🔒The Worcester Bravehearts are the only game in town

In a normal season, the Worcester Bravehearts gear the team toward baseball fans, who’ve made the Bravehearts a perennial top draw nationally among collegiate summer teams.

This season though, the Bravehearts are prioritizing another group: the players, said Dave Peterson, the team’s general manager.

“As much as we’ve built our business on doing something for the fans … we’ve really kind of flipped it this year on hosting this season for the players,” Peterson said. “That’s the philosophy of the whole league.” 

That new focus – forced by the coronavirus pandemic – is the necessary result of a few factors.

College seasons were stopped about halfway through this spring once the pandemic hit, leaving players without valuable game time to develop their skills and show off to professional teams’ scouts. And with teams affiliated with Major League Baseball taking 2020 off, the Bravehearts and the Futures Collegiate Baseball League has an unusually high-profile platform to offer those players.

“The league basically said in April we have a really special opportunity here if it happens,” Peterson said.

Finding a way to play

For a time, it might have seemed unlikely the Futures League would take place this season. Professional sports of all kinds were forced to stop play for months, and even the Boston Red Sox didn’t begin playing their abridged 60-game season until July 24 – without fans.

But the Weymouth-based league was determined to move forward.

“I was confident from the beginning,” said Joe Paolucci, the Futures League’s commissioner. “All our owners, all our general managers – everyone had a really positive approach.”

Beyond that, they had a detailed plan. The league turned to Tami Chase, the medical director at Boston Medical Center and the mother of Bravehearts hitting coach Adam Chase, to figure out how best to structure a season – if it were to happen at all.

Starting July 2, it did. The Bravehearts, unable to play in their normal home park at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, opened the season in Lynn against the North Shore Navigators with some differences from a normal game.

Players and coaches have their temperatures checked when they arrive at the ballpark and answer questionnaires about showing any symptoms of the virus. There isn’t any regular testing for the virus, but symptoms are watched closely, with a plan for quick action if needed, Peterson said.

Players are kept socially distant on bus trips to away games and even during games, with extra seating outside the dugout so players can sit farther apart. Chewing on sunflower seeds or gum, a common way to pass time on the bench, is banned.

Reminding college-age players they’re not invincible is a regular necessity.

“It’s definitely been a challenge with the players to keep them socially distanced and to keep them wearing a mask when they’re supposed to be wearing a mask,” Paolucci said.

One more thing was missing from that first game in Lynn: fans. At least officially, there were none. Some set up chairs beyond the outfield fence to watch, but Lynn and Brockton officials have yet to give the OK for fans to attend games in their cities.

“That’s something we didn’t anticipate,” Paolucci said of having to go without fans.

Another Futures League team, the Pittsfield Suns, chose not to play, reportedly because the team’s owners found it too difficult to comply with safety guidelines.

A rare opportunity

The Futures League has much of New England to itself this summer.

Not only can fans not attend games at Fenway Park but Minor League Baseball has been called off this season. That means no Pawtucket Red Sox, no Hartford Yard Goats or Norwich Sea Unicorns in Connecticut, no Portland Sea Dogs in Maine, and no New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

Other collegiate leagues like the Futures League have opted to cancel their season. That includes the Cape Cod Baseball League, among the most renowned, as well as the New England Collegiate Baseball League, which has a similar footprint to the Futures League.

In fact, few baseball leagues at all have given a 2020 season a shot.

The Minnesota-based Northwoods League has played since June 15, but with some teams starting weeks later than others, and the team regularly drawing the most fans of any collegiate league club – the Madison Mallards in Wisconsin – taking the year off. The North Carolina-based collegiate Coastal Plain League is going with only seven of its 15 teams this year, with fans able to watch only online.

The Futures League has been given a potential to draw more fans this season than it normally might, Paolucci and Peterson said, but they’re mainly focused on maintaining safety and adjusting as time goes along.

The Bravehearts, whose season is slated to run through Aug. 19, have had to shift a few times this season. Roughly 19,000 hats they bought in January for promotions this season are sitting in storage. A few weeks before the first home game, the team said Holy Cross wouldn’t host them, forcing the team to use Leominster’s Doyle Field, a city-owned park.

“Right now, we’re living in the moment. We’re taking this one step at a time,” Peterson said of what’s been such an unusual year.

The team is still hampered by technically not being able to allow in fans. But because the team is playing at a public park, anyone is able to come by and watch. The team isn’t charging for admission and expects hardly any revenue this season.

Like other Futures League teams, the Bravehearts have signed a contract with Kentucky-based BlueFrame Technology to allow fans to stream games online for $8 a game.

“We’ve gone away above what we thought we would do in terms of subscription services,” Paolucci said.

There’s also the possibility the Bravehearts give a tourism boost of sorts to North Central Massachusetts, which this time of year might otherwise struggle to draw people or keep residents from going elsewhere.

Roy Nascimento, the president and CEO of Visit North Central Massachusetts, the region’s tourism office, expects more visitors locally this summer from within a relatively short driving distance as people seek less-crowded destinations, such as Wachusett Mountain State Reservation in Princeton.

Nascimento is hopeful the Bravehearts will help people get more comfortable with responsibly being out and about again this summer.

“Recovery starts locally, so we need to get people comfortable going to restaurants and seeing sites,” he said. “The region is really well-positioned to benefit.”