Thanks to my job, I found myself needing to pay particularly close attention to the last three weeks of the West Coast League baseball season, which included divisional playoffs and a championship series.  The final game was tonight, an 11-4 Corvallis Knights (@CorvKnights) victory over the Walla Walla Sweets (@WWSweets), a sweep of the WCL championship series 2-0.

Even though I had no dog in the hunt (I’m a fan of my local team, the #Kitsap BlueJackets @Bluejackets_kit), I found myself listening to tonight’s game on my laptop via the Sweets’ streaming radio feed. The live play-by-play added extra excitement to the half-inning updates both teams provided on Twitter, the same kind of updates I’ve followed a lot over the last few weeks!

What I’m getting at is…the West Coast League is a jewel, man!  And I don’t mean a jewel like a Klamath Falls Gem (@KFallsGems), which I learned is a type of potato; that’s why their mascot is “Tater”.  I mean a jewel like a diamond, as in an engagement ring (or even a baseball diamond for that matter).  The problem is, not enough people know that the WCL is a “jewel”.  Not enough baseball fans in Kitsap County know it or show it, anyway.  But now I know it, just like many other folks seem to know it in other #WCL towns.

The reason I know it is because I had the pleasure of attending games in Bellingham (@BhamBells), Wenatchee (@AppleSox), and Walla Walla earlier this month.  At each stop I was blown away by the number of people who knew about the “jewel”.  That is, they knew about the budget-friendly, family-friendly good time there is to be had at every home game of their home town team.  In those places, they know that a good place to be on a summer night is at the ol’ ball game.  They know that the PNW’s version of a summer collegiate baseball league, where the rosters are filled with active college baseball players with at least one more year of eligibility and maybe dreams of playing beyond that, is a “jewel” where you’ll find the Boys of Summer.