It wasn’t supposed to work out this way for Dan Merklinger. After all, the 20-year-old left-handed pitcher was a late addition to the Harwich squad, more afterthought than budding star. But over the course of the eight-week 2006 Cape Cod Baseball League season, the New Jersey native and Seton Hall student turned into just that. In the waning days of his second, and final, summer on the Cape, Merklinger gave Cape Cod Life an inside look at his life.

8:15 a.m.: Most of his Harwich Mariner teammates are still hours away from hitting the snooze button, but Merklinger—a bit bleary-eyed from last night’s trip to Boston—greets his visitors at the front door of his host family’s dwelling. Merklinger had ventured to Fenway Park the night before, where he and the other All-Stars were honored on the field before Boston’s game against the Cleveland Indians. As he douses his cereal with milk, Merklinger talks about his whirlwind eight-month season. In his final appearance of the summer, two nights earlier, Merklinger experienced his worst outing yet when he walked five and allowed five runs—only two earned—in a 10-1 loss to Brewster. He doesn’t make excuses, but the slender six-foot one-inch southpaw has been sick all week and dropped 10 of his 195 pounds. On the day of his last start, Merklinger didn’t eat a thing. He feels better today and devours his cereal.

8:30 a.m.: Merklinger prepares for what should be an easy day. Today is the final day of the team-run baseball camp, for which players are paid $10 an hour and after which Merklinger plans to head to the gym for a quick workout, followed by lunch and then the Mariners’ game at Yarmouth-Dennis. Merklinger moves through his basement bedroom, which looks very much like any college kid’s dorm room, with baseball paraphernalia scattered around two unmade beds.

8:45 a.m.: Dan McDonald, Merklinger’s roommate for the summer, has already departed, leaving Dan without a car for the rest of the season. Fortunately, his host family, the Chipmans, have offered to pitch in by giving Dan unlimited access to the family’s Oldsmobile Cutlass. As we climb into the car (which, let’s just say, has seen better days), Merklinger swipes his hand across the passenger seat, clearing off the candy wrappers and knickknacks to make room for his companion.

9:00 a.m.: The tired-looking Harwich players trudge through the parking lot on their way to gather the necessary equipment for the day’s activities. After Dan leads the campers through several stretching exercises, he takes his place at one of the four assigned stations, where his job is to hit soft fly balls—using a racquetball racket and tennis ball—to groups of kids age 6 to 10. When Dan asks one group what each player should do first-thing when a ball is hit to him or her, one responds quickly, “Catch it.” Dan chuckles and continues with his mini-contests of fly balls, youngsters diving all over the outfield.

10:45 a.m.: The second session begins, with players 11 to 15 years old. Today’s session is a game, with far too many fielders on each side. Dan pitches for both teams, while most of his Harwich teammates perch themselves on buckets along the third-base line.

11:20 a.m.: It has been a beautiful summer, scorching hot over these past few days. In fact, the camp has yet to see a drop of rain . . . until today.

Merklinger works with young campers in the summer baseball program.

The thunder has been rolling in for the past 10 minutes, and now the rain starts, and then comes down in buckets. The kids scramble for the dugouts, and the Harwich players gather up the equipment and head for cover. Camp ends shortly after, a somewhat anticlimactic conclusion to the six-week campaign.

12:00 p.m.: This is the time slot for Dan’s workout, as scheduled through his Seton Hall training program. But the Harwich front-office staff has other ideas. The players are told to report to the team president’s house to sign cards for the campers. Dan begrudgingly jumps into the Cutlass, the seats soaked from his having left the windows open earlier that morning.

12:30 p.m.: The players kid about what to write on cards to particularly challenging campers. Two players spend several minutes jokingly debating whether to jot a personal note to one especially attractive mother. Dan, as per his M.O., goes about his business quietly, picking away at half of his sandwich while writing out his cards. He is the last to leave, and there is no time for even a quick workout.

	Left: Merklinger, right, and fellow Mariner Eric Fryer write thank-you cards to summer camp participants. Below: A pre-game warm-up

2:00 p.m.: Time to head back to the ballpark, where a school bus is scheduled to take the team down the road to Yarmouth-Dennis (Y-D). After five minutes, and with no bus in sight, players pile in their cars to drive themselves. But just as the line of cars pulls out of the parking lot, the bus finally arrives. The caravan of Mariners makes one huge U-turn and heads back into the lot to catch the bus. Dan pulls his beat-up Nike bag out of the backseat, jumps onboard, and heads to the rear of the bus.

2:35 p.m.: The team arrives at Y-D’s beautifully sculpted Red Wilson field behind a decaying parking lot in South Yarmouth. The setting is more suitable for high school kids than for players who may be signing multi-million dollar contracts next summer. Though the weather has cleared, the field isn’t ready for batting practice, which guarantees a good deal of downtime before the 4:30 p.m. start.

3:10 p.m.: Nursing a fatigued left arm and maintaining repeatedly that he therefore would not pick up a baseball before the end of the season, Dan eventually succumbs to the boredom and plays catch with a fellow pitcher after completing his brief running session. Once Dan is back sitting in the dugout, he is called to by a middle-aged woman whose son had framed a picture of Dan from the All-Star Game and has come to the field to present it to the pitcher. A tad embarrassed, Dan thanks the boy and is genuinely excited about his gift.

Merklinger demonstrates his power high-kick pitch.

4:30 p.m.: Amid clearing skies, the game finally gets underway. The Harwich club is loose and rather unfocused early on, with two base-running mistakes, costing the team a run in the first inning. Despite Merklinger’s terrific summer, the Mariners will not be going to the playoffs. Many of the players, who are in the final days of an eight-month season, are more focused on going home than on winning the contest, especially with most of the big league scouts having departed the Cape.

5:15 p.m.: This is not pro ball quite yet, and so Dan jumps out of the dugout between innings to greet his parents.

Merklinger hosted his parents for a few days.

He is hungry and recounts how, earlier in the summer, he and several of his fellow pitchers wolfed down a pizza they had delivered to the bullpen in Chatham. Merklinger won’t go hungry tonight. After a week of scarcely a single solid meal, he will dine with his parents back in Harwich after tonight’s game.

6:30 p.m.: Despite hanging in for seven innings against the division-leading hosts, Harwich eventually crumbles in the late innings and loses the contest, 2-1. Unlike Y-D, the Mariners are not going to the playoffs this summer, and many of the players’ thoughts are elsewhere during these final few days of summer.

7:00 p.m.: As Dan and his teammates move anxiously toward the bus, a prospective “advisor”—baseball lingo for an agent who aspires to represent a player in next June’s Major League Baseball player draft—approaches Dan. These meetings have intensified as Merklinger continued to dazzle over the summer. Eventually, he will end the summer with a 1.21 ERA (earned run average), fourth-best in the league, and with a strikeout record of 47 batters in 45 innings.

7:30 p.m.: The bus bumps out of the parking lot and onto Route 6 toward Harwich. Several players talk quietly, while others pull out music devices and cellphones. Dan slumps back in his seat, in no real mood to talk after a day spent doing just that. The team star, summer camp worker, and aspiring pro drifts off to sleep.

PLAY BALL! Download the 2007 Cape Cod Baseball League Schedule PDF

Josh Goldfine is a freelance writer based in Boston.