Hickory Crawdads, L.P. Frans Stadium, Hickory

May 28: The hometown Hickory Crawdads subdued the Winston-Salem Dash, 7-3, and we were there at L.P. Frans Stadium to bear witness.

The standouts of the game, for bad reasons, were the Winston-Salem pitchers who walked in three runs. (Three different pitchers, two different innings.) Once as a kid I was in the stands in Philadelphia for a game when Pete Rose drew a bases-loaded walk to win it in the 9th inning for the Phillies, versus his old team, the Reds. That was gripping drama. This was closer to amateur farce. On the positive side, one of the heroes of the night was Crawdad shortstop Luisangel Acuna, who homered and stole a base. He is the younger brother of Ronald Acuna Jr., of Atlanta Braves fame, and is worth keeping an eye on.

Clearly a feature, not a bug, of this ballparks quest is that it’s an excuse to take some car trips along the back roads of our state and take in some local color and hospitality along the way. On this drive we hit towns such as Siler City, Asheboro, Lexington, Cleveland, Statesville, Newton. We stopped in Lexington for a barbecue lunch at the historic and renowned Barbecue Center. In Newton later in the afternoon I wanted to watch the Champions League soccer final, and a very nice woman steered me to a suitable bar, B-52's on College Avenue. While I watched soccer, Angela visited an antique store and added to our collection of yard art. 

Later we made our way to L.P. Frans, where a second very nice woman gave us two tickets that her group couldn’t use as we approached the gate.

The ballpark boasts 4000 fixed seats, with a max capacity of 5000 or so. Outfield dimensions: 330 down each line, 400 to center. We sat along the right field line, and the setting sun was blinding for the first 30 or 40 minutes as we tried to look toward home plate. Would you call this a design flaw? The park sits at the bottom of a hill, with a terraced parking lot looking down on it. So maybe the contours of the land dictated the orientation. 

Food consumed: chicken tenders and fries. Also a couple of B&G Handmade Fruit Pies that we smuggled into the park.

The park was perfectly OK, though I’d rate Five County Stadium slightly above it. The weather was perfect, though.

I try to Drink Locally at these Tar Heel ballparks; the teams are cooperating so far. At L.P. Frans I enjoyed a Knotty Gurl Blonde Ale from Granite Falls Brewing Company in the town of Granite Falls, NC. At B-52’s I savored more than one glass of the 73 & Hazy IPA from Royal Bliss Brewing Company, Denver, NC. I rate the beer on our Hickory trip higher than on the Zebulon trip.

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From early in the 20th century, there was a pretty good brand of baseball being played in the mill towns of the Southern Piedmont, sometimes semi-pro, and with varying degrees of organization. Hickory first appears in the Baseball Reference tables in 1936, as an entrant in the Carolina League, then classified as Independent. From 1939 to 1960, and not all of those years, the Hickory Rebels were a Class D club in different leagues. Then pro baseball was absent from Hickory for over 30 years.

The Hickory Crawdads date from 1993 (as does L.P. Frans Stadium). A group bought the Gastonia franchise in the Class-A South Atlantic League and moved it. I started to say "local group" but apparently the same folks owned the Crawdads and the Charlotte Knights for a time, so I'm not sure where they were based. Their major-league affiliate was first the White Sox, then the Pirates, then the Rangers, who are the parent team now. The Crawdads have won three SAL titles (2002, 2004, 2015). A handful of Crawdad players went on to have meaningful big-league careers, maybe most notably Magglio Ordonez with the White Sox.

The new Hickory owners took suggestions from fans for the team's nickname, which is partly how they became the Crawdads. I feel there was a minor-league revival in the early 1990s, partly thanks to Bull Durham, partly thanks to the ballpark renaissance that started with Camden Yards in Baltimore. That period also ushered in cutesy, cartoonish team names like Crawdads. (Sorry, I would prefer Furnituremakers or something old-school like that.)

Incidentally, the concourse at the Hickory ballpark has a big sign listing the members of the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame, which includes illustrious names such as Hank Aaron and Ty Cobb! It speaks to the long, rich history of what is familiarly known as the Sally League.

