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