Editor’s Note: This is the third of a three-part series looking at the 2026 season:

Cam Cook had a forlorn look on his face for much of the final two home games for the Nashua Silver Knights last weekend at Historic Holman Stadium.

“This,” he told a group of season ticket holders at their annual appreciation pre-game dinner, “is supposed to be the most exciting time of the year.”

But it wasn’t. For the fourth straight season, a team that had set the bar in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League for years is seeing other teams — Norwich, really, with three straight titles – raising it. High above where Nashua was.

But here’s the thing. OK, past three seasons, the rosters the Silver Knights put together were fairly flawed.

This year? The team that GM Cook and now-former field manager Nick Guarino put together was playoff caliber and certainly could have given FCBL champion a run for its money.

But Cook and Guarino couldn’t keep the roster together. One pitcher gone. Another gone. Shut down by their schools, presumably.

“You’d call the coach and they’s say, ‘He wasn’t shut down, he did that on his own,'” said Guarino, who stepped down from the job last week after a two-year mark of 47-71.

Who knows. It’s become an epidemic in summer collegiate baseball. They take their bat and ball and go home – or to another team. Some players were grousing about the season being too many games. But you may have read the words of FCBL Commisioner Joe Paolucci who says the league’s mission is to provide the players with as much of a pro experience as possible, to prepare them for the next level. Hear the words of Guarino when he’s talking about a player who stayed: “He’s a baseball player. He loves playing baseball.”

“It’s a long summer, it’s a lot of baseball,” Nashua infielder Caleb Vacchiano said. “But at the end of the daywe’re committed to this. … At the end of the day I’d rather be here playing baseball than at home working.”

Four straight years.It gnaws at someone like Cook, who puts his heart and soul int this and has grown ohhhh so much from a championship player to a championship GM. Perhaps owner John Creedon, Jr.’s best move was installing him as the GM back in 2019.

Heck, Cook wasn’t put on the 2016 team originally. He had played out of the region, didn’t like it, and left that team before B.J. Neverett called him. He knows the deal.

The 15-year lease agreement with the city is a highlight. We say the All-Star Game that Nashua hosted and recovered from its rainout nicely was still somewhat of a distraction. It took up time, manpower, resources, and close to the game is when the second straight mass exodus took place. Lots of teams go through it, it’s how you deal with it that is huge.

Then, when Nashua blew a 6-1 lead on July 30 vs. Norwich at HHS and lost 7-6, a game that if won would have put the Knights within a half game, it was done. Similar to when Vermont snatched victory from the jaws of defeat back on July 16, 2025. Some games just leave a mark.

It’s a shame. The season ticket holders are mainly the ones who live and die with each win or loss. Others do, too, and we remember the great fan bus that brought the diehards up to Vermont in 2022 to see Nashua win its sixth FCBL crown. In no way, shape or form could we have thought it would be the last time we saw a Silver Knights pigpile on the mound. Or at least experience the thrill of a playoff game.

Ok, what are the Connecticut teams doing to retain a lot of their players? Simple. They’re in Connecticut.Where are their guys going to go? Most of them are from Connecticut, got to Connecticut colleges. So they stay. Norwich and New Britain last week played each other in the postseason for the third straight year. And maybe for the final time, for as an aside, the Sea Unicorns may be booted out of Dodd Stadium in favor of minor league pro soccer.

But here in Nashua, what happened on the field the last month was just a shame. There was a different feel to this Silver Knights team. They were all baseball players. The everyday lineup was clearly the club’s best in recent years. The starting pitching was super. Then, one by one, pitchers left and it all fell apart.

Again.

That’s why you can bet something will change between now and the likely opening date of May 26. In fact,with Guarino unfortunately moving on,it already has.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on X @Telegraph _TomK.