Lynda Linnell gazed across the diamond, singing along softly to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch. She didn’t bother to glance down at her lap, where her fingertips worked with precision, spinning teal and white yarn into a cardigan sweater.

She didn’t need to look. Linnell knits by feel, which means she can stitch while occupied with something else, like watching a baseball game. And that’s what she did at nearly every Whitecaps game this season, sitting in her lawn chair just to the left of the press box at Stony Brook Field.

“I like to think of knitting as a lifestyle, not a hobby, because I do it every single day,” Linnell said. “It’s just my nature.”

If knitting is Linnell’s lifestyle, baseball is her hobby. A Brewster native, she grew up going to Orleans Firebirds games at Eldredge Park with her family in the 1960s, long before the Whitecaps existed. She fell in love with the game, watching future stars like Carlton Fisk up close.

Once the Whitecaps joined the Cape Cod Baseball League, Linnell switched loyalties to her hometown team, first attending games at Cape Cod Regional Technical High in Harwich before the team moved to Stony Brook Field in 2006.

Eventually, she began the tradition of knitting a large project throughout the baseball season. Two years ago, she made various pairs of socks; last season, she twirled two shawls. This year’s undertaking was the cardigan, featuring Whitecaps colors and a sprinkle of lavender.

Linnell started the sweater during Brewster’s season-opener at Yarmouth-Dennis and continued it throughout the year — working on it at almost every Whitecaps game, home and away, and at her nephew’s youth baseball games.

Knitting has become an increasingly popular activity at baseball games, considering the sport’s slow pace of play. The Seattle Mariners, for instance, host an annual Stitch N’ Pitch game to draw knitting enthusiasts, and several other MLB and MiLB teams have launched similar initiatives.

Linnell attended her first Red Sox game at Fenway Park last summer, knitting from her seat down the third base line. But she said she prefers the environment at games on the Cape, where space is plentiful and the atmosphere is more relaxed.

“I’d much rather be sitting out here,” she said before a Whitecaps game in late July, wearing a green baseball cap with a ball of yarn on it.

She would lay claim to her spot behind the plate long before each game began, starting her work on the cardigan as early as batting practice. Linnell positioned a rolling cooler bag in front of her chair, and propped a magnet board atop the cooler’s long handle. Pinned onto the board was a pattern sheet, a printed piece of paper with directions for the intricate pattern of her cardigan.

Linnell has made thousands of pieces over the years, from Christmas gifts for family to donations for various causes. She also participates in weekly knitting classes at the Brewster Council on Aging, where she has built a community with a small group of local women. One of them, Joan Cassidy, hosted third baseman Daniel Cuvet and pitcher Jake Clemente this summer.

“She’s phenomenal,” Cassidy said of Linnell. “She does beautiful work, she does very creative patterns, she can help anybody out.”

When Cassidy gets stuck on a stitch or needs a new pattern, she often turns to Linnell for help. Cassidy described her as “caring,” an attribute she developed through her job as a neonatal intensive care nurse, tending to sick or premature babies. In that role, working at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she’d knit little blankets and other items for her patients.

Linnell moved back to Brewster from North Carolina a few years ago and now works with a local nursing agency to help medically fragile young children who are in the next stage after neonatal care. She still donates pieces often, like the crocheted dogs and teddy bears she’s recently given to foster children through the Cape Cod Foster Closet in Orleans.

“She’s always making all these things for other people, for other organizations and donating them,” said Linnell’s sister, Sharon Kautz. “That’s an important part of why she does it.”

Of course, the knitting process is no chore for Linnell. Over the years, she’s gotten good enough to read while knitting, and Kautz even remembers her walking through a mall near Chapel Hill and knitting simultaneously.

But for Linnell, the ideal knitting conditions almost always involve baseball, whether a Whitecaps game, a Red Sox game on the TV or something else.

“We sort of grew up in that atmosphere, watching baseball,” Kautz said. “And so it was always a part of our childhood.”

Linnell was about halfway through her Whitecaps-themed cardigan when the team’s season ended on Aug. 4. She’ll keep it for herself when she’s done — teal and white are her favorite colors — but that time has not come yet. For now, she’s still working away at the pattern — stitch by stitch.

“Just like life,” she said. “You take one row at a time. One inning at a time.”

Title photo credit: Julianne Shivers.