WHOI Softball League
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution WHOI Softball League has finished the 2025 season. It was an absolutely epic year. The USGS team had three employees of D-2 Inc. this season. We are friend with players in the league outside of this softball league. Some of us play down in Woods Hole on Sundays outside of the league for some additional softball fun. This was the second year on the USGS team and I think it made for a very fun season. Jake Soares, James Gracie, and myself (Dean Fougere) played on the USGS most weeks. We tried to contribute to the best of our abilities.
The WHOI softball league is not competitive it is just fun. Every team is required to be coed or they forfeit and play the game just for fun. There is no sliding, there is no striking out, there is no walking to base. This makes the games more relaxed and less likely to cause injury. Every year there is a bunch of players from overseas that have never played baseball before. So it’s a great league even for beginners to learn.
USGS 2025 Season Recap
There were many close games this season for our team USGS. We even came very very close to beating the Fisheries team this year, which has not been done in possibly forever by USGS. The POFACS team was the other loss we took this season. We had one forfeit to begin the season due to not having enough players as well. We were up by one against fisheries entering the last inning, and they dropped a 10 run inning on us. However there is always next season. This year we did pull off under dog wins against the United States Post Office team and the Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering team. We managed to pull together a 8-3 season.
2025 Individual Performances
Coach Jin-Si was a great coach and pitcher for our team all season, often providing solid singles right through gaps in the infield at the plate. Liam from USGS had a great season playing reliable defense at multiple positions, knocking in many timely hits and sporting the best mustache in the league all season. Matt Liles resembled Nomar Garciaparra making countless plays at shortstop all season long while also being a threat at the plate every at bat. As for our D2 team Jake lead the way with multiple homeruns and playing solid first base all season. James typically played left field snagging anything within range and providing a lot of big hits and a home run or two.
I personally was akin to Lou Gehrig in his prime, batting nearly .600 on the season with countless RBI’s and a grand slam. My first ever homerun in any form of baseball was a grand slam at age 39, took long enough. Really great season and will be hard to have more fun than we did.
I did not post an article about last year’s 2024 USGS team. However below is a photo from our first game ever on the USGS team at the beginning of the 2024 season.
Thanks to WHOI Softball League
Thanks to the WHOI Softball league for allowing us to participate. It is truly just a fun time for everyone involved and we enjoy getting a chance to play on the extremely well maintained WHOI softball field. Thanks for reading and make sure to bookmark D-2 News for all your D2 news updates!