This area of North Carolina, the Western Piedmont or foothills, has spawned a number of notable baseball figures. To mention just a few:

• Smoky Burgess was from Caroleen, in Rutherford County. "Putsy fat... like the mailman or your Uncle Dwight." But he was a certified professional big-league hitter, a passable catcher for many years, and an important member of the Pirates team that won the 1960 World Series over the mighty Yankees.
• Madison Bumgarner is still active, though he's been hampered by injuries the past few years. But if his career ends tomorrow, he should be remembered as one of the greatest clutch pitchers of his time. Three World Series rings, and MVP of the 2014 WS. Born in Hickory, raised nearby in Hudson.
• Eddie Yount, from Newton, had two cups of coffee in the majors, but a long minor-league career from the '30s to the '50s, interrupted by WW2 service. Eddie started out as an outfielder, but at age 26 converted to catcher. He wound up as the catcher-manager of the Newton-Conover Twins for several years, and won at least three Western Carolina League pennants there. Eddie Yount was an unsung baseball genius, I would conjecture.
• Jim Poole was from Alexander County and attended Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory. He was a power-hitting first baseman who had a monumental minor-league career extending to age 51. He joined the Philadelphia A's as a 30-year-old rookie and lasted three seasons, during one of the down periods of the Connie Mack era in Philadelphia.

Carolina Mudcats, Five County Stadium, Zebulon

On May 21 my wife Angela and I were on hand to see the Carolina Mudcats defeat the visiting Down East Wood Ducks, 2-1, in a Carolina League contest. There were two rain delays but they got the full 8.5 innings in.

In 1990 Steve Bryant announced his wish to relocate his Southern League franchise from Columbus, Georgia to Raleigh. We learned, however, that organized baseball has a territorial rights rule, so that an existing franchise is protected against another one moving to within 35 miles of its home park. Some clubs waive their territorial rights, sometimes for a financial consideration. But Miles Wolff, owner of the Durham Bulls, insisted on his 35 miles of elbow room. That’s how the Carolina Mudcats came to make their home in the much-smaller town of Zebulon rather than Raleigh.

I won't write the history of baseball in the Triangle right now, but the early '90s was a pivotal time. Raleigh didn't get its team restored in 1990, the one it had lost in 1967. Who knows how that might have played out if Miles Wolff had decided differently. The Durham Bulls, meanwhile, benefited from the reflected glow of the popular Kevin Costner movie released in '88, as well as population growth in Durham, and flourished. They built a new stadium and in 1998 moved up from A to AAA status, to membership in the International League. Although they won a couple of Southern League pennants along the way, the Mudcats made the opposite move in 2011: they shortened their horizons. Ownership complained that travel costs were killing them, so they dropped from AA to A, to a smaller league (the Carolina League) that meant lower costs but a lower caliber of play. 

I'm a tiny bit embarrassed to admit it, but living in Raleigh all this time, I'd never been to a Mudcats game until the other day, whereas I've been to numerous Bulls games. But if I regard it as an either-or choice, it's not hard to explain. There is more to see and do in Durham than in Zebulon, and AAA baseball is better than A baseball.

Zebulon is considered part of the Triangle media market, but it feels rural. Zebulon is an early signpost on the road past the minor-league ghost towns of Wilson and Rocky Mount, toward the great northeastern N.C. coastal plain, the home territory of the Perry brothers and Jim Hunter.

Five County Stadium seats 6,500. The park was built for the Mudcats’ arrival in 1991. It is surrounded by open land, so there were no constraints on the outfield dimensions, but they made it asymmetrical: 330’ down the left field line with a high wall, 15 feet or so, but a more enticing 305’ to right, with a wall of maybe eight feet. This is the only minor quirk of the place; it is clean and simple and fan-friendly.

Our food selections consisted of popcorn, hot dogs, and a funnel cake, all of which hit the spot. Beers consumed were the Deep River Mango Tango Foxtrot IPA and the Red Oak Bavarian Amber Lager. Despite the spotty weather, the atmosphere among the crowd was fun and positive. We noticed one mean-spirited heckler, but a lot of families, a lot of civic groups and whatnot. The grounds crew hustled while getting soaked, rolling the infield tarp out and then back as the rains came and went. I got the feeling that any teenager in Zebulon has a job at the ballpark if they want one. 

The Zebulon area has produced a handful of baseball notables:

• Jim Pearce grew up, grew old, died and is buried within a few miles of Five County Stadium. As a young man Pearce had a brief career in the majors, 30 games over five seasons with Washington and Cincinnati, but quite a long minor league career. He played in the 1940s and 50s. 
• Jakie May grew up in Wendell, the next town over from Zebulon. May bounced around the National League for 14 seasons as a pitcher, culminating at age 36, with the 1932 Chicago Cubs, when he had the privilege of getting rocked by the New York Yankees in the World Series in two relief appearances, taking one loss.
• A pitcher from my childhood, Jim Bibby, recorded 111 big league wins over 12 seasons. He had one of his best years with the 1979 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates. Bibby was from Franklinton. 

Ange and I are on a quest to visit every North Carolina minor league park this season. This is number 1. I have a notion to do one of these rambling reviews for every park we visit. I'm sure they will evolve.