Eagles in the Cape
8/1/2013 3:39:00 PM | Baseball
STATESBORO, Ga. - A pair of Georgia Southern Eagles have spent their summer playing baseball in the Cape Cod League, the nation's top collegiate summer baseball league.
Rising Juniors Chase Griffin and Sam Howard had a little more than 15 days off between the end of the Eagles season on May 27th and the beginning of the Cape Cod League's competition in mid-June.
"It is definitely the best guys in college up here. If you miss a spot they are definitely going to execute on it and hit it hard somewhere," said Howard.
"The competition within itself is unreal. Every time you step to the plate you got guys throwing mid to upper 90s with really good command. It lets you see what you are made of," said Griffin.
Griffin, playing for the Hyannis Harbor Hawks, is hitting .195 with two home runs and 10 RBIs in 26 games. The Eagles primary catcher in 2013, he has seen action at catcher and designated hitter during the summer. Griffin's first home run in the cape came in just his second game and sparked a four-run top of the eighth that led to a 5-4 Harbor Hawks win over the Wareham Gatemen.
"It was a hanging slider," Griffin said of his first home run. "I just got good barrel on it. The field was a pretty decent size and with the wood bat, I wasn't so sure it was gone. Sometimes with the metal bat back at school I kinda know when it is gone, but I knew I put a good swing on this one. When I looked up, the umpire was signaling for me to go and that it was a home run. There ain't nothing like barreling up a ball with a wood bat."
For Griffin though it wasn't just the competition level that was different his bat was different as well. The Cape Cod League uses wood bats like those the MLB hopefuls will eventually use in the minor and major leagues.
"Growing up through high school I got to swing the wood bat a little bit towards the end of the summer. It was never for a long period of time like it is up here," Griffin said. "With the metal bats you can get some nice cheap knocks, but up here if you hit one off the handle you get sawed off and break a bat. I felt like I have had to adjust by shortening up my swing a little bit and really trying to get the barrel to the ball."
Howard has appeared in seven games with one start and holds a 0-2 record with a 6.11 ERA for the Harwich Mariners. He has allowed only six walks and has tallied 13 strikeouts in 17.2 innings this summer. In his first outing in the Cape, Howard allowed one run and two hits over three innings while striking out four batters.
"It has been awesome," Howard said about his experience in the Cape Cod League. "I am living on a farm with four other guys that are from the College of Charleston. It has been awesome how they treat us when we go to the field everyday. It has been really fun."
The two will start making their way back to Statesboro following the conclusion of the season on Sunday.
"I won't be home for maybe more than a day before I head straight to Southern to start working down there," said Howard. "I am ready to get down there and get back to work."
The premier amateur baseball league in the nation since 1885 features a 44-game regular-season schedule and an action-packed postseason made up of best-of-three quarterfinal, semifinal and championship series. The league boasts more than 1,000 alumni performing at all levels of professional baseball and in 2010, a record total 236 former Cape Leaguers populate major league rosters, including Jacoby Ellsbury, Tim Lincecum and Mark Texeira.
Georgia Southern Athletics provides up-to-date information on all its sports through its official website, GSEagles.com, through social media channels facebook.com/GSAthletics and twitter.com/GSAthletics, and its new "Eagles GATA" mobile app for Android and iOS.
