By the mid 1940s time was right on Cape Cod for renewed interest and enthusiasm in organized baseball for participants and spectators. After the insecurities and deprivations of the Depression, and the grief of World War II, Cape Codders were very ready to return to the excitement and pride of supporting their local baseball teams, as they had in the 1920s when top college players and some professional players who didn’t have a scheduled game were paid to join forces with talented locals. There were many older former players, in their mid twenties, thirties, and forties who had returned to civilian life after service in our armed forces. Baseball was in their blood, and enlisting players for various town teams wasn’t difficult.

Spectators watch a game in Falmouth, 1933.

Such was the interest that two separate leagues were organized for geographic reasons, not talent. They were equal in ability and having an Upper Cape League and a separate Lower Cape League provided opportunities for more players and removed the necessity for as much team travel in private automobiles for distant games.

Weekday games were seven innings, commencing at 6:00 p.m., unless you were at one of a couple towns with lighted fields. Sunday games were nine innings in the afternoon. There were eight teams in each division. The Upper Cape League teams included at one time or another Barnstable, Cotuit (Kettleers), Falmouth (Falcons and All Stars), Massachuseets Maritime, Otis Air Force Base, Sagamore (Clouters) and Wareham. The Lower Cape League included Chatham (Sparklers), Brewster, Dennis (Clippers), Eastham, Harwich (two teams –a town team and a Cape Verdean team), North Truro Air Force Base (Blue Sox), Orleans (Red Sox), and Yarmouth (Indians). Not all teams had names or kept them throughout the era.

In order to be eligible to play, someone in your family had to be a Cape property tax payer, perhaps because each town had to approve financial support for its team. Even this led to occasional under the table shenanigans, such as when an outstanding pitcher at the Wellfleet Army Base became the owner of a tiny piece of Cape property and was then eligible to pitch for Orleans. Players were not paid, although summer jobs were usually found for those who needed them.

Roland Barker was one of the Cape League’s first college players when he was recruited in 1949 by Yarmouth manager Ed Harrison, after Barker’s very successful freshman season pitching for Dartmouth College. Although his home was in Montclair, New Jersey, his grandfather had bought property in West Dennis in 1907 which his family still owned and for which they paid taxes. Yarmouth provided Rolly with a job as grounds maintenance, mowing lawns and trimming hedges around the John Simpkins School and inside the school on rainy days cleaning windows, painting boys’ wood shop benches, scraping chewing gum off the bottom of moveable wooden auditorium seats and washing them.

Barker was an outstanding pitcher and while working at the school in 1950, he met a vivacious young lady who had just graduated as valedictorian of the 1950 class. Beverly immediately seemed to be a “keeper,” and in June 1952, when Roland became Sergeant Barker at the North Truro Air Force Base, they were happily married. Barker had taken a leave of absence from college when the Korean War began and enlisted in the Air Force for four years in 1951. He often emphasized that their sixty years together prior to Beverly’s untimely death from cancer in 2010 were the best, most wonderful years of his life.

In 1952 the North Truro Base organized its first team, and the Blue Sox were accepted into the Lower Cape League. The base was officially the 762 Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, a part of the DEW line bases of the Korean Conflict era which guarded America’s boundaries. Barker again pitched with great success for the Blue Sox in 1952 and 53 against former league opponents and Yarmouth teammates prior to being assigned to North Africa in 1954 for his final Air Force year. The North Truro Blue Sox did not have a home ball field on which to practice or for home games. They were bused to Provincetown to practice evenings on the very sandy high school field in the shadow of the monument with right field bounded by an ancient cemetery. For Barker, it was baseball, and life was good!

Barker was the last surviving player of the 1949 Yarmouth Indians, and he remembered with great insight baseball at that time. The fields were no match for today’s league ones, which in most cases are now owned and well maintained by towns, with subsidization from Major League Baseball and others so that college players will perform their best both for the myriad of scouts who “birddog” throughout the season and summer tourists and locals.

Not all teams originally had grass infields. Yarmouth played behind the John Simpkins school and baseball committee member Ray Reynolds dragged a section of chain link fence behind his car to smooth the dirt/sand infield before games. The Harwich field was at Brooks Park across the street from what was then the county court, now the library. Right field sloped down considerably and from home plate you couldn’t discern whether the right fielder was wearing shoes. Eastham had one of the worst fields; it was mostly soft dirt and weeds and had been former farmland in the recent past. Brewster played at a small field behind the old school building and town office on Main Street (6A). Its right field area was very limited by a narrow paved road cutting across it from the main road to the school, and the left field fence was much less than 300 feet from home plate. Chatham had a good grass infield, although right field was very short due to an abrupt rise in front of the old rail station.

Orleans had a good field, although the setting sun shined toward the catcher and batter and the first baseman who were then on the southeast (now left field) side of the field. The Dennis team played at Ezra Baker school along Route 28. It was the first lower Cape team to have lights, beginning in 1949. Two large, noisy Army surplus diesel generators behind the backstop provided the power. The light poles were not as high as those on later fields. Pitchers, catchers, and batters found the lighting quite adequate, while some fielders had to get accustomed to judging high fly balls.

Most valuable players awarded trophies for Upper and Lower Cape at the all star game in Bourne, 1957.

The 1949 Lower Cape first all star game was played under the Dennis lights. The White Team consisted of players selected from Yarmouth, Brewster, Harwich, and Cape Verdeans; the Red Team had players from Orleans, Dennis, Chatham, and Eastham. Rolly Barker and Roy Bruninghaus were selected as starting pitchers.

Every Lower Cape team played one regular season scheduled seven inning game under the lights against Dennis each year. The proximity of Yarmouth to Dennis promoted a great rivalry with Yarmouth winning close games in 1949 and 50. Barker struck out 11 in the 1949 game, and 14 in 1950. The novelty of night baseball attracted large crowds with 1800 in attendance in 1949 for their game.

The umpiring was generally quite good. Umpires showed up on time and all were experienced and well versed in baseball rules and field management, and they were paid. Game controversies were usually caused by overly enthusiastic players’ biases or the unfamiliarity with all of baseball’s rules. A number of the “men in blue” are memorable for their ability and season after season longevity; Kelleher, Duchesney, McGinn, Rogers, Stevenson, MacFadden, and Brown immediately come to mind.

The interim period between the waning years of the 1940s and the early 1960s marks a rejuvenation of baseball enthusiasm, excitement, and just plain fun for spectators on Cape Cod. It may not have been a showcase for rising major leaguers on manicured fields that encouraged spectators to lounge comfortably on viewing accommodations with nothing more demanding in mind than the next visit to the refreshment stand (a far cry from 20 years earlier when the only refreshments were peddled at games by the Java man from his panel truck). But what fun it was and what bonding relationships and lasting memories developed among teammates who have become Cape Cod sports history.

Researched and written by Duncan Oliver with help from Roland Barker (who passed away in 2019).