Fayetteville Woodpeckers, Segra Stadium

The Fayetteville Woodpeckers downed the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers, 4-3, on Father's Day (Sunday, June 19) in Fayetteville. In contrast with Durham's rapid shuffling of pitchers the other night, Fayetteville's starting pitcher, Edinson Batista, threw six shutout innings.

There were a couple of moments that told me we were watching a Class A game, not AAA. One was when a Kannapolis outfielder caught a long fly ball and started to jog toward the dugout before teammates yelled at him to make a throw. He must have forgotten how many outs there were. Not one but two runners tagged up to score. Given the closeness of the game, that was a big goof. 

Another was Fayetteville's second pitcher, a young man named Schroeder, who was simply the wildest pitcher I can ever remember seeing. He made it through one inning and was charged with three wild pitches, but two or three more went to the backstop, and in the scariest moment, he hit a batter on the helmet, right above his ear. The batter was okay, thankfully. Somehow only one run scored.

Angela lamented the fact that we were watching the Ballers versus the Peckers. But like the Cannon Ballers, there's some background to Fayetteville's team name too. It is tied to the red-cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species whose cause is well-known around these parts.

Segra Stadium, opened in 2019 and located on Hay Street in downtown Fayetteville, is new and nice. I liked the "see-through" fence in left field with the bullpens behind it, and I loved seeing and hearing the freight train rumbling past beyond left field. The outfield dimensions marked on the fences are 340' to left, 400' to center, 325' to right. The park holds 4,786 spectators. 

Ballpark foods sampled: a cheeseburger and fries, and a pulled-pork sandwich and hush puppies.  My ballpark beer was the Namaste Lavender Ale from Fayetteville's Gaston Brewing Company. 

Fayetteville sits in the Sandhills, a geological zone on the upper edge of the coastal plain, extending into South Carolina. Fayetteville has fielded a professional team off and on in various leagues since 1909. For several years the team was called the Highlanders or Scotties, referring to the Highland Scot migration to this part of the state in the 1700s. Later it used the name Generals, related to Fayetteville being the home of Fort Bragg and the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne.

• Rube Benton (1890-1937), from Clinton, was a rounder. Someone should write a song about him. He won 150 games as a National League pitcher and 172 more in the minors. He was the losing pitcher in a famous game in the 1917 World Series. Witnesses connected Rube to game fixing during the Black Sox era, though he was never banned from organized baseball. Died in a car crash a long way from home.
• The real Moonlight Graham (1877-1965) was born in Fayetteville. So was the real Austin Warren (b. 1996), currently building his Baseball Encyclopedia entry as a relief pitcher with the Los Angeles Angels.
• Taffy Wright (1911-1981) grew up in Lumberton, in Robeson County. A professional hitter for 9 seasons in the majors and 12 more in the minors, with 3 years of WW2 military service in the middle. Is sometimes credited as the 1938 American League batting champion, with a ridiculously low number of plate appearances (281).
• In 1914 Babe Ruth hit his first home run in a professional uniform, that of the Baltimore Orioles, during an exhibition game in Fayetteville.

Durham Bulls

After a thunderstorm passed through, delaying the first pitch for about an hour, the Durham Bulls trounced the Louisville Bats, 5-0, at Durham Bulls Athletic Park on Friday evening, June 17. My wife and I were joined by two of my daughters, one daughter's domestic partner, and my dad, in an early Father's Day celebration.  The game was followed by a pretty great fireworks show. 

I never thought I'd see the winning team in a shutout game use six pitchers, but the Bulls did, by design I'm sure. There were no mid-inning changes to slow the game down. Catcher Joe Hudson was the player of the game, for his opposite-field two-run homer and for handling all those hurlers. 

The Durham Bulls have operated in organized baseball most seasons since 1900, in various leagues. They have paused only for major national emergencies: World War I, the Great Depression, the COVID pandemic, and the disco era. 

Durham was an important manufacturing center in postbellum North Carolina. Textiles and, especially, cigarettes. In the late 80s, especially on summer mornings, the city smelled like an unlit cigarette. Bull Durham was a popular brand of tobacco dating from 1874. It gave the local team its name, and it's among the best team names in American sports: pithy, distinctive, tied to its hometown. Also, bulls are majestic and fearsome, unlike Senators or Twins or Banana Slugs or a lot of mascots I could rattle off. 

The 1988 baseball movie directed by Ron Shelton, starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon, could have been set in a number of minor-league towns. It came to life as Bull Durham, the charming and perennially popular rom-com set in Durham and the Carolina League. It showed Durham in a good light, not to mention minor-league baseball. It gives the Bulls name recognition and a marketing hook no other minor league team can match. 

In the wake of Crash Davis, Nuke LaLoosh, and Annie Savoy, the ballclub's profile rose. As results of that, the Bulls got a new stadium in 1995 and a promotion to the Class AAA International League in 1998. In another lucky break, since rising to AAA, the Bulls have been a Tampa Bay Rays affiliate. Tampa Bay has its problems, but it's really good at drafting and coaching up young prospects, and in those 20+ years, only 4 years have seen the Bulls finish under .500. 

The DBAP was tied in to the American Tobacco Campus urban rehab project and an overall period of growth and renewed vibrancy for downtown Durham. The stadium was designed by the same architects responsible for Baltimore's Camden Yards, the catalyst for a wave of neo-traditional downtown baseball parks in many MLB and MiLB cities. All of which is to say, the DBAP is pretty great, and within walking distance of lots of fine eating and drinking places. The Camden wave of parks were quirky and asymmetrical. In the left field corner the DBAP has a short 303' fence, but a 32' tall "Blue Monster" to compensate, topped by the famous Bull sign. Center field is 395', and it's 329' down the right field line. The DBAP seats 10,000 fans. Friday night post-game fireworks have become a regular feature.

