HOLYOKE – Tammy Campbell has three kids of her own, but this past Mother’s Day, she received about 10 “Happy Mother’s Day” texts.

Campbell and her family have hosted Valley Blue Sox players at their Greenfield home for four years now, and she said most of the dozen players they’ve hosted in that span messaged her on May 12.

The Blue Sox play in the New England College Baseball League, a summer league for college baseball players from across the country. Since players are only in town for two months, they stay with host families in the area, who open up their homes to players with dreams of reaching the major leagues.

Valley’s regular season ends on Tuesday, and Sunday’s 1:05 p.m. game against the Danbury Westerners will start and end with a celebration of this year’s host families.

“It’s really nice,” said Jax Traeger, a Spring, Texas native who plays at TCU and is staying with a host family in Easthampton. “The fact that families are able to open up their homes to us to live out this summer ball dream is pretty awesome.”

Each host family houses a few Blue Sox players, and this year there are 10 – made up of seven returning families and three new ones. There are three families in Greenfield, as well as outposts in Holyoke, Easthampton, Southampton, Ludlow, Chicopee, Westfield and even one in northern Connecticut. There are also five players staying at an Airbnb in Northampton. 

Before the season started, Campbell – the host family coordinator – set up a questionnaire for each family and each player to fill out so she could match them. Players said whether they were comfortable sharing a bedroom, how they felt about kids in the house and whether they had a car or were allergic to pets. They also wrote down their favorite foods, what they wanted to get out of the summer and what activities they wanted to do during their time in western Mass. 

Players are responsible for all of their own transportation – Traeger said he drives his roommate Conor Wolf around everywhere – and mostly eat out or eat after games at the stadium. At the beginning of the summer, host parent Stephanie Ward said she received a large bag of food to share with her host players over the course of the season.

Though players’ schedules are usually busy with five or six games a week and workouts, host families and their players eat together when they can. Campbell said on her players’ off-days, they occasionally help her cook family meals. Colleen Chesmore, who has hosted players for the past five years at her home in Holyoke, said she usually tries to get her family and her players together for Sunday night dinners of pasta, chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs.

Blue Sox outfielder and Madisonville, Kentucky native Jonathan Hogart said on his first night with his host family in Ludlow, he was treated to some steak.

“We’ll eat together as much as we can,” Hogart said. “So it’s been great.”

Ward said she likes watching movies with her players and Chesmore said she enjoys an occasional card or dice game after dinner with her players. Chesmore has also become friendly with many of the players’ families, who often make a trip or two out to western Mass. to see their sons play. When Traeger’s family flew out, they toured the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield – something that’s still on Hogart’s summer list. The Blue Sox also organized a Red Sox game at Fenway Park for the whole roster of players and host families.

Ward played sports throughout her childhood and still plays softball next door to MacKenzie Stadium at John Young Field. She and her husband decided to host Blue Sox players last year at their home in Chicopee as a way to give back now that her own athletic career has mostly wound down. She liked giving players a feeling of home and enjoyed having their energy in her house, so she signed up again this summer.

Chesmore also wanted to provide a place for players to live out their “summer ball dreams” and said she enjoys meeting the players and learning about their hometowns.

“It’s nice meeting kids from other places,” Chesmore said. “It’s just nice learning about different colleges and different parts of the country and just helping out.”

Campbell said her family fell in love with going to the games and she wanted to provide memories for her kids.

“This summer, one of our players got dropped off and within 10 minutes he was in the backyard playing catch with our youngest, he was in the pool having fun,” Campbell said. “The connection, I think, is the biggest thing – the memories that my kids make from these guys.”

Her sons go to every Blue Sox game they can, and the feeling is mutual – when one of her sons played in a youth baseball state championship game in mid-July, one of her players was in the stands cheering him on.

Ward, who lives with her husband, three cats and two dogs, said it didn’t take long for her pets to become familiar with their new housemates.

“They didn’t meet him until he had already slept at the house, didn’t bark, they love him,” Ward said. “They go in his room every night and they’re so excited to see him.”

Chesmore and her family always arrange to have their players sign a ball and give them a shirt from their college. After last summer’s season finished, they still hadn’t gotten a shirt from Thomas Ballard, a pitcher at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Then, one day, they received a giant box on their doorstep, full of UAB merch and snacks local to Alabama.

“You just meet these great people,” Chesmore said. “And they’re always like ‘if you’re ever in Alabama, if you’re ever in Chicago, if you’re ever in Nashville, stop in.’ So I feel like we’ve got places all over now that if we’re ever going through, we have a friend and a family to visit.”

The NECBL playoffs start on Aug. 1, and players will report back to their colleges later that month. The host families’ time with their players is nearing its end, and not everyone – Ward’s dog included – is ready for it to be over.

“I know she’s going to literally watch in the window when they leave and don’t come back,” Ward said. “She did that last year.”

Families interested in hosting can email Tammy Campbell at tammyc@valleybluesox.com