Opening Day is at home this year, beginning at 5 pm on Thursday the 14th when the Hyannis Harbor Hawks open the season against the Kettleer’s.
Coach Mike Roberts is returning with what looks like another exceptionally powerful lineup of college freshmen and sophomores. The other night my son and I played scout and ran the roster through The Google as it’s published on the newly (and nicely) redesigned Kettleer’s website to see if there were any surprises. On several occasions we admired the stats and commentary on the players’ college bios and started rubbing our hands with anticipation on what kind of talent would emerge through mid-August.
Early season rosters are notoriously flaky due to the MLB draft, the post-season college World Series, Team USA invites and sadly, not this year, Olympic team commitments as this is the summer Olympics when the ass-hats at the IOC decided to drop one of the truly global team sports in favor of, I believe, golf. So take this roster with a bit of latitude. Some will come, some will go, and some won’t show up at all. But whatever happens, June is a blast getting to know each and every one of the players and playing the game of trying to predict who the heroes will be during the August championships.
There’s no way of telling precisely who in the following roster will show up on June 14, but of the 20-man roster, only one returns from the 2011 lineup: Kevin Ziomek from Vanderbilt, a perennial feeder for the Cotuit team.
Vanderbilt supplies the most players this year, at three, LSU sends two. There’s a pair of Bay State natives, one Ivy Leaguer, and a lot of strong batting averages and low ERAs coming to town.
There aren’t any major renovations to the field worth mentioning, but the Cotuit Athletic Association is kicking of a $900,000 capital fund drive to give us home fans a new third-base grandstand and some other improvements to the bathrooms and snack bar. So, even if you are an annual booster, you may want to consider an additional donation to the fund so we can do away with the springy green planks and get something new on a level with the visitors’ stands behind the visitors’ dugout.
Given the wet weather and my belief that I saw a snow flake yesterday when I left the gym, this promises to be a chilly June and I don’t intend to get fooled again. So he who arrives on the 14th without a fleece and some mittens probably won’t make it to the second inning.
In related news, Deven Marrero, the all-star standout from the Kettleer’s championship summer of 2010 was the Red Sox’s first pick during the MLB draft. Here’s the news at the Boston Globe.
Update: and a great piece on ESPN about Deven with a lot from Coach Roberts.
Run it through”the Google?” Sweet Suffering Moses The Law Giver, that’s funny.
jimf