Cubs Star Keith Moreland Hypes New Baseball Team's First Season

Cub legend Keith Moreland stopped by Shorewood Tuesday afternoon to help get the word out about the local entry in a new collegiate wooden bat league set to open its season Friday.

Moreland, who spent six of his dozen years in the big leagues with the Cubs, touched on his own college baseball career when he starred for the University of Texas in Austin.

Moreland, who also aspired to play in the NFL, recalled how there were no elite wooden bat leagues when he played college ball, because everybody played with a wooden bat.

That's not the case anymore, as college players use aluminum bats during the scholastic season. But come summer time, the better players get to show their stuff with the kind of bats the pros swing when they take the field for associations such as the Midwest Collegiate League, to which the CrackerJacks belong.

Manager Vern Hasty introduced most of his roster to a lunch-time gathering at  in Shorewood, and CrackerJacks President and General Manager Jamie Toole spoke of the big things to come in this debut season, which starts Friday at Joliet Junior College.