HANNIBAL HOOTS BASEBALL
About
Founded in late 2017, the Hannibal Hoots Baseball Club is a summer-collegiate wood-bat team in Hannibal, Missouri. The Hoots' inaugural season will begin in late May 2018.
The Hoots are a proud member of the Prospect League's West Division, an elite college summer league made up of eleven teams spread across six Midwestern states (Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri). The Prospect League and its teams aim to 1) provide their communities with a quality baseball and family-friendly entertainment experience at an affordable price and 2) provide collegiate players with professional prospects a venue to get a taste of minor league style baseball with a high level of competition, night games at stadiums with large crowds, host families, bus travel, hotel stays and a professional style schedule of 60 games in fewer than 70 days. The league also allows professional scouts to see many players at once playing in comparable circumstances to what they might experience in the minor leagues.
Rosters are limited to 32 players who are signed on an invitation basis and must be enrolled in college and have eligibility remaining, with two exceptions: 1) each team may sign up to two players who graduated high school immediately preceding the season, as long as the player has signed to play college baseball the following Spring and 2) each team may sign up to four players that are college graduates and were on a collegiate baseball roster during the semester immediately preceding the season.
Players arrive from all over the country and stay with host families who "adopt" them during the season.
The Hoots make their home at Historic Clemens Field, a ballpark built in 1938 as a Works Project Administration (WPA) project to replace the original ballpark on the same location that burned down two years earlier. The ballpark is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1944, the ballpark was used as a German Prisoner of War camp. The 200 POW's lived in tents, were surrounded by barbed wire and sorted military shoes for repair and reuse. In 2008, Clemens Field received a major renovation that preserved the original grandstand and brick wall perimeter, added 2,500 seats and modern amenities.
Attending a Hannibal Hoots baseball game is for more than just die-hard baseball fans, it's an event to take in with friends, family, clients, and fellow community members.
