CAPE COD BLOG
DAY TWO / Part II
EDITOR’S NOTE: PG Crosschecker’s Allan Simpson is spending five days in the Cape Cod League and will check in daily with some of his observations from the nation’s premier summer college league. Among other things he has seen was Thursday night’s Cape League all-star game at Boston’s Fenway Park.
The Home Run Derby at this year’s Cape Cod League all-star game had more than its usual intrigue because the target in left field wasn’t your garden variety outfield wall. It was the mother of all barriers—the Green Monster at Boston’s Fenway Park.
Despite its inviting dimensions, just 315 from home plate, the wall scales upwards some 37 feet and some of the elite power bats in the Cape had their share of difficulty slaying the monster. No player hit more than three homers in any round (before 10 outs were recorded), and the winner of the six-man competition, Harwich first baseman Connor Powers, won the final round by hitting just two balls out of the yard.
It was the second go-around in a Cape Home Run Derby for Powers, an 11th-round pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers in this year’s draft who hit 19 homers as a junior this spring at Mississippi State but had homered just once in 23 games this summer in his return to the Cape. Powers bowed out in the first round a year ago, but his three homers this time around were enough to move him on to the final round, where his competition was Cotuit catcher Cameron Rupp (Texas). Powers defeated Rupp 2-1.
“I went through it last year,” Powers said. “I was a lot more relaxed, which made it much easier to hit.”
Powers appeared to have some formidable competition as Rupp had never lost a Home Run Derby that he had entered, and power-hitting Falmouth first baseman Hunter Morris (Auburn) was leading the Cape in homers this summer at the all-star break.
Rupp, who previously won similar long-ball competitions at the AFLAC Game in San Diego in 2007, and both the All-American Game in Albuquerque, N.M., and the Connie Mack World Series in Farmington, N.M., in 2008, appeared primed to win again as he didn’t need his full allotment of 10 outs to match Powers’ preliminary-round total of three. His third blast, to dead center field, was the longest in the competition.
But the powerful Rupp couldn’t get it going in the final round, homering just once.
“That wall is very inviting,” Rupp said, “but unfortunately you have to hit the ball over it. I wanted to make sure I got my best pitch, but I didn’t. I just should have hit better pitches.”
Drizzling rain throughout the competition, along with a steady wind blowing in from center field, may have hampered the sluggers, but the aura of the Green Monster may ultimately have been the most inhibiting factor.
That wasn’t a factor, though, for Morris, the only lefthanded hitter in the group. His target was the more distant right-field seats and he pulled up short, homering just once. At that, it may have been a generous call as the ball appeared to curl just before the foul pole down the right field line. Still, he was given credit for going deep in Fenway.
“It’s a little tougher to hit one out from the left side,” Morris acknowledged. “I don’t want to use that as an excuse, but I thought it was a little unfair.”
Morris may have been under a little extra pressure, as well, as he was Boston’s unsigned second-round pick in the 2007 draft, and more than a few Red Sox fans in attendance were aware of his decision to bypass an offer out of high school to sign with the hometown team. “Yeah, I’ve been reminded of it a few times,” Morris admitted. “It was just at a time in my life that I don’t think I was ready to play pro ball, and I really don’t regret my decision.”
Morris’ Auburn teammate, Cotuit first baseman Kevin Patterson, would have added a second lefthanded bat to the competition, but he contracted the swine flu virus a week earlier, forcing him out of the game and out of Cape League action altogether for two weeks. It was Rupp who replaced him in the derby.
Other participants included Brewster third basemen Jedd Gyorko (West Virginia) and Harold Martinez (Miami), and Wareham outfielder/righthander Brett Eibner (Arkansas).