Birdball By The Beach

For many different reasons, the Cape Cod Baseball League represents the very best of the NCAA summer season. It's a melting pot of talent, a place where the best of the best converge to showcase their talents and chasing professional aspirations. Located on an idyllic vacation peninsula, it combines players' burning desires to impress MLB franchise scouts and hone skills with a destination for locals and tourists alike. It's the blazing new physics of the game laid out against the tradition of towns standing since the 1600s.

This summer, Boston College was well represented through the Cape League's first half. With players from Bourne to Chatham to Cotuit to Harwich, the Eagles saw players match up, night after night, against the best collegiate players in the nation.

"I got a good feel for the competition level last summer when I was down here and it's a lot like playing in the ACC," Jake Palomaki said of his second run with the Chatham Anglers. "There's great competition every time you're on the field. You see weekend arms pitching in every game and it's the best players who can be thrown at you. It helps you learn a lot about yourself. The league is so tough; it'll humble you really quick. So you take what you can for what it's worth and learn as much about the game as you can every day."

The CCBL has a well-earned and well-crafted reputation. Players must have NCAA eligibility remaining at the end of each summer, meaning incoming freshmen and graduating seniors are excluded. By limiting talent pool to players who will go back to college in the fall, pro scouts begin or continue amassing data on targeted players by watching them against high-level competition.

Teams are restricted from recruiting too many players from one team, meaning each team takes on something of an All-Star feel. Baseball players begin working with players who they've potentially only seen for a rival school, if they've ever met at all. It creates a requirement to gain fast familiarity with new teammates' tendencies.

"It's challenging but also really good to work with so many different guys," Cotuit's Gian Martellini said. "As a catcher, I'm working with guys who are really high caliber pitchers with incredible pitches and high velocity. I wasn't used to them, so I didn't know how their ball would move on one pitch versus another guy throwing the same pitch. That was probably the most difficult part (about coming to the Cape). I have to work really hard with these guys so when the game happens, it's like I've been catching them for a year."

"When I came to Cotuit, one of the best things for me was to throw to my catcher," Kettleers' pitcher Brian Rapp said. "On the mound, especially down here, you'll often have to have a transition period with a new catcher who has to learn your tendencies, your pitches and your signals. I jumped right back into it with Gian, and I was right back in the swing of things. That was something I joked about with (Cotuit manager Mike Roberts)."

That only compounds the challenges of actually playing on the Cape. The Cape League recruits the best players from the best conferences because of its reputation for producing Major League talent. Nearly 300 CCBL alumni played for MLB franchises last season, with over 1,100 players all-time having made it to The Show.

In addition, it's a wood bat leagues. Though NCAA baseball allows more forgiving metal bats during the season, the Cape League forces hitters to learn how to hit with wooden bats.

"I feel that wood bats are 'real baseball,'" Martellini said. "It forces you to become a truer hitter and I think it's the way to play the game."

That doesn't mean everything is all business. Because Cape Cod is a Massachusetts destination, Boston College is among the most recognizable team names at each field. Fans who remember players year after year latch onto new groups every summer, and they're instantly drawn to their form of "local heroes."

"You turn into a crowd favorite right away coming from BC," Palomaki said. "Everyone knows Boston College and knows who we are. A lot of people have really seen our games (at BC), especially the last couple of years. So it's a lot of fun to be put on a pedestal right away.

"The fans here in Chatham are great," he continued. "We get 4,000 fans per night. Chatham is a great experience for anyone who can play college baseball. With the best competition every day, it's against the best players, and the town's been really great (to all of the players)."

It also means Boston College players might face each other in game scenarios, creating the potential for one of the summer's most fun storylines - the proverbial Eagle-on-Eagle crime.

"I faced Dan Metzdorf, and he got me to ground out on a changeup," Martellini said. "I busted his chops a little bit because he didn't throw me a fastball; he was probably a little scared (to throw it to me). But we've played against everyone - Jake Alu, Palomaki, Jacob Stevens, and Donovan Casey (before he signed his pro contract). It's great to see these guys and check in on them. We call and FaceTime all the time but to see them in different uniforms, it's kind of weird but kind of cool at the same time."

"It's great to see our guys and be able to hang out with them, even if they're in a different uniform," Rapp joked. "I don't know - I might have to go up and in with a pitch on them."

For BC players, though, it's something to which they've easily adapted. BC plays in arguably the toughest division in all of college baseball in the ACC Atlantic. Every week, the Eagles are challenged with big-game atmospheres where scouts flock. Martellini had four RBIs in a single game against Hyannis then followed it up with two more against the Harbor Hawks two days later. Palomaki delivered four RBIs over a four-game stretch in early July.

On the mound, Dan Metzdorf is 2-0 with a 2.79 ERA for Chatham, teaming up for the Anglers with Jacob Stevens. Down the road in Harwich, John Witkowski has 17 strikeouts in 19 innings, with just four walks for the Mariners. Mitch Bigras and Jake Alu also saw time in the Cape on temporary contracts. It's all part of an attitude fostered in Chestnut Hill, where scouts, many of whom watch games on the Cape, watch the Eagles during the college season.

"The scouts are the same down here as it's been since our freshman year at BC," Palomaki said. "It's cool to play in front of them, but it's turned into a routine thing. What we've seen at BC and what I experienced last summer, I honestly don't think about it and just go out there and play ball."

As enjoyable as the summer is for BC, there's still the looming shadow of their return to campus in the fall for practice. As the predecessor to February's opening day, fall ball starts the process of returning the Eagles to the postseason.

"I want to take a lot of the stuff that I'm learning from Coach Roberts in Cotuit and talk to Coach Trezza about the staff, how we can be more successful," Martellini said. "We started 1-14 in the ACC last year, but we finished with a 10-5 run. I think we're going to be really successful (in 2018). We're going to be a little bit mature. Everyone's going to be bigger, stronger and faster."

"We had our ups and downs this past year," Rapp said. "We came off such a high where we were so close to going to Omaha for the College World Series (in 2016). So I think last year will be a great thing for us (in the long run). The younger guys learned a lot about how hard it is to come out, win the ACC and get to the postseason. This type of summer is where we're grinding hard, learning to play through injuries, fatigue and everything. That's what we have to do in the spring. I know personally I learned a lot and this is going to teach me more to get ready for BC."

"I'm really excited to get back to school," Palomaki added. "We're going to have a great team. We have a really great core group of guys, even though we've lost a couple of guys we really loved like Johnny Adams and Donovan Casey. The coaching staff, the players - I know I'm bringing what I learned down here back to campus. We've got a lot of guys down here who can translate it back from the Cape back to fall ball when we get back."

Players Mentioned

Johnny Adams

Jake Alu

Mitch Bigras

Donovan Casey

Gian Martellini

Dan Metzdorf

Jake Palomaki

Brian Rapp

Jacob Stevens

John Witkowski

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