Ballpark foods consumed by me: a hot dog with chili and slaw, and most of an order of BBQ nachos - messy, unhealthy, but good. Others in my party consumed pizza slices from Pie Pushers. Ballpark beers enjoyed: the Red Oak Hummin'bird Helles Munich Golden Lager. But there are a lot of beers and ciders to choose from.

Durham is the northernmost point of the Research Triangle. My idiosyncratic definition of the "Durham region" is a broad sweep of the Piedmont north of the city to the Virginia line, including all those towns along I-85 North. This part of the state has spawned its share of notable baseball figures, particularly around the turn of the 20th century.

• George "Possum" Whitted (1890-1962) spent 11 years in the National League as an outfielder and utilityman. He was a key player on the 1914 "Miracle" Boston Braves. Born in Durham. After leaving the majors, Whitted did a spell as player-manager of the Durham Bulls.
• Jack Scott (1892-1959) grew in Ridgeway, in Warren County, and had a 12-year National League career. He had some bad seasons with bad clubs, as well as good seasons with good clubs. His finest hour was throwing a shutout for the New York Giants over the crosstown Yankees in the 1922 World Series. He spent some time with the Bulls in 1913-14.
• Born and raised in Oxford, in Granville County, Lee Meadows (1894-1963) won 188 games as a National League pitcher. He had the honor as a Pittsburgh Pirate of getting roughed up and losing a start to the Yankees in the 1927 World Series. A sometime teammate of Possum Whitted's, Meadows started and ended his pro career with the Durham Bulls.
• Enos Slaughter (1916-2002) was a native of Roxboro in Person County. He got his start in baseball with a textile mill team in Durham, where he caught the attention of the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He went on to play in five World Series, winning four of them, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985. Later in life he coached the Duke University baseball team. I met him once, at a Duke basketball game.
• Durham native Roger Craig (b. 1930) had a career much like Jack Scott's for the Brooklyn and L.A. Dodgers, the original Amazin' Mets, and the Cardinals. Not a star, just a pretty darn good pitcher. Craig won two games and lost two in the four World Series he pitched in, collecting three rings. As an MLB pitching coach he had a major impact in the 1980s as a teacher and proponent of the split-finger fastball. He also managed in the big leagues for 10 years.

Kannapolis Cannon Ballers, Atrium Health Ballpark

The Kannapolis Cannon Ballers held on to beat the Down East Wood Ducks, 2-1, in a Carolina League contest last Saturday night (June 11) with Angela and me in attendance. The home teams are now 3 and 0 in the games we have seen this season. The Ballers made it interesting as their 9th-inning reliever issued walks to the first two Woodies hitters, but stranded them to record the save. It wasn't pretty, but it counts the same. Player of the game was catcher Victor Torres, who threw out a would-be base stealer and launched a solo home run to left for Kannapolis's first run.

We were piddling around the house Saturday morning, neither of us in any apparent hurry, and I asked, "Are we gonna do this Kannapolis thing?" Mostly what I knew about Kannapolis is that it was at one time the Towel Capital of the World, built by (and named for) the Cannon Mills Corporation, which went the way of the rest of the N.C. textile industry in the 80s and 90s. I'd driven past Kannapolis on I-85 many times without ever stopping; I guess I figured I would find a dilapidated mill village, the ultimate company town whose company fled and left a crumbling wreck behind. 

We did do the Kannapolis thing (these ball games are not gonna attend themselves), and I'm glad. Kannapolis turns out to be an attractive town, with a busy central district that includes the ballpark. Angela and I were both struck by the Cannon Baller brand and logo. It pays tribute to the Cannon name as well as to Kannapolis native and NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt. (The picture above is of a statue of Dale, located downtown near the Kannapolis Amtrak station.) 

If you can stand to read news from the world of sports marketing, I found this article to be illuminating, both about the minor-league baseball biz and about Kannapolis's pursuit of a vision for itself that acknowledges the past but isn't burdened by it. 

Atrium Health Ballpark opened in 2020, part of the larger plan of downtown development; it is new and clean and fan-friendly. Being in a walkable neighborhood is a big plus in my book. 325' to left field, 315' to right.

Ballpark foods consumed were an Italian sausage and chicken sausage sandwich (tasty though we felt they were a little small given the price), and two cups of soft serve ice cream. Ballpark beers enjoyed: two by the Cabarrus Brewing Company of Concord, the Cabarrus Cotton Blonde Ale and the Concord Amber Lager. 

Shout-out to Sweet Meadow Cafe in downtown Salisbury, NC, who serve an excellent Sunday brunch in a cool, quirky atmosphere.

In searching for Central North Carolina Piedmont natives in the annals of baseball history, I almost overlooked two prominent contemporary players:

• Kyle Seager, Seattle Mariners third baseman from 2011 to 2021, now retired, and Corey Seager, Texas Rangers shortstop, 2020 World Series MVP as a member of the L.A. Dodgers. The Seagers were raised right in Kannapolis and both are All-Star caliber players.
• Billy Goodman was born and raised in the neighboring town of Concord. A long-time teammate of Ted Williams on the Red Sox, Goodman appeared in two All-Star Games and is credited as the AL batting champion for 1950, all while rarely holding down a regular spot in the defensive lineup. He could play almost anywhere in the field and had a knack for getting on base, which is a good recipe for a 16-year big league career. Goodman appeared in the 1959 World Series with the White Sox.
• The preceding guys were from Cabarrus County, but the neighboring county of Rowan produced notable major leaguers Vern Benson, Bill Baker, Clyde Kluttz, and Jay Ritchie. Benson and Kluttz each had long post-playing careers as coaches and scouts.