Kettle Ho!

Walking into the ball field at Elizabeth Lowell Park, Jul-2023.

Seating is mainly in wooden bleachers.

Except for a small parking lot, the entire park is flanked by trees.

• Location: Lowell Avenue at Main Street, Cotuit, Barnstable, Mass. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1947
• Home team: Cotuit Kettleers, Cape Cod Baseball League

The kettle-and-a-hoe purchase price for the land lends its name to a nearby restaurant and also to the Cotuit Kettleers, who have been participating in the Cape Cod Baseball League since 1947. They play at Elizabeth Lowell Park, which was once a school ground (named for a relative of a president of Harvard who used to take his summer vacations in the area), but the school only lasted into the 1930s. The field, however, is used to this day, and it is managed by the organizers of the Kettleers.

A fundraising effort has added to the extent of the park so that the surrounding forested landscape can be preserved forever and saved from encroaching development. There are no lights here, so games begin at 5 or earlier and are sometimes called for darkness, like the 2023 contest I attended, which was a blowout in favor of the home team at the time.

The very small parking lot adjacent to the park fills up quickly. Fans are encouraged to park along an alley leading to town tennis courts a quarter-mile away.