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Kettleers Celebrate 4th with Parade, Water Fight and Win

07/14/2008 10:49 AM

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14 July 2008

Kettleers Celebrate Fourth with Parade,
Water Fight and 3-1 Win over Falmouth

COTUIT, Mass. -- The Fourth of July was a wet one for the Cotuit Kettleers, who took part in the village’s Fourth of July parade and celebrated America’s birthday with a community-shared tradition: an all-out water fight with the crowds lining the streets. 

    The team has been a part of Cotuit’s Fourth of July parade for more than 20 years and each year the parade -- and the water fights -- gets bigger.

    “It’s fun,” said Cotuit General Manager Bruce Murphy. “The village looks forward to the whole parade and the Kettleers being a part of it. The parade’s just grown and grown. It’s a family event. There are lots of little kids in the parade, riding on bikes, people that live on the side along the parade route.”

    And they all join in the water fight. 


It was a soggy Fourth of July for Cotuit's beleaguered Kettleers, who were targets of fans' water guns along the route of the annual holiday parade. Later, the players got dried off and beat the visiting Falmouth Commodores at Lowell Park.
Photo courtesy of Ashley Crosby

    Cotuit’s catcher, Robert Stock (Southern California), was a part of it last year and this year, and had said at the beginning of the season that the water fight was what he looked forward to most this summer. He wasn’t disappointed. “We showed up in the morning with trash cans filled with water for our water guns,” he said, before delving into the chaos that ensued. 

    “That was the greatest fourth of July I’ve ever had,” said Kettleers’ star left-hander Nick Hernandez (Tennessee). “I’ve never been part of anything like that where the whole town’s involved.” 

    Hernandez’s host family made sure he remembered the day, too. His host father followed the float and “wore me out” along the route. “I got him back at the field though. I dumped a bucket of water on him.”

    Ball boy Pete Theoharidis, Hernandez’s host little brother, tried to help Hernandez out as much as possible; both Theoharidis and Hernandez stole as many water balloons from the crowd as they could find. The two laughed about the water fight and argued over the finer points of water balloon fights (“You can’t use real balloons!” said Hernandez). And of course, Theoharidis couldn’t help but throw one or two balloons filled with water at the pitcher. 

    “This year was better than all of them,” said ball boy Cody Pasic, who has taken part in the parades as a Kettleer for three years. 

    The celebration continued at the park where an adult hitting contest was held, with Manager Mike Roberts throwing batting practice for the contestants. There was food at the school at the end of the route and a 3-1 win over the Falmouth Commodores. 

    “It was a great crowd that night,” Murphy said.

    And a great win for the Kettleers, who are in a three-way battle with Hyannis and Bourne for the West Division pennant.
 

Ashley Crosby, CCBL Intern ([email protected])
 

John Garner, Jr.
Director of Public Relations & Broadcasting
(508) 790-0394
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Joe Sherman
Web Editor
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Interns: Chris Blake, James Chandley, Ashley Crosby, Phil Garceau, Stefanie Marini, Laura Rasmussen