Saturday, July 16, 2022 – Orleans Firebirds
Saturday featured the best meal of the trip as Brandon and I went to Hyannis to check out Baxters, right on the Harbor. I, of course started with the clam chowder, we split some bacon-wrapped scallops and I had a piece of cod the size of a brick 10-out-of-10 (Beattie recommendation).
For our final game, Brandon and I traveled to the northeastern most Cape Cod team Orleans for another bit of a lopsided game.
Unbelievably, the Beattie contingent grew yet again with the arrival of Eric’s older brother and his family. We again saw the Stallings family, but the Ohme family had returned to Tampa – still I felt like we were pretty well-protected throughout should a Mass v FLA showdown have broken out.
Orleans was another great setting for a game with very limited built-in stands, instead with another berm that ran the length of the right field line where most of the fans sat in folding chairs or on blankets. The field – Eldredge Park was on the campus of Nauset Regional Middle School with no fence past the dugouts on either side of the field.
Plant alum JD Urso (University of Tampa) takes his lead off third base in a game at home for the Orleans Firebirds in the Cape Cod League.
The highlight for us (and the reason we went to see two teams we’d already seen play) was the Friday arrival of University of Tampa MIF and Plant alum JD Urso. The game featured a great 813-moment in the bottom of the first as Coach Beattie and Urso shared a hug and talked in-between warmups. Beattie, of course played for Urso’s father, Joe at UT and has known JD since he was a baby.
Urso, a 2020 Plant alum and a member of our first-ever Defend10 team in 2019, went 1-for-4 with a double for the Firebirds.
Urso batted .219 this summer in 17 games, with three doubles, three RBI and five runs scored.
Final: Hyannis 9, Orleans 1
Chowder Count: 5
