Cape League: Two-Time Champions, Pair Of Brothers, Home Run-Hitting Pitcher on 2026 League-Winning Harwich

August 19, 2026

by Erez Ben-Akiva

HARWICH – Emptying out the notebook on the Mariners’ second Cape League championship in three years…

Harwich went 6-1 through the postseason, but that record is a misdirect for how much of a tightrope walk their journey to the trophy was. In five of those six wins, the Mariners faced the tying or go-ahead/winning run on base or at the plate in the ninth inning. The only time they didn't find themselves in such a situation closing out a win was their first of the playoffs, a 4-0 shutout at Brewster in Game 1 of the East Division semifinals.

Harwich’s two recent titles (2024, 2026) have prevented a full-blown dynastic takeover of the Cape Cod Baseball League by the Bourne Braves, who won in 2022, 2023 and 2025. Still, the Braves have been the West Division’s representative in the championship for six consecutive seasons (Brewster also swept them for a league title in 2021). Time to rename the championship series the Bourne Invitational.

Right-handed pitcher Jason Finkelstein (Babson, a Division III school) surely had one of the more unique paths to Harwich’s championship win last week. Finkelstein, who was also on the Mariners in 2024, had a summer internship doing sales at Dell, but Harwich needed another arm early this year after a player became sick. Finkelstein arrived for the weekend to pitch, and Harwich manager Steve Englert said he’d give Finkelstein a call later on. Finkelstein went back to his internship and even pitched as a member of the scout team against Orleans during the Cape League’s Fenway Day in July. Then he got the call to rejoin the Mariners. Finkelstein started Game 1 of the championship, going four innings and striking out six on two unearned runs. “Came back down and pitched some meaningful innings, which was awesome,” he said. “I can't thank [Englert] enough for getting me down here and just getting another championship.”

Right-hander Rex Hauser (Maine) joined the Mariners in August and proceeded to pitch multiple high-leverage spots during the postseason. That all came only after Hauser completed a stint this summer with the Vermont Mountaineers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. There, Hauser pitched to a 2.39 ERA across 26 and a third innings. He also won that league’s home run derby less than a week before he arrived on Cape. Hauser swatted 23 total home runs to win the event.

As the Mariners mobbed each other by the pitcher’s mound after the final, championship-clinching out of Game 3 on Aug. 11, a group of fans ran onto the field with their shirts off — the Cape League’s embodiment of the “tarps off” craze that’s swept baseball this year. They were quickly shooed away.

Then, after a post-game ceremony, as the team took pictures with the trophy, a horde of fans waited by the fence at Harwich’s dugout. “Open the gate,” they chanted. Great sports as they are when it comes to autographs and pictures, the players did deserve some time for themselves to enjoy the win. Not much later, the floodgate opened and fans spilled onto and into Whitehouse Field.

One adolescent asked outfielder Colin Larson (Boston College) if he could sign his “notes app” — meaning, could Larson type his name on a page of the text document software on the kid’s phone. Larson laughed and obliged.

Like Finkelstein, infielder Cade Kurland (Florida/Louisiana State) also played for Harwich in 2024 when the Mariners defeated Bourne for the championship. Kurland missed most of the following collegiate season with a shoulder injury and couldn’t return to the Cape in 2025. He finally made it back in mid-June this year to play 37 games (regular season and playoffs) and win another title. “It's awesome,” Kurland said. “It's the best thing ever, right? I mean, to do this twice now with this team and this group of guys, unbelievable.”

Kurland said the 2026 postseason run was very similar to the 2024 one. In both cases, according to Kurland, the Mariners were written off at the start (In 2024, Harwich started the season 2-17, then turned it around enough to get into the playoffs as the third-seed in the East. The Mariners, at 21-19, were the third-seed this year, too.)

What was definitely different for Kurland this year was a teammate on the Mariners he didn’t have in 2024: his younger brother, left-handed pitcher Rivers Kurland (Florida/Rice). Cade and Rivers are no strangers to playing together, as they’ve previously also done for high school, at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa, and for college, at Florida. “But either way, it's like that doesn't happen, right?” Cade said. “And so to get that chance is awesome.”