Home field advantage: How host families are helping the Squeeze win

The Winter Garden Squeeze finished the 2024 Florida Collegiate Summer League season with a 21-12 record — good enough to earn the West Orange baseball team the No. 2 seed for the playoffs. 

To explain the Squeeze’s successful 2024 season, one could simply look at the stats.

The numbers that jumps out immediately reflect the Squeeze’s potent offense. Winter Garden leads the Florida League, as a team, in total runs scored, walks, total bases, extra-base hits, runs batted in and on-base percentage. 

One also could look at the pitching. The Squeeze pitchers struck out more batters than any other group in the Florida League; they gave up the second-fewest earned runs, total runs and hits; and they had the second-lowest opponent batting average this season.

There are plenty of people whose efforts explain why the Winter Garden Squeeze have been so good this season, but if you ask the team’s general manager, Adam Bates, he will point to one specific group of folks that sit above the rest: The seven families who have opened their homes and hearts to host 10 Squeeze players for the summer as part of the league’s host family program. 

“We are not as good as we are right now without our host families,” Bates said. “We’re not sitting in first, or second place. We’re not fighting for the top spot in the league or a Florida League Championship, without our host families. ... Our host families … are the absolute glue of this team.” 

“The host family program is a program to provide housing for our college athletes,” Florida League President Stefano Foggi said. “Many of our players come from out of the area. These are kids who are playing college ball around the country, and they decide to come play in the Florida League for the summer, but obviously, they don’t have housing. So, what we do is we reach out to families in the community and ask them if they’re willing to host a baseball player or two for the summer. It’s a great program for families that love baseball; it’s great for families that want to support their local team and the community. A lot of families that participate have young kids that play baseball, or did play, and have an interest in the game. And now they instantly have a role model in the house.”

“It’s been awesome, honestly,” Squeeze player Ben Maskin said about his experience staying with Kevin and Stacey Burger. “It’s my first time staying with a host family, and I was a little skeptical at first, but I feel like I’m part of the family now. It’s weird to think back and realize that I’ve only been here for two months. I’m just really glad that this all worked out the way it did.”

The Burger family has been hosting both Maskin and Squeeze outfielder Garrett Byrd this season. One of the ways the Burgers have gone above and beyond to help make the two feel at home is by including them in their family activities. 

“One of the best parts of staying with the Burgers is definitely the family nights,” Maskin said. “Maybe once or twice a week, we would have family game night. Kevin, my host dad, took us on a fishing trip with Josh, our host brother. They just really took us in and made us feel at home.”

For Byrd, the hospitality the whole Burger family has shown him since he arrived has meant the world to him.

“To open up their home and just give us their hospitality is amazing,” Byrd said. “ They are literally having their daughter sleeping with them in their room, so I can have a room to stay in. Since I got here, that really stuck out to me, because I would have slept on the couch. But for them to open up their home and give up their kid’s room for me, it just means a lot and shows how great they are.”

What about the families hosting these players? What is in it for them?

“For some of the families, being closer to the team they follow and having kind of that inside scoop or inside relationship with the team through a player is a big reason they love the program,” Foggi said. “For others, it’s their kids; seeing their kids come to the ballpark and interact with those players and watch them on the field perform and then come home at night is the reason they love doing this.”

For Shannon Till, a first-time host mom, the idea of giving back to a local organization and these athletes pursuing their dreams is an honor.

“I love helping these young kids. … I grew up playing sports myself, so I know how much they are putting into this,” Till said. “It’s been an amazing experience for me to give back to a local organization like the Squeeze. I love showing Drew (Cashin), who is from Enterprise, Alabama, around Winter Garden.”

For the Myhres, also a first-time host family, joining the program was less about what they are getting out of it and more about simply being stewards of their community. 

“It’s been a very good experience,” Curt Myhre said. “The kids are very respectful and polite, and they’re very respectful of us and our home.”