By Luke Schrock, WKTV intern
Many local college baseball players where hoping to play some summer league baseball, but then there was COVID-19. But for one local college player, Davenport University’s Gaetano Vallone, a summer at Traverse City was just the pitch he’d been hoping for.
The Northwoods League was one of the few summer baseball leagues that had the chance to play this summer, due to north Lower Peninsula Michigan and the Upper Peninsula being allowed to be exempt from many state-mandated restrictions.
“It was huge for me to find a team like the Pit Spitters to play for during this pandemic,” Vallone, a pitcher for Davenport, said to WKTV, “Being able to play for such a high caliber baseball team definitely helps me prepare for our upcoming season” in spring 2021.
The Northwoods League split its league into seven different “pods” including the ‘Michigan North’ (Traverse City) pod that also included the Great Lakes Resorters and the Northern Michigan Dune Bears (before the Dune Bears was disbanded after the first suspension of the season back on July 4).
Like most of the country, working out and staying in shape was a hard task, especially for players like Vallone, who were training for their upcoming collegiate season.
“I was forced to do at home workouts with limited supplies and run,” he said. “The transition from workouts at school to workouts at home was difficult but I managed to stay motivated.”
The Pit Spitters ended the season with a regular season record of 33-8 and lost in the finals of the Michigan bracket to the Kalamazoo Mac Daddies, 4-1.
