From Dartmouth To Japan, Firebirds Flock To Cape

ORLEANS – It’s about a 70-mile drive to get to Eldredge Park, the home of the Firebirds, from Javar Williams’ hometown of Dartmouth, Mass. The distance is roughly the same between the field and Taunton, where Dawson Bryce is from.

Itsuki Takemoto’s birthplace of Osaka, Japan, is nearly 7,000 miles from Orleans. For Elijah Ickes, from Honolulu, it took a 10-hour flight to get to Boston.

In a league that features some of the best college players in the game today, perhaps no team better represents how those players come from all over the country and the world to Cape Cod — for the opportunity to play 40 games of baseball — than the Orleans Firebirds, a team that in 2025 includes players as local as Williams and Bryce and as faraway as Takemoto and Ickes.

Talent — and character — has brought the players, whether from Japan, Massachusetts or elsewhere, to manager Kelly Nicholson’s Firebirds at Eldredge Park. Baseball is baseball for them, wherever they are, said Ickes, a shortstop from the University of Hawaii.

“You’re just playing the game you love,” he said. “It’s pretty awesome.”

Born in Honolulu, Ickes is one of three University of Hawaii players — along with Takemoto and Sebastian Gonzalez, who’s from California — on the Firebirds. The West Coast and beyond is well represented on the team helmed by Nicholson, also from California.

“Just familiar faces,” Ickes said. “Makes it a lot more comfortable. You can just have some conversations here and there and even meeting new people from halfway across the country or the other side of the country, just creating new relationships, it’s pretty awesome.”

It’s the second summer in Orleans for Takemoto, a right-handed pitcher for the Firebirds who both pitches and hits at Hawaii. He came back because he likes the coaches, the players, the kids — everything. But there’s really one primary factor for why he takes the mound 5,000 miles from his school and close to 7,000 from Osaka.

“I love baseball,” he said. “That’s the main reason, so I just keep playing. That’s it.”

Nicholson doesn’t roster any players because of where they’re from. Any leans towards a specific area are unintentional as he tries to field the best players. Takemoto is a really good player who happens to be from Japan. The head coach at Wake Forest told Nicholson a year ago about outfielder Williams — a Tabor Academy alum from Dartmouth — who was a tremendous athlete but an even better human being, exactly what Nicholson was looking for.

“They’re worlds apart, right? But great kids,” Nicholson said.

Williams said it had been a while since he’d been home. It had always been a goal of his to play in the nearby Cape League.

“That’s been nice to be able to be near home and near the family and friends that are able to come see me play,” he said.

Bryce, a Taunton native and infielder at Charlotte, came to Cape games as a kid, he said. He and Williams, as locals, are part of the minority of players from Massachusetts or even New England in the Cape Cod-based summer league. 

And taking the same diamond as Ickes and Takemoto, they stretch the Firebirds’ geographic reach from the Cape and South Coast of the Bay State across the lower 48 to the coast of the island of Oahu and to the Kansai region of Japan.

“It’s pretty cool because you get to know how everybody else thinks about baseball and stuff, and you learn a lot of new things too,” Bryce said.

Said Williams: “It’s super cool. I’ve only played with mostly East Coast kids throughout my baseball career, and now being able to expand that, it’s been super cool, and learning different cultures and whatnot, so I’m looking forward to keep doing that.”

For Nicholson, the Firebirds could all happen to be from the West Coast, East Coast, Southeast or elsewhere and that would be OK. It’s about the player and the person.

“We’re just trying to get the not only really good players but the right guys, and I love our team,” he said. “I love our team.”