Community Corner

#85 - Bring the Family to a Tomcats Game

With a majority of home games on second half of schedule, plenty of time to head down to varsity baseball field to catch collegiate baseball action.

Baseball might be America's past time, but the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League is still finding its roots on the East End. 

The league got a start in the summer of 2008, with the Hampton Whalers. Following the team's success - it lost in the finals of the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League - East Hampton resident Rusty Leaver multiplied the Hampton Whalers by five teams, with three in the Hamptons, one in Riverhead, and another on the North Fork.

The league is modeled off of the popular Cape Cod Baseball League, an amateur league in Massachusetts which has been in existence for nearly 130 years and has become embedded into the fiber of summers on Cape Cod.

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Entering their third summer, the Riverhead Tomcats are comprised of nearly 30 collegiate baseball players from across the country. The players are housed with local families and work and volunteer in the community throughout the summer.

Though you might not necessarily know about them unless you stumbled upon them.

Find out what's happening in Riverheadwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"I just happened to be driving by," said Tom Byrne, who - along with roughly 50 other baseball fans - attended Monday's Tomcats game against the Westhampton Aviators. "But this is unbelievable. And for nothing? My kid will love this. He'll be at the next game."

Tomcats General Manager Bob Furlong said the Tomcats' schedule is back-logged with home games in the second half of the season, which runs until the end of July. Playoffs continue into August.


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