Fans should be proud of Catfish team in their inaugural season

Most of us figured the Cape Catfish would be bottom feeders, let's face it.

First-year teams and programs usually take some time to develop. We would have been happy with competitive.

But that's not what happened at all. The Cape Catfish turned out to be a really big fish in the Prospect League pond.

On Wednesday, their incredibly successful debut season ended in disappointment with a 5-2 loss to the Chillicothe Paints. One big swing, a grand slam, sealed the Catfish's fate. It came off the bat of a Sikeston native, Trey Smith.

The Catfish tied the Prospect League record for victories with 44.

The inaugural season of the Cape Catfish will go down as a smashing success, despite the final game.

Capaha Park's stadium has been improved with seating, and the team lived up to the venue, providing clean, good baseball all summer long. And those players developed relationships with each other and their host families along the way.

Congrats to the Catfish on a wonderful season, and a special tip of the cap to first-year manager Steve Larkin, and all the management, which includes Mark Hogan, Cindy Gannon, president Jim Limbaugh and owners Andy and Anissa Patel, who assembled such a winner the first year out.