With the Cape Cod League set to play a game on Monday in New Bedford, the Standard Times published a story yesterday about the unlikely possibility of New Bedford getting a Cape league team:

City’s hopes for Cape league franchise beginning to fade

NEW BEDFORD – Mayor Scott W. Lang has made no secret that he wants the Cape Cod Baseball League to expand to the city, but the storied amateur collegiate league seems to have an it’s-not-you-it’s-me attitude about the courtship.

“The likelihood is really not all that great,” Wareham Gatemen general manager Tom Gay said of the city’s chances. “It has nothing to do with New Bedford, but with expansion at all.”

This is discouraging considering that New Bedford has history of playing Cape Cod teams going back to at least 1867 when a club from Barnstable played the Wamsutta Club in New Bedford:

The New Bedford Republican Standard

September 12, 1867

The game between the Wamsutta Base Ball Club, of this city, and the Cummaquid, of Barnstable, on Saturday, was won by the former, by 25 runs, in seven innings. The eighth inning was played by the Cummaquid, scoring one run, but the game was called when the Wamsutta on the eighth inning had made six runs, with two men out, the Barnstable boys having barely time to get to the cars.

New Bedford last had an organized, high level team in 1934. That year the New Bedford Whalers played in the Northeastern League. They finished with a 46 win 60 loss season. 1934 was the only year of the Northeastern League. It folded at the end of the season and the Whalers folded with them. The New Bedford Whalers had played in the New England League the year before finishing the season with a 58-33 record in a split season format. New Bedford, with the best record in the league, finished in first place during the second half (Worcester won the first half). A round robin playoff system was decided upon for the end of the season consiting of New Bedford, Worcester and Lowell. But New Bedford withdrew from the playoffs when they learned that they would not face first half winner Worcester in a single series to determine the champion. The New England League folded after that season prompting New Bedford to join the ill fated Northeastern League. The New England League was revived in 1941 as a semi-pro league with New Bedford as a club member.

Organized amature baseball still exists in the New Bedford area in the form of American Legion ball and adult leagues with players trying to extend their playing days or relive their glory days (and even non glory days). The Southeastern Massachusetts Baseball Association existed about 10 years ago based in New Bedford and included teams such as the Fairhaven Lumber Red Sox, Mattapoisett Marlins and Fall River Indians. That league folded and was eventually replaced by the Southcoast Baseball League which is currently operating. Fall River has the Fall River Independent Baseball League (formally the Southeastern Massachusetts Baseball League) and the Cape has the Baseball Clubs of Cape Cod for its has been but still- wants-to-play competitive ball players.

As far as competitive spectator sports entertainment, there maybe other alternatives such as the New England Collegiate Baseball League.

Invite the NECBL here to play a game or two and see what sort of interest is out there for this league. Although it is not as well known as the Cape league, it is quality baseball. Just remember to remind people of the long history of baseball in New Bedford and on the south coast. Baseball loves its traditions and history and so does the south coast. Baseball is part of south coast’s history and it is a tradition that needs to be revived.