband would take them golfing. Fishing. Clamming. Anything that we could do to introduce them to Cape Cod. They were always playing in the backyard with the kids. After they left us, we’ve been invited to weddings. They share their baby pictures with us. Watching them over the years. That was a reward.”

One favorite story stands out. In 2011 she and Mike housed Jon Moscot, a right-handed pitcher who was selected in the fourth round of the 2012 draft out of Pepperdine University in Malibu by the Cincinnati Reds. While on the Cape, Jon and catcher Kevin Plawecki had become close friends. Jon worked in three major-league games in June 2015. Kevin was a first-round selection of the New York Mets and also debuted in 2015.

In April 2016 the Mets were due to host the Reds at Citi Field in New York. “One of my favorite memories was when I actually quit my job to go to a game. On April 27, 2016. Jon got us tickets to the game and Kevin got us passes to go on the field before the game.” She was working a new job at the time. “No, you can’t have the time off.” “OK, I quit.”

They visited before the game. Then “We sat in the stands and these two women were sitting next to us. When Jon was pitching, my husband and I were just screaming for him. And when Kevin was catching and hitting, we were screaming for him. This woman said, ‘I’m really confused. Which team are you here for?’”

“That was just one of the greatest days of our lives. We brought the kids. We drove down to New York and then drove back the same day. It was just a wonderful experience to see those two playing against each other, as best friends. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

BILL NOWLIN was born in Boston and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He sometimes says he “hasn’t gone far in life.” He hesitates to admit it but, despite going to well over 1,000 games at Fenway Park (including every game in 2022), and hearing about the Cape League for years and years, he had never been to a game on the Cape. He’d even been to the Midnight Sun Game in Alaska and seen baseball in several other countries. That changed once this book got underway. Now he gets it!

 

NOTES

1 Author interview with Leah Rogers on February 9, 2025. All quotations attributed to her come from this interview.

2 Arnold Mycock became Cotuit GM in 1950 and served until 1995; then he was GM emeritus and on the Cotuit board until his death in 2016.