Wareham Gatemen (Cape Cod Baseball League) @ Clem Spillane Field (Wareham, MA)

Cape League baseball - off Cape Cod

*This trip occurred on the evening of July 4th, 2025. For more on the Cape Cod Baseball League, I wrote about it here, and I personally recommend you check it out.

Also, you may have noticed that I went and added a bunch of photos to some old posts. I do have some photos of Wareham that I could put here, but they're from 2022 (pre-renovation) and I don't think it's fair as the stadium has changed fairly significantly since then.

Baseball has been played on and off in Wareham since 1927, but the current team was formed in 1952. The town has a pretty good history with nine league championships (most recently in 2018); however, Wareham is notable amongst the Cape League towns for…not being on Cape Cod. It’s a few miles west of the Bourne Bridge on what I like to call “mainland Massachusetts” (the cape is separated by a canal) and, being located in Plymouth County, is also not part of Cape Cod’s county (Barnstable)¹. As such, it doesn’t really get the visiting fans/tourists many of the other teams enjoy, and Wareham consistently ranks at or near the bottom of attendance each year.

Honestly…it’s kind of a shame ‘cause I think Clem Spillane Field is pretty good. Not the best, mind you, but I think it’s better than others (though that also depends on your opinion on port-a-potties, as there seem to be no public bathrooms nearby). It’s a combination baseball/football configuration, but unlike Hinchliffe Stadium in New Jersey, the diamond is far enough away from the opposite sideline to have a normal distance down both lines (in this case it would be the left field line). Spillane also features the Cape League’s first ever video scoreboard; I don’t know when it was installed (it was there by 2021 though, as that was my first visit), but only one other team (the Cotuit Kettleers) have a video board (the rest use good ol’ electronic scoreboards). Notably, the field was upgraded in 2025; it previously (infamously) featured gray gravel base paths, but now has more traditional dirt.

Quite possibly my favorite seating section in the entire Cape League is here: thanks to the field’s status as a combination baseball/football stadium, the bleachers used for football line the outfield (as well as one of the bullpens - for a long time it was the visitor’s bullpen, but in 2023 it became the home bullpen). "Good" outfield views in the Cape are rare, as where you do get them they’re usually at field level (or the grassy berm in Chatham), so it’s a great way to get a unique view of the game (especially as you can get a rather elevated view in Wareham).

The story of this visit can be summarized in one sentence:

The night after the lights went out in Wareham.

My original plan was to stop here briefly to check out the "team store" before heading up to Brockton to see Rox 2.0, but after the Nashua game, I saw that this game had been moved from 6 PM to 7 PM. Thinking that It’d be REALLY awkward to try and get to the Rox game after it started, I figured I’d pivot to this game, as I really like the outfield seats (my second favorite seats in the Cape after Chatham’s grandstand). In doing so, I ended up deciding to go to Cape Cod itself (traffic was basically nonexistent thankfully), where I spent a little bit of time in Brewster and then Falmouth looking for various merchandise items before heading over to Wareham.

When I got to Wareham, I found out why the game was moved: an intense thunderstorm had knocked out power to the field the day before, and initial indications were that the power would be back between 6 and 7 (thus the pushback). However, that ended up NOT being the case, so the game started at 7 with no lights, but with a contingency plan should the power not return in time. Fortunately, those plans ended up being unnecessary, as the lights came on during the third inning. UNfortunately, the Gatemen ended up giving up a 1-0 lead in the sixth and went on to lose 5-2 (I left during this sixth inning with Bourne having loaded the bases with no outs in a then tied game).

MERCH

Like a lot of other teams in the Cape League (seven before 2025, six this year), the Gatemen merchandise “store” is basically in/next to the press box. There’s also a small concession stand here that mainly serves drinks and light snacks, but the main concession stand at Wareham is behind the left field foul pole/home bullpen.

In the past, the team sold old hats that they were looking to “offload” (which is why I REALLY wanted to come here). This was no different for this trip, and I was able to get an old hat, a current hat, and the Fourth of July hat - but only after they got their credit card reader working (which thankfully happened before the lights came back). I didn’t get a baseball here, as the only baseballs they had were Cape League balls (this is sadly rather common on Cape Cod), and they had the former commissioner’s signature on them (I have WAY too many baseballs signed by him BTW).

Like Chatham, I went against my better judgment and bought a jersey as well; in fact, they actually let me into a section of the press box as that’s where they keep the jerseys. However, I should mention that the most interesting piece of Cape League merch I ever got was from here: A dugout jacket! Before you question the usefulness of a jacket during the summer, you have to understand that June nights in New England can be rather cold - especially on the Cape and South Coast (which is technically what Wareham is part of), where temperatures tend to be lower than the rest of Massachusetts.

Also, another thing that separates Wareham from the rest of the Cape League: Each team in the league publishes a yearbook/program…except Wareham. They stopped publishing their yearbook in 2022, but I will note here that I got a yearbook at every other Cape League stop I made this year (Chatham, Brewster, Falmouth, plus one other stop which I'll get into in a future post).

As for Brewster and Falmouth, I actually intend to talk a little bit more about them later in the year.