The Northwoods League baseball teams in West Michigan announced on Monday that their seasons will start on July 1st.
"We have our amateur players that have missed one of their four seasons of their life in college baseball," Growlers managing partner Brian Colopy said. "So to give them that opportunity to be back and play. Our coaches, fans, it's been a long three four months for everybody."
The Northwoods League has gone to local pods this summer and the Kalamazoo Growlers and Battle Creek Bombers will be joined by the Kalamazoo Mac Daddies from the Growlers Father's Day promotion.
"Mac Daddies we launched that we always do goofy, weird things here and the success was overwhelming," Colopy said. "The jersey's will be on SportsCenter on Friday, it has just been great so we thought it was natural to make them the team name for our second Kalamazoo team. We are going to have a lot of fun with it cheesy jokes, dad jokes."
They will need extra players to make up the third team but getting players is not expected to be a problem.
"There is numerous college leagues that have been canceled so there is players that need to and want to play," Colopy said. "So it is not going to be who its going to be which ones we want to choose."
The rosters are still being finalized and will be announced soon but they should have a a local feel with plenty of players from area colleges.
The players are expected to arrive next week to get ready for the season opener.
"They will come in, they will get some training, they will get into their housing, tested, all the fun stuff they will be doing," Colopy said."They will just get in here about a week early make sure everything is up to snuff and they are ready to go they know that we are going to be doing on the field."
The season will consist of 60 games. 40 in Kalamazoo and 20 in Battle Creek. The season is scheduled to conclude in the first week in September.
