Baseball is back in Winter Park

Dust off your glove and get ready to change your diet over to hotdogs and beer: Starting this week, it’s baseball season in Winter Park.

The Florida Collegiate Summer League is back for its 12th season, with rosters of could-be MLB stars swinging wood bats for the fences. It’s prospect baseball in our own backyard, at Alfond Stadium along Orange Avenue in the city’s southern restaurant district.

It’s a league with some strong pedigree — one of less than a dozen in the country that’s sponsored by Major League Baseball — and for good reason: 289 Florida League players have been drafted by MLB clubs. Twenty-nine were drafted last year alone.

“This year we may have the best crop of players we’ve ever had,” FCSL president Rob Sitz said. A tough Sanford team returns star hitter Rock Rucker, who batted a Ted Williamsian .424 last season. Infusing some top-down talent, 10-year MLB veteran catcher Eddie Taubensee is signed up as manager of the Winter Garden Squeeze.

And if that’s not enough to get fans into the ballpark, the League has mixed an enticing blend of ticket, food and drink deals plus mid-inning entertainment to make for a family affair that they’re hoping fans will want to repeat. This season the league is offering $80 season tickets or $100 Disney-style “park hopper” passes to let fans go to any game in any FCSL stadium, all year, plus a single-game Family Fun Night deal for $25 for a family of four, including food and drinks. Thursday nights will feature dollar beers at all beer-selling stadiums.

That Winter Park baseball fans get one of the most competitive teams in the league as their home team doesn’t hurt the bargain. Last season the Winter Park Diamond Dawgs won the whole thing, topping the Sanford River Rats in the FCSL championship game at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. And in an “anything can happen” twist, the Dawgs, who didn’t have a single player in the top 15 batters in 2014, won a 6-4 slugfest for the championship.

The Sanford/Winter Park duo has the longest rivalry in the league by far, with many of the other teams in the league in constant flux of location and name. Bad news for College Park baseball fans this season: Their team is gone after two shaky years at the bottom of the league standings, playing out of Bishop Moore Catholic High School’s home stadium. The Altamonte Springs Boom is taking their place. The good news: the most successful team in FCSL history is right down the road in Winter Park.

They’re back for their 12th year — tied with Sanford for the longest tenure in the league — and ready for opening day at their home ballpark. It’s coming up quickly: though the FCSL’s grand opening day is Thursday, June 4, when the Dawgs play the River Rats in Sanford, the Diamond Dawgs will have to wait a day to take them on at home. That game starts at 7 p.m. Friday when the Rats come to town.

“It’s going to be a great season and a lot of fun for our players and our fans,” Sitz said. Visit Floridaleague.com for tickets and game schedules.