Cape Cod Baseball League coaches aren’t generally well-known outside of baseball circles or the Cape itself. John Schiffner was made a little famous in Summer Catch and Mike Roberts is a famous baseball dad.
But there will be a pretty famous assistant coach on the Cape next summer.
Ron Polk, the former Mississippi State head coach, has signed on as an assistant with the Wareham Gatemen, according to the team’s twitter. Polk, 67, is the all-time winningest coach in SEC history, across all sports. He also ranks eighth on college baseball’s all-time wins list and is a member of the College Baseball Hall of Fame.
His connection to the Cape League started when he wanted to watch his college players who were in the league. Now an assistant at UAB, Polk has still been making the trek and was featured earlier this summer by the Cape Cod Times.
As he says in that piece, Polk knows Wareham manager Cooper Farris well, and the two will now be together in the dugout. I think that can only be a good thing for the Gatemen. As Polk told the Cape Cod Times in August, “I think there is a good chance I’ll be up here, and help [Farris] recruit some kids from the SEC and Conference USA so we can win this thing next year.”
Hunter Morris hit eight home runs for Falmouth in 2009 and hit 46 in his three-year career at Auburn. In this his first full season of pro ball, Morris is still crushing the ball. A fourth-round pick of the Brewers in 2010, Morris set a new single-season home run record for the Class A Brevard County Manatees this summer. Morris, who batted .271, finished with 19 homers.
The Boston Globe recaps the first season for New England’s newest collegiate baseball league, the Futures League. Four teams played in the inaugural season, including one on Martha’s Vineyard, and the league is hoping to expand.
The site Ballpark Business has two interesting tidbits about summer baseball attendance. The first is a list of the top drawing summer collegiate franchises. The list is topped by the Madison Mallards of the Northwoods League, who demolished all previous summer attendance records by bringing in an average of 6,278 per game. The top drawing Cape League team was Orleans, which ranked only 17th overall. Ballpark Business also has a press release from the Northwoods League detailing its success at the turnstiles.
Jim Callis has a column up promoting Baseball America’s summer top prospect lists. It’s also a nice reminder of how big a step summer ball is on the draft calendar.