Play Ball! College Summer League Comes to Victory Field

When the door officially closed on the 2020 Minor League Baseball season – Tuesday, June 30, to be exact – the Indianapolis Indians organization was weeks into preparations of hosting outside events at Victory Field. Before the season was canceled, The Vic had already held two travel baseball Pastime Tournaments each of the last two weekends in June, and the club was quick to arrange a third Pastime Tournament in mid-July. Baseball was being played at the corner of West & Maryland, albeit with 250 family members or less in attendance every game due to COVID-19 restrictions.

As the calendar flipped to July and Indiana’s Back on Track plan reached stage 4.5 in Marion County, slightly larger events with 1,000-person capacities were on the docket. After the Fourth of July weekend, an American Red Cross Indiana blood drive and one of Indy’s most popular downtown traditions – American Dairy Association Indiana’s 31st annual Ice Cream Social – found their way to Victory Field. When the last few remaining ice cream novelties were distributed on Friday, July 10, that meant one thing for the Tribe front office – baseball was on deck for the rest of July.

Grand Park, a 400-plus acre sports campus located roughly 30 miles north of Victory Field in Westfield, Ind., hosts over 2.5 million visitors each year. One of the many extravagant buildings on site is Pro X, a sport-specific training facility that welcomes high school and college athletes from near and far. When the pandemic hit in mid-March and college seasons were cut short, over 100 local players who had returned to Central Indiana expressed interest in training to where Luke Dietz, Director of Operations at Grand Park, jumped on an opportunity.

“[Pro X] typically hasn’t had enough players training to necessarily form a league,” Dietz said. “But as more and more players reached out, we thought ‘Hey, we’ve got fields open on Mondays and Tuesdays, let’s go ahead and try to run our own league.’”

The uncertainty of a season start date did not deter interest. The 22-team Northwoods League delayed the start of its season into the first week of July, and the Cape Cod League, known to host some of the best college talent in the country every summer, wasn’t an option after it canceled its season on April 24. Grand Park promised there would be games, eventually, with doubleheaders played every Monday and Tuesday. As a bonus, players could pay off their league fees by working Wednesday thru Sunday tournaments at Grand Park. Those factors, along with Prep Baseball Report Indiana’s connections to college athletes, helped swell the interest to 270 players, who were divided into 12 teams of which they named themselves: The A-Team, Screwballs, Local Legends and Snapping Turtles, to name a few.

The College Summer League at Grand Park was born.

Players from Indiana University, Purdue University, Butler University, Ball State University, and countless other in- and out-of-state programs litter the rosters. There are also players representing the SEC, ACC and Big 12, among other major conferences. The league originally aimed at being a commuter league, but the drive to play hasn’t prevented some players from tackling much longer commutes.

“We’ve got guys who will drive four hours to play on a Monday,” Dietz said. “Out-of-state guys will come to Westfield on a Monday morning, play a doubleheader, stay in a hotel room, play a doubleheader again on Tuesday and drive home that night.”

Once the regular season began, Dietz’s connection to the Indians made for easy conversations in hopes of bringing select College Summer League games to Victory Field. He interned for the Tribe during the 2018 season and knew the organization would be hungry for baseball after losing its respective season.

“We want to give the players a college league atmosphere, but on Mondays and Tuesdays at Grand Park with 12 teams playing at the same time – even with free admission – you don’t have many spectators,” Dietz said. “So, we thought, ‘Let’s try to play at the greatest baseball facility in Indiana.’”

Neither side balked at the idea and in due time, it was announced that the league’s All-Star Game, regular-season finale, and league championship were coming to The Vic on July 16, 23 and 30, respectively. Tickets started as low as $8, the brand-new Elements Financial Club was open for business, and baseball was back at Victory Field. All three games sold out.

For Jack Lang, a shortstop on the Snapping Turtles who will repeat as a junior at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) after losing his 2020 season to the pandemic, the College Summer League has been a blessing. He expected to play in Kokomo, Ind., and then the Prospect League in Terre Haute, Ind., before finally settling with the newborn College Summer League at Grand Park in his backyard. And playing at Victory Field fulfills a childhood dream. He starred at Hamilton Southeastern and now plays with or against many former high school teammates also playing in the College Summer League. At HSE, the goal was to always end the season at Victory Field.

“My junior year [Hamilton Southeastern] probably had one of the best teams on paper, six or seven Division I guys,” Lang remembered. “We came up short for whatever reason, but I’m excited to step onto a professional baseball field for the first time.”

And the talent in the league, many with professional baseball aspirations and legitimate draft stock, Lang included among them, runs deep. The league split into an upper and lower division for the regular season, but the postseason bracket includes every team.

“There’s never a matchup where I’m like, ‘I know this team is going to win because this guy is pitching,’” Dietz said. “It’s competitive. These guys are really good, and it’s fun to watch every week knowing they could make it to the big leagues someday.”