Club Baseball’s Fight for Cooperstown

Oswego club baseball taking a team picture

(Oswego Club Baseball takes a team picture after sweeping Colgate during their double header 9/30)

Club History

SUNY Oswego is certainly popular for its success within its athletic programs. While Hockey seems to steal the spotlight, in recent years, their Men’s Basketball Team and Baseball Team have made some pretty impressive runs. However, some teams that haven’t really found much attention at all belong to Oswego’s club sports programs. One specific example is Oswego’s Club Baseball team. Like many other clubs, Club baseball saw a halt in operations around the start of the COVID 19 Pandemic. It basically cut their funding completely and they had to start from the ground up.

Quinn Jones (featured on the left), the current president of club baseball, has been on the team since the fall of 2021, and with his experience playing D3 college baseball at Skidmore, he was quickly elected president of the club. This was the first year that the club started to rebuild in terms of funding and numbers. Come fall 2022, the team went from a 14 man roster, to having a tryout of 60 participants, keeping an official 35 man roster. This same year, Quinn also made an executive decision to switch over to a new league called the Colonial Club Baseball league. This league, unlike their previous one, grants the champion a trip to Cooperstown to play the champion of the CCBA’s western division. Since then, some people have come and gone but as of now, they still possess a 35 man roster for the 2023 fall season, currently fighting for a trip to Cooperstown

Playoffs

Here’s how it works. Unlike traditional baseball seasons that usually start in the spring, their official season is in the fall. The 2nd and 3rd place team from each division will face off in a winner take all game to see who advances to play the 1 seed of the division who is awarded a round 1 bye. The winner will then advance to play the winner of the other division and based on whoever has the best record of the three winners will get an automatic bye into the championship game (as seen below).

CCBA playoff bracket layout from the 2022 fall season

(Fall 2022 CCBA playoff bracket)

Considering the amount of sports being played at this level and this time of year, there aren’t any other options to see this type of competitive baseball in November. With this win or go home format, it fuels a lot of energy into the league, and specifically, Oswego’s club team.

I had the opportunity to speak with their President, Quinn Jones, stating “Bottom line is we take it seriously, there’s a trip to Cooperstown on the line and our roster is full of guys who want to compete and win baseball games.” I myself, being the Vice President, have had many talks with the team about how there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be giving 110% everytime you step foot on a baseball field. I’ve also mentioned that taking this seriously gives us a competitive edge against our adversaries, especially if they don’t take the game as seriously as we do.

Oswego Club baseball preparing for the start of their second game of the day

(Oswego Club Baseball during intermission)

Oswego currently holds sole possession of the one seed with a record of 6-2 in the Central Division, giving them a 3 game advantage over Cornell. However, they have a crucial 2 game series against them on Saturday, October 21st. One win will secure Oswego’s spot as the one seed. Quinn Jones talked about how important this series was saying “I mean yeah it doesn’t get any more intense than this, it’s our most important series of the season and we’re ready to win on the road and ride that momentum into the playoffs”. Oswego is definitely ready to fire on all cylinders to secure that 1 seed.