Community Baseball League In Development On Nantucket

A Nantucket Community Baseball League is currently in the works with over two dozen islanders already signed up to play in the league being organized by Bret Samboy and Shane Riley. The games would be played on weekends with practices taking place during the week.

"This is something I thought about for a while, but I didn't really look too much into the resources and how to do it and then I saw Shane put up a post on Facebook and I immediately replied and said I was super interested," Samboy said. "Then a couple other guys started replying, and we started gaining some interest."

Riley said he is hoping to talk to Parks & Recreation Manager Charlie Polachi about using the Tom Nevers Field, which isn’t being used at this time and is need of some maintenance.

"It's going to be like whoever can show up during the week and just practice and throw the ball around and get some hits in and stuff either before work or after work, or whatever works for people's schedules,” Riley said. “Maybe we just select a day or two during the week just to leave it open for guys that want to run around, throw the ball around, and just stay loose during the week. But I follow Bret on that I think the weekends are best.”

Samboy said they are still working on what the cost per person would be but is hoping that if there is enough interest they can negotiate something with Polachi. Riley said he has spoken to Park & Recreation and the fee as of now would be $200 to use the field.

The Tom Nevers Field would need a pitcher’s mound developed, and the weeds would need to be dug up in the infield. The outfield grass is in good shape and would not need much maintenance. Games would take place from September into early November depending on weather conditions and then start back up in the spring. They’d take place either in the morning or afternoon since the field does not have lights.

Samboy said he grew up playing baseball and recently moved to the island full-time with his wife two years ago. He previously played in leagues in the Boston area but said it has become difficult to stay involved, which led him to thinking about a baseball league on the island.

"It's hard getting off the island,” he said. “It doesn't make sense to just get off the island for baseball. So I always thought that getting a league on Nantucket would be awesome and it would be a cheaper way to do an activity on an island that's really expensive and not everyone has access to playing golf or surfing or whatever the activities in Nantucket that you want to do. A lot of them can be a bit pricey. So especially with the number of year-round people that we have that keeps growing, I think there definitely could be enough interest to get a full league going.”

While Samboy and Riley don’t have an end goal, they said they’d love to someday get 10 teams.

“That may be lofty, but who knows,” Samboy said. “But the more teams the better. I want to get this affiliated with MSBL which is a men’s senior baseball league. They have franchises all over the country. There's a bunch of tournaments all over the country. There's a big tournament on the Cape every Labor Day. So if we get enough teams together, we could field a team or two and do tournament teams and go travel and stuff, which I think would be a fun experience for guys.”

For Riley, he said he always finds himself trying to stay busy in the offseason and has always wanted to find a way to play baseball on the island.

“I had baseball roots growing since I was four or five years old,” Riley said. “I've been playing up until high school about my junior year, and I took it very seriously. I traveled. I was on travel teams. I pitched varsity. I was on the AAU travel team, and then I just had a falling out with the sport as a junior in high school. I played a couple times in my early 20s for Cape Cod Leagues. Like a Men's Association League. It's like an amateur league that they have, and it was really well done and so about maybe three or four weeks ago like Bret said, I put the feelers out there and there was a lot of interest, just organically. Bret picked up on it. We've been talking about it, and to see something come to fruition is pretty special. So for someone like me, I want to go play baseball, but I didn't have anybody to go do that with. So if we can get a group of guys just starting it, it has an opportunity to be a really, really great thing.”

Anyone interested in joining this league can email the league at nantucketcommunitybaseball@gmail.com or you can reach Bret Samboy by his cell phone at 518-424-5196.