Winston-Salem Dash, Truist Field

On Sunday, August 14, the Winston-Salem Dash fell to the Bowling Green Hot Rods by a 4-2 score at their home grounds, Truist Stadium. Angela and I were in attendance along with my cousin Caskie, who made the trip down from her home in Danville, VA. We bumped into some other friends at the ballpark as well, and it was a beautiful day for watching a game, despite the disappointing result.

Ange and I spent Saturday night in a downtown hotel and got to do a decent amount of walking around the city. We went to dinner in the Arts District, which is a lively area with a lot of eating and drinking spots, in the vicinity of the old R.J. Reynolds headquarters. We walked through Old Salem and the big Moravian Cemetery. 

We found a historic marker on the line between the two formerly separate towns, Winston and Salem. I vaguely knew that there had been a merger, but hadn't considered the details. Salem was settled first: the Christian pietist community. Winston came later, the industrial boomtown. The official incorporation happened in 1913, but the contiguous towns had been referred to jointly for a generation prior. 

Winston-Salem has been in the minor leagues almost every year since 1908. Until World War II the team was nicknamed the Twins, in recognition of the city's dualistic background. Winston-Salem was in the Carolina League continuously from 1945 to 2019. The club was a Boston Red Sox farm team for over 20 years. Their best-known alumnus is probably Wade Boggs. They've been a Chicago White Sox affiliate since 1997, which might not be a coincidence (Winston-Salem / White Sox?) In the recent minor league reorganization, Winston-Salem was shifted the South Atlantic League. 

The team was known as the Warthogs for a time, in the cutesy era of the 1990s and 2000s. They became the Dash in 2008. Apparently it is a reference to the punctuation mark between Winston and Salem.

Opened in 2010, Truist Stadium is an attractive park, located downtown which is a plus with me. Truist, incidentally, is a bank which has undergone a merger and rebranding, hence their putting their new name on everything possible. Winston-Salem has a Truist Stadium as well as a Truist Field, where Wake Forest University plays. 

Ballpark foods enjoyed were a burger and a hot dog, to which my companions gave less than rave reviews, so I got a bratwurst, which was decent. Beers enjoyed: a Foothills Brewery Session IPA, out of Winston-Salem, and a Wicked Weed Pernicious IPA, an Asheville product.

The Piedmont Triad, I really believe, is an area more fertile than average as a baseball seedbed. Why? The mill league culture plays a part, I think. Area schools, notably Guilford College and Oak Ridge Academy, had good baseball programs in the early 20th century. 

• Ernie Shore (1891-1980) attended Guilford College. He became one of the pitching mainstays, along with Babe Ruth, on the Boston Red Sox teams that won the World Series in 1915 and 1916. After retiring from baseball, he served as sheriff of Forsyth County (which includes Winston-Salem) for 34 years. For over five decades Ernie Shore Field was the home of the Winston-Salem entry in the Carolina League.
• Sam Gibson (1899-1983), hailing from the town of King, won 32 games in the majors, but over 300 in the minors. He won 200 games just for the San Francisco Seals, where he played with two DiMaggio brothers. 
• Alvin Crowder (1899-1972), nicknamed General, went 167-115 as a big-league pitcher, which is especially impressive since he was 27 years old when he made his debut. He pitched in three World Series and got a complete game victory in Game 4 of the 1935 WS, for the eventual champion Detroit Tigers. Later he was an owner, manager, and executive of the Winston-Salem Twins.
• Kernersville native Kemp Wicker (1906-1973) won 202 games in pro ball, 10 of them in the major leagues. He had a lot of good seasons in the high minors, and had, well, more than one cup of coffee in the majors. He made a relief appearance with the Yankees in the 1937 World Series. He was a minor-league manager, then returned home to N.C. late in life to raise tobacco and cattle.
• Laymon Yokely (1906-1975) was a Black player in the Jim Crow era, and a fine pitcher at his peak. He was the staff ace of the Baltimore Black Sox club who won the American Negro League pennant in 1929. The information I found on his life was a bit thin; he is buried in Winston-Salem.
• Johnny Temple (1927-1994), raised in Reeds Crossroads, was a second baseman and a terrific leadoff hitter for the Cincinnati Reds in the 1950s. Temple had his demons, which plagued him in his baseball career and afterwards, and which Bob Trostler and Bill James have written about. But he was a wonderful small-ball player. A six-time All-Star.
• Don Cardwell (1935-2008) pitched 14 seasons and over 2100 innings in the National League. He contributed as a spot starter on the Amazin' Mets of 1969. Tom Seaver credited him as being a good veteran mentor. After retiring as a player, Cardwell returned to Winston-Salem and worked in sales for the Ford Motor Company.

