Countless players in the big leagues have spent a summer or two playing in the Cape League. Memorabilia from those early, pre-professional days hang on a wall at the CCBL’s Hall of Fame inside the History Museum at Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich.

    With walls on either side of the museum filled with plaques and recognitions of some of the league’s more famous players and cases filled with other bits of tangible memories from one of the nation’s top amateur baseball leagues, Heritage Museums & Gardens has played host to the Hall of Fame exhibit for the past five years. But come November 1, all that will change. The exhibit will be moving out of Sandwich to a new home.

    President of the Cape Cod Baseball League Judith Walden Scarafile said the league is hoping to move the Hall of Fame into the lower level of the JFK Museum on Main Street, Hyannis. Although she has not received confirmation from the town manager in Hyannis, she said an agreement is very close.

    “We still need to work out the details and get approval on some of the architectural designs, but we are getting very near to signing an agreement,” Ms. Scarafile said.
With its downtown location and situated in a museum that pays tribute to one of the most famous residents of the Cape, she is hoping that the Hall of Fame will receive as many visitors at its new site as it has at Heritage.

    The move is a mutual agreement between Heritage Museums & Gardens and the Cape league.

    The league had signed a five-year agreement with Heritage back in 2003 and with that lease agreement up, the time was right to make a change, said Jennifer Y. Madden, director of exhibits and collections at Heritage. She said the museum tries to keep its exhibits and displays fresh by rotating some items in and others out and that, typically, a short-term exhibit is only displayed for one season.

    “The Hall of Fame was considered a borrowed exhibit, and five years is a long time to keep a short-term exhibit on display,” she said.

    Both Ms. Madden and Ms. Scarafile agreed that it is time for a change and to freshen up their exhibits.

    Ms. Madden said she appreciated the visitors that the Hall of Fame drew to the museum. She recalled the time when the World Series Trophy was on display at the Hall of Fame and the large number of people who came to see it and to stand near it. She said the line of people wound its way around the large room and out the door. “It was so exciting to see that,” Ms. Madden said.

    Ms. Scarafile is hoping that with this being the final season for the Hall of Fame’s location at Heritage, that people will make a point to visit it.

    On November 1, the History Museum will be closed and interior renovations will be made. Besides removing the green carpet that offers the illusion of a baseball field and removing the makeshift backstop that covers one wall at the end of the room, other renovation plans call for removing the partial second level inside the museum. This level sits just four feet above the basement, making that area nothing but a crawl space, and four feet below the main level of the building.

    “The renovations are not complicated or expensive, but they are necessary,” said Ms. Madden.

    She explained that once the partial second level is removed, it will open up the basement and add 1,000 square feet for collection storage, something she said that is desperately needed.

    With 2,660 square feet of space on the main floor for exhibits, Ms. Madden said they are still in the discussion stage as to what the next displays will be in the History Museum when it reopens in the summer of 2008.