You start questioning the GPS when it says you’re a minute away and you’re still on the backroads of Barnstable County, but then you see the cars parked on both sides of the street and families carrying beach chairs, blankets and coolers. Headed to the beach? A sunset sail? No, you’ve found yourself at Lowell Park, the home of the Cotuit Kettleers, a Cape Cod Baseball League mainstay for decades.

Cape Cod is obviously home to some of the best summer locales on the East Coast, all those spots have a home team to cheer for. Chatham has the Anglers, Hyannis hosts the Harbor Hawks, and the team furthest out on the Cape, the Firebirds in Orleans. Split between two divisions, the West and the East, the playoffs in August rachet up the pressure just when the weather is peaking. The Cape Cod Baseball League may be the purest form of baseball, especially on a field like Lowell Park.

With origins stretching back to 1885 and officially established in 1923, the Cape Cod Baseball League has long been a summer stage for the nation’s finest collegiate talent, offering their first crack at the crack of wooden bats. The Kettleers, one of 10-teams, barnstorm from Bourne to Chatham and back for 40 games between mid-June to late July before the playoffs ignite in August. For generations, this sun-soaked circuit has been a proving ground for future legends—Frank Thomas, Chuck Knoblauch, Mo Vaughn, and Nomar Garciaparra among them—who first chased their big-league dreams beneath the Cape’s golden skies.

Walking up in Cotuit surrounded by hundreds of kids, grandparents, young families, and a few college kids back for the summer, you get your first glimpse of the ball field. Surrounded by acres of trees, the park is one of three CCBL ballparks that do not have lights. You can picture exactly what it would look like in 1947 when it opened, because little has changed. The sounds and smells bring you back to your earliest memories of the game. The smells of buttered popcorn and hot dogs mix with grass, dirt, and sunshine. The bleachers are wooden, the kids in front of you are squirming around just like you did too many decades before. The entire outfield fence is occupied by patrons in those beach chairs and blankets, setting up picnic dinners for their families. Kids surround the small bullpen where a potential Hall of Famer is warming up. And what about the cost? It’s absolutely free, and you can buy dinner at the concession stand for less than $8 a person. 

Is this heaven? No, it’s Cape Cod.