Gulls to Raise Championship Banner on Opening Night Friday
June 1, 2015 - New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL)
Newport Gulls News Release
NEWPORT, R.I. - The 2014 NECBL champion Newport Gulls begin their 21-game home schedule at Cardines Field on Friday night, June 5, as the Flock opens their 15th season playing in the City by the Sea.
Fresh off last season's thrilling Fay Vincent Sr. Cup victory - the sixth for Newport since 2001 - the 2015 squad assembles this week to begin yet another title defense. The latest NECBL championship banner will be raised at Cardines during special pregame festivities beginning at 6:10 p.m. in advance of Friday's 6:35 p.m. first pitch vs. the Mystic Schooners.
The Gulls, who officially open the season on the road Thursday at Forges Field in Plymouth, Massachusetts vs. the Pilgrims, will play 10 games at historic Cardines Field in June - all on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday nights - and a further 11 in July, with division playoffs set to begin Aug. 3.
For Friday's Opening Night contest presented by Discover Newport, gates open at 5 p.m. and tickets are $4 for adults; $2 for seniors, military and teens 13-18; and $1 for children 12 and under. The first 1,000 fans through the gates of Cardines will receive free 2015 season magnet schedules courtesy of Carmella's Pizzeria in Middletown. Parking is $2 with a game ticket at the Newport Visitors Center located across America's Cup Avenue from the field.
Season passes are available, good for all 2015 home games, for just $50, and can be purchased on Opening Night at the Gulls Ticket Office outside of Cardines Field. The game will also be broadcast live on the newly revamped NECBL Broadcast Network and via www.newportgulls.com, with pregame show coverage beginning at 6:05 p.m.
For a second straight season, the Gulls will find themselves with relatively short road trips this summer to their divisional rivals' ballparks, with their furthest Southern Division opponent - the Danbury Westerners - residing at Rogers Park in Danbury, Connecticut. Their closest rival, the Ocean State Waves, will take on the Gulls in a rematch of the Pell Bridge Series. Won by Newport during the Waves inaugural season in 2012, the Waves edged the Gulls in the six-game regular season series last summer - only to fall to Newport in three games in the first round of the NECBL playoffs.
Groton, Connecticut's Fitch Field, where the Mystic Schooners - the NECBL's oldest franchise - call home, New Bedford's Paul Walsh Field, and Plymouth, Massachusetts's Forges Field round out the NECBL South.
Plymouth, like Ocean State, enters its third season as an NECBL expansion team, although the Pilgrims had a breakout year in 2014, winning the regular season division championship by finishing 31-11, before being eliminated by the Gulls in an unbelievable Southern Division Championship Series that saw each road team overcome seemingly impossible odds to win in all three contests, including two come-from-behind Gulls victories at Forges Field, and a thrilling Game Two at Cardines that saw the Gulls overcome a late-inning, 5-0 deficit only to fall 7-6 in 12 innings.
Plymouth, whose bid to join Newport as the league's second ever 32-win squad last season came up short when the Gulls defeated the Pilgrims at Forges in a rain-shortened regular-season finale (the Gulls finished 32-10 in 2006, a feat as yet unmatched in the NECBL), will host the Gulls at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday to kick off both team's 2015 schedules, in what has quickly become one of the best new rivalries in the NECBL.
Meanwhile, Newport, which despite winning the championship was not as dominate in 2014 as the club has been in recent years, is coming off a second-place division finish in the South at 25-17. The Gulls, who have reached the 25-win benchmark in each season in the franchise's existence dating back to 2001, looked defeated last July after one of the worst stretches in team history, before catching fire later in the month en route to an August where the team won six of eight playoff games, nearly all of which in thrilling fashion.
Among returning NECBL three-time veterans that include infielders Reed Gamache and Shea Donlin, the Gulls also bring back their coaching staff for 2015. The 15th anniversary season for the Gulls will be the 11th for their manager, Mike Coombs, who has now led the team to championships in 2005, 2009, 2012, and 2014. Also returning for a fifth season is Kevin Long, the team's pitching coach. Al Leyva, who took last summer off after serving as the Gulls' hitting coach from 2012-'14, returns for a fourth season this summer.
After the banner is raised and the first pitch is thrown on Opening Night this Friday, the Gulls will hit the road again, making the short trip to New Bedford to play the Bay Sox. On Sunday, the Gulls will play their annual exhibition game against the Cape Cod Baseball League's Wareham Gatemen at 6 p.m. at Spillane Field in Wareham, Massachusetts. The Gulls lead the all-time series - which has swapped ballparks annually since 2011 - three games to one, although with collegiate playoffs ongoing and the MLB Draft looming, neither team is typically at full strength so early in June.
Despite many short road trips, the Gulls will still cover thousands of miles this summer crisscrossing New England. The Gulls and their furthest division opponents, the Westerners, were once division rivals a decade ago, before being separated by the league's east-west alignment (and subsequently playing each other in the 2012 championship, bested by Newport). In the NECBL North, the Gulls' former NECBL East opponent, the Laconia Muskrats, find themselves pitted against the Sanford Mainers - who were swept by Newport last August in the League Championship Series; the Keene, New Hampshire Swampbats - who themselves defeated Newport in 2013's finals; the Montpelier, Vermont Mountaineers - who have played Newport in the finals three times; the North Adams, Massachusetts SteepleCats; and the Valley Blue Sox of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The Gulls will play each Northern Division team twice, with one game at each team's ballpark, and each Southern Division squad six times in completing their 42-game schedule.
On Monday, June 8, the Gulls are on the road for a third straight day, taking on the Mystic Schooners for a second time on the young season, before earning their first off day on Tuesday. On Wednesday, June 10, the Gulls return home to Cardines to host the Keene Swampbats for Scholarship Night, where the team is giving away 2015 Gulls summer camp scholarships every inning.
After another day off next Thursday, the home-standing Gulls play their first 2015 Pell Bridge Series matchup against the Ocean State Waves on Friday, June 12 at Cardines Field at 6:35 p.m. for Salve Regina University Night, where the team is giving away 2015 season passes each inning.
The Gulls 15th anniversary celebration in Newport will be marked on Friday, June 26, when all fans receive free admission for Reunion Night vs. the Westerners, and former players, coaches, volunteers, staff, host families, sponsors and fans are invited to celebrate the organization's 15 years of unprecedented success. On June 27 at the Newport Marriott, located just across the street from Cardines, the entire extended Gulls family will gather for a reunion celebration dinner and auction, to include special guests and the announcement of the team's 2016 Hall of Fame Class.
More information about the Gulls 15th anniversary reunion events, 2015 home-game promotions and giveaways, and the entire 2015 game schedule is available at www.newportgulls.com.
The Newport Gulls, members of the 12-team New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL), are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded as the Rhode Island Gulls in 1998 in Cranston, R.I., before moving to Newport in 2001. In addition to recruiting, fielding, and developing a team of the nation's top collegiate baseball athletes and attracting 50,000 fans annually to Cardines Field, the predominantly volunteer organization strives to benefit the youth of Newport County via summer camps, reading programs, fundraisers, scholarships, and charitable donations - totaling nearly $1 million since 2001. The Gulls are six-time champions of the NECBL - the winningest franchise in league history - and were ranked as the overall No. 1 summer collegiate baseball team in the country by Perfect Game USA in 2012.
New England Collegiate Baseball League Stories from June 1, 2015
- Gulls to Raise Championship Banner on Opening Night Friday - Newport Gulls
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