Nothing better than summer ball — and that's where the Newport Gulls come in
We’re in the lull of college sports, with the College World Series wrapped up and football still a few weeks away. The Little League World Series hasn’t even started yet, leaving Rhode Islanders to root for the Boston Red Sox, who are barely hanging on by a thread. That’s where the Newport Gulls come in.
A member of the Coastal Division of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, the Newport Gulls is a summer baseball team composed of college athletes from around the country. A player from Vanderbilt, my school, was even on the team!
This summer, the Gulls have made it to the NECBL semi-finals (the division finals), after defeating the Ocean State Waves (based in South Kingston) in the division semi-finals on Aug. 2. I attended Game 1 of the three-game semi-finals series between the Gulls and the Danbury Westerners. Tickets to all Gulls games can be purchased at the field at a rate of $5 for adults, $2 for teens, military members, and seniors, and $1 for children.
Gulls games are perfect for families, and many children were running around the stands clad in orange and blue or in line to grab ice cream from the concession stand. The Gulls won the game I attended, which was action-packed with four home runs combined across both teams just in the first few innings! Fans were into the game, shouting chants in between batters and participating in mid-inning games and lotteries.
The Gulls play at Cardines Field in Newport, just down the road from Thames Street. The field was established at around the same time as Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, the two oldest MLB fields. The field rests on a plot of land that used to be a source of water for steam locomotives. However, in the late 1800s, railroad workers turned the land into a baseball field on which a league of six teams played. Its backstop dates back to this time — around 1908, making it the oldest backstop known in the country. The George S. Donnelly Sunset League was then established in 1919 as the first known amateur baseball league in the country.
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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: What's Great Off 138: Newport Gulls collegiate league baseball team
