Cape League says "We're Back" for 2021
The Cape League announced its return for 2021 with two short words
Today the Cape Cod Baseball League announced that it's coming back for the 2021 season – with some changes.
Gone is the usual 44 game schedule in favor of a shortened 40 game season starting on June 20th. This year there will be no All-Star Game, no make-up games from postponed games, and Thursdays are now league-wide off days. The league will return to its original playoff format, consisting of the top two teams in each division making the playoffs and playing each other for the right to play in the Cape League Championship. And perhaps the most significant change is limiting the number of spectators to 150 for each game.
All changes are being done so that the United States oldest summer league can return to the field amidst the challenges of an ongoing pandemic and lead to one of the stranger-looking seasons in recent memory, if not Cape League history. With the changes come questions, especially regarding the spectator caps. Do interns, team volunteers, and the like count against the cap? Will certain groups of people like residents, scouts, or host families be prioritized when it comes to who can attend? What is this going to do to 50/50 raffles and teams’ income during the season?
While we may not know the answers to these questions, we know that people are worried. A host parent has reached out to us via Twitter expressing concern that he might not be able to watch “his kids” play this year, and we can only imagine what games in Chatham and Orleans might look like with only 150 people in the stands or on the berm. We can imagine that these restrictions will likely change throughout the year as Massachusetts state policy changes, but these are the rules that the league will use to begin the season.
One thing is sure: the United States premier amateur baseball league is coming back after its forced hiatus in 2020, and the team’s online broadcasts are likely to be more important than ever before.
Codball’s Twitter operator, Dave, contributed to this report.
