Charlotte Knights, Truist Stadium

Our 2022 baseball quest has reached its end. The Nashville Sounds cruised to an easy 9-1 win over the Charlotte Knights, Friday, September 9. I guess a quest is not supposed to end with the Knights losing, but I am celebrating nonetheless. Whew! 

If it isn't obvious, Angela and I chose which games to attend based on scheduling needs, not baseball criteria. The outcome of this game might have been expected, considering Nashville is in first place in their division of the International League, and Charlotte is in last place in its division. 

This year's Knights team is Class AAA's Island of Misfit Toys. Their best player is a 30-year-old, short, stocky guy churning around center field. Their right fielder looks like Adonis but strikes out too much and doesn't hustle. Their corpulent first baseman is a failed catcher. The best athletes are not good enough players, and vice versa. Maybe the White Sox will deal them a better hand next season.

What can I say about the city of Charlotte that it hasn't already said about itself? It is North Carolina's largest city, and it has the traffic and the steel-and-glass towers to go with that status. The place has grown and changed determinedly in my lifetime. In the 1980s and 90s, Charlotte elbowed its way from being a regional banking center to a national one. In the same time frame, it became a major league pro sports city, landing teams in the NBA and NFL. (Raleigh acquired an NHL hockey team, but it's a consolation prize.)

The rest of the state has a complex about Charlotte: the eldest, most successful sibling that the others have tepidly loyal but slightly resentful feelings toward. A series of politicians has thought that being mayor of Charlotte would be a springboard to higher political office, like Governor or Senator. Most of them have been disappointed. Rural voters don't like city pols in general, and voters in the other North Carolina cities just don't especially like Charlotte.

Despite its strong minor league history, North Carolina has never had an MLB team. It took some doing just to get Charlotte elevated to Class AAA status in 1993. But Charlotte has had a minor-league team almost continuously since 1901. 

The team was called the Hornets for many years. There is a disputed story about a 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Whatever the authenticity of this document, it is true that a British official referred to Mecklenburg County as a "hornet's nest" of rebellious sentiment. Some Charlotte people take a lot of pride in this history, and adopted the Hornets nickname for their ball team. Of course, the Charlotte NBA franchise has now claimed that nickname. 

My circa-1985 memory is that Charlotte's ballpark was tired and shabby. Truist Stadium, opened in 2014, is pristine; Angela considers it the nicest ballpark we've visited, hands-down.  As McCormick Field is surrounded by trees, Truist is surrounded by skyscrapers. It's a nice view from inside. 

Photo by JBJ

This was a special night at the ballpark for the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. A nun threw out the first pitch; a chorus of seminarians sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game;" the bishop said a few words via the JumboTron. All unexpected, but nice. Ballpark foods consumed: Philly cheese steak (I had it in sandwich form, Angela in nachos form) that was sinfully good. Beer enjoyed: a Hop Drop 'N Roll IPA from NoDa Brewing Company in Charlotte.

Charlotte grew up with the Southern textile manufacturing industry after the Civil War. As a banking and railroad hub, it was first among equals relative to Gastonia, Concord, Albemarle, and others. At heart, though, in its earnest boosterism, Charlotte is a big small town, the biggest mill town of them all. 

• Huntersville native Hoyt Wilhelm (1922-2002) broke into pro ball in 1942 with the Mooresville Moors, just a few miles from home. Class D ball, unaffiliated, the lowest rung of the ladder. He entered WW2 military service for three years, then spent two more seasons in Mooresville. Big-league teams consistently doubted him: he was a knuckleball pitcher, which was unfashionable, and he got a late start due to the war. Wilhelm was a surprise success as a 29-year-old rookie reliever with the New York Giants. He bounced from team to team. But he lasted until age 49 and was an All-Star as late as age 47. He set an MLB record by pitching in 1,070 games. Wilhelm entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985, capping a remarkable, sprawling career.
• Sonny Dixon (1924-2011) has a lot in common with Hoyt Wilhelm: He broke in with his hometown team, the Charlotte Hornets, and he was slow to fledge and leave the nest. He was a right-handed pitcher, a rubber-armed innings eater.  Like Wilhelm, he spent the years 1943-45 fighting WW2. He rose through the minors slowly. Unlike Wilhelm, he had the bad luck to wind up with weak parent organizations; he broke into the bigs with the Senators and then pitched for the Athletics (Philly and KC). His final MLB stint, three appearances, was with the 1956 Yankees. Dixon pitched for the Hornets again at ages 34-35 before hanging them up. He lived most of his life in the Steele Creek community near Charlotte, and is buried there. 
• Minnie Mendoza (b. 1933 or 1934) was born and raised in Cuba, but is an honorary Charlottean thanks to spending 10 seasons with the Charlotte Hornets when they were a Senators/Twins farm team. He was sort of a full-time utility infielder, a Billy Goodman or Tony Taylor type, about the same quality. Why he spent so long at Class AA Charlotte, I don't know--possibly for his coach/mentor qualities. He finally got his cup of coffee in the Show with Minnesota in 1970, when he was 35 (maybe 36) years old.
• Raised in the world of mill-town baseball, Tommy Helms (b. