page_title: Cotuit Kettleers
section_title: The 1960s and Hubbard's "four-peat"
hierarchical_section_title: Cotuit Kettleers / History / Modern era (1963–present) / The 1960s and Hubbard's "four-peat"
caption_attribution_description: Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico and former Secretary of Energy of the United States.
context_page_description: The Cotuit Kettleers are a collegiate summer baseball team based in the village of Cotuit, Massachusetts, which is in the southwest corner of the town of Barnstable. The team is a member of the Cape Cod Baseball League and plays in the league's West Division. The Kettleers play their home games at Lowell Park in Cotuit. The team has been owned and operated by the non-profit Cotuit Athletic Association since 1947.
  The Kettleers most recently won the CCBL championship in 2019 when they defeated the Harwich Mariners two games to none to win the best of three championship series. The title was the team's seventeenth overall, including two separate strings of four consecutive titles. Cotuit's record of fifteen titles in the modern era and seventeen overall is unmatched among CCBL franchises. The team has been led since 2004 by field manager Mike Roberts.
context_section_description: In 1963, the Kettleers continued to ride their success into the newly-reorganized league, returning many of the same faces, including McCarthy, Kilroy, Mayo, Helzel, Sikorsky, and Butkus, who was the league's Outstanding Pitcher with a minuscule 1.04 ERA. All-American basketballer Cotton Nash of Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Wildcats joined the Kettleers as a pitcher/outfielder. Cotuit finished the regular season with a 28–4 record and first-place finish in the Upper Cape Division, and earned a bye in the first round of playoffs. The Kettleers met Wareham in the Upper Cape finals, but dropped Game 1, 1–0, for the hard-luck loser Butkus, who had tossed a two-hitter. Cotuit bounced back to take Game 2 by a 3–1 tally, and Butkus got his revenge in Game 3 as he pitched the Kets to a 5–2 series-clinching win. Game 1 of the Cape League championship series against Orleans was the Bernie Kilroy show. The all-star did the moundwork and also drove in three runs on three hits to help his own cause in Cotuit's 5–4 win at Lowell Park. Game 2 at Eldredge Park saw the Kettleers bang out a 7–1 victory on five hits and 14 walks to give Hubbard's crew their third consecutive Cape League crown.
  Hubbard's 1964 squad returned McCarthy, Butkus and Kilroy, who was the league's Outstanding Pitcher with a 1.44 ERA and 72 strikeouts with only 16 walks in 62.1 innings. To this championship core, the Kettleers added outfielder/pitcher and league MVP Ken Huebner, as well as 1964 All-American hurler Keith Weber, who would pitch later that summer for the United States at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. The Kettleers finished the regular season with an astonishing 31–3 record, and faced the Lower Cape Division champion Chatham in the CCBL title series. Cotuit sent Weber to the mound at home for Game 1, and came away with a 4–0 shutout. Weber allowed only three hits in the win, and the Kettleers got a pair of RBI's each from McCarthy and Huebner. In Game 2 at Veterans Field, Kilroy took the hill and Butkus came on in relief in a 6–3 Kettleers' win that gave Cotuit an unprecedented fourth consecutive league championship.
  After the '64 title, Hubbard would continue to skipper the Kettleers throughout the 1960s, but the team finished no better than second place, and did not return again to the championship series in the decade. The trio of Butkus, Kilroy and McCarthy was together for one last season in 1965, and Kilroy continued to twirl for Cotuit through 1967. CCBL Hall of Famer Bob Hansen starred for the Kettleers from 1966 to 1968, an all-star first baseman/outfielder, he was voted to the CCBL's 1960's all-decade team, and went on to play in parts of two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers. The 1967 Kettleers pitching staff included Jim Courier and Doug Smith, both of whom tossed no-hitters for Cotuit, as well as Bill Richardson, who would go on to become the Governor of New Mexico and the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
caption: Ambassador Bill Richardson pitched for the Kettleers in 1967.
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