Photo Byronemerson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Down East Wood Ducks, Grainger Stadium, Kinston

On Saturday, August 6, on our way back to Raleigh after a family vacation at the beach, Angela and I visited Kinston to take in a game at Grainger Stadium. We watched as the home team, the Down East Wood Ducks, fell by a 3-0 score to the Fredericksburg Nationals. We seem to be a bad luck charm for the Wood Ducks; we also watched them lose at Kannapolis and at the Mudcats.

I noticed in our program that Fredericksburg's starting pitcher, Jackson Rutledge, is a former first-round pick. He looked like one that night. Angela remarked that she found this game dull. Whereas the game I found hardest to watch was the 12-10 slopfest in Burlington. I appreciated this one: a well-pitched game by both teams, the FredNats scratching out their runs one at a time. 

Kinston is a somewhat sleepy place. It was a busy tobacco market town at its peak in the 1980s. Since 1990 the overall population of the town has waned; the African-American majority has grown to 68%. As a baseball town, Kinston punches above its weight; I believe it is one of the smallest towns in the country to have a minor league team, and its minor-league history is much more extensive than more populous N.C. towns like Rocky Mount and Goldsboro. The team was called the Kinston Eagles for many years. "Wood Ducks" is a more distinctive nickname, and hey, it's a handsome species of duck and a real conservation success story.

Kinston was the home of a semi-pro Black team called the Greys, beginning in 1939. Two black players from Kinston, Donald Jarmon and Fred Hobgood, pitched in the Negro National League. I'd like to learn more about Black baseball in North Carolina in the Jim Crow era. Certainly Eastern N.C. is a rich source of Black athletic talent. In recent years Kinston has become renowned for producing a bumper crop of Black basketball players, most notably Cedric Maxwell, Jerry Stackhouse, Reggie Bullock, and Brandon Ingram. 

Somewhere I'd seen Grainger Stadium described as a gem of a minor-league ballpark. I wasn't disappointed. Dating from 1949, set in a residential area not too far from the center of town, Grainger is the second-oldest park in the Carolina League. It has ambience and compactness that reminded me of my one long-ago visit to Fenway Park. 

When in Kinston, one has to sample the wares of Kings BBQ and of Mother Earth Brewing. Both are available at the ballpark. Beers enjoyed were two Mother Earth brews: a Weeping Willow Wit, then later a Long Weekend IPA.

Here are a few baseball men who hail from east of Interstate 95:

• Lifelong Kinston resident George Suggs (1882-1949) had an eight-season major league pitching career, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds and the Baltimore Terrapins. This article gives the lowdown on George's romantic peccadillos; he was kind of the Bo Belinsky of the dead ball era.
• Despite not turning pro until he was 25, Buck Leonard (1907-1997) rang up a Hall of Fame career (Cooperstown Class of 1972) as a slugging first baseman. He and Josh Gibson were the biggest stars on the Homestead Grays, who won nine straight Negro National League pennants,1937-1945. Leonard returned to his hometown, Rocky Mount, after his playing career ended at age 48.
• Clyde King (1924-2010) was a pitcher, mostly in the Brooklyn Dodgers system, mostly a starter in the minors, a reliever in the majors. A native of Goldsboro, Clyde won 14 games and saved 6 for the star-crossed 1951 Dodgers. He stayed in baseball virtually his whole life as a player, coach, manager, and executive. He may deserve sainthood for his long and constructive relationship with George Steinbrenner, 
• George Altman (b. 1933), also from Goldsboro, had a nine-year National League career, mostly with the Chicago Cubs, and was named an All-Star in 1961 and '62. An outfielder with power and speed, Altman became one of the first American players to have success in the Japanese Leagues.
• Jim Ray Hart (1941-2016), was a good-hit, no-field third baseman for the San Francisco Giants. He hit 139 home runs for the Giants from 1964 to '68. He finished his career with three partial seasons in the Mexican League. Hart grew up in Hookerton, in Greene County. 
• Jerry Narron (b. 1956) is part of a distinguished Eastern North Carolina baseball family. Jerry was a journeyman catcher in the majors and minors. He then had a long career as a big-league coach, with stints as manager of the Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds. Narron is a Christian Zionist, and was the coach of Israel's national baseball team for a time.  

Photos by JBJ

Burlington Sock Puppets, Burlington Athletic Stadium

Friday, July 29 saw the Burlington Sock Puppets prevail over the Bluefield Ridge Runners, 12-10. The game was marked by errors and passed balls and hit batsmen. It did seem like the guys remembered how to hit along about the 5th inning, so there were a few homers and even a couple of defensive gems, but they were outnumbered by sloppy plays. This was the longest game we've seen this season, over 3 1/2 hours, and we were pretty ready for it to be over. (Burlington is only a hour from our house, so we commuted to the game and got home before midnight.) 

The home team pulled it out, though. (They have the best record in the Appalachian League. Go Sock Puppets!) We felt lucky that the thunderstorms passed us by with only a few drizzles. The evening sky was lovely, streaked with clouds and rich colors.

The effort in recent years by organized baseball to restructure the minor leagues (i.e., shrink them for economic reasons) was one of those news stories that depressed me enough that I didn't follow it closely or understand the resolution. Part of the upshot is, the Appalachian League today is no longer a low-level pro league, a "rookie" league, but a developmental league whose players will return to their college teams next year. The players are mostly 18 and 19 years old, and all U.S. players, none from Latin American countries that I could tell. It's a short season, June 1 thru August 10, roughly. Kind of like summer camp? Are these the "best" college prospects in the country or are they self-selected in some way? Was I correct to categorize the Appy League as part of the minor league system? These are my questions.

Burlington Athletic Stadium stands out as the oldest ballpark we have visited, and the most unpretentious: metal and concrete like one of your better high-school football stadia. It originally stood in Danville, Virginia. The structure was bought by the town of Burlington, disassembled, brought in, and reassembled in time for the 1960 season. Its hard aluminum bleacher benches are a little problematic for a middle-aged person after a few hours. The park seats 3,500. Well-tended grass field. 330' down each line, 400' to center.

Photo by JBJ

Burlington has held a place in the Appalachian League since 1986. Prior to that, they had an entry in the Carolina League for about 25 years, from the mid-40s to early 70s. The ballpark is within sight of the Pioneer Plant of Burlington Mills, later Burlington Industries, which came to specialize in hosiery. So the name Sock Puppets, dating only from 2021, reflects that history. Earlier team nicknames merely mimicked the big-league affiliate at the time: the Indians, Pirates. Royals, etc. 

This area of the state was settled pretty early, pre-Revolutionary War, with some religious dissenters and Regulators in the mix. Yet there was never much of a town here until the rise of the railroads in the 1850s and the need for a repair site. The town was known as Company Shops for over 20 years. "Burlington" was chosen as the new town name on 1887, nominated by a resident who saw it on a passing train. 

Burlington went quickly from being dominated by the railroads to being dominated by the textile barons. Yet I liked the spirit in the crowd in Burlington, as downwardly mobile and unpretentious as its ballpark. We saw families, young couples on dates, teenagers screwing around behind the bleachers. 

Ballpark foods consumed: a pulled-pork barbecue sandwich and an order of barbecue nachos, which were fine. (I will say, next time in Burlington I want to visit Hursey's Barbecue, which I expect will be better than fine.) Local beer enjoyed: a Sock Puppet Pilsner by Tobacco Wood Brewing of Oxford, NC. 

Each of the following baseball gentlemen was born in the Burlington area, and three of them died there as well:

• Left-handed pitcher Tom Zachary (1896-1969) never spent a day in the minor leagues, but appeared in 533 big-league games over 19 seasons. If you know only one fact about Zachary, it's probably that he gave up Home Run # 60 to Babe Ruth in 1927. My favorite fact, however: He was from a family of Quakers, and served with a Red Cross unit in Europe as an alternative to WW1 military service. Zachary pitched in three World Series (1924-25 with Washington, 1928 with the Yankees) and won each of his three WS starts. 
• Garland Braxton (1900-1966), from the community of Snow Camp, was a journeyman lefty pitcher. He won 50 games in the majors, plus 193 in the minors, including some big seasons in the high minors. Started out at age 20 with Greensboro in the Piedmont League. At age 39 he returned to his home region, playing for Winston-Salem, again in the Piedmont League. Within that league, Braxton later shifted to the Norfolk (Va.) Tars, and apparently settled in Norfolk after pitching his last game at age 49. He died in Norfolk.
• Mebane native Lew Riggs (1910-1975) was a left-handed hitting third baseman. He came up through the Cardinals system, became a regular for the Cincinnati Reds for a few years, then was brought to Brooklyn by Leo Durocher to be a pinch-hitting specialist for the Dodgers. Riggs appeared in the World Series in 1940 with the Reds and in 1941 with the Dodgers. As a youngster he came up in the minors with Dizzy Dean. As a veteran he was a member of the 1946 Montreal Royals, Jackie Robinson's first "white" professional team.  
• Jim Holt (1944-2019) is a player I remember from my bubblegum card collecting childhood. An outfielder/first baseman, a semi-regular for the Minnesota Twins, then later a useful sub on the World Champion 1974 Oakland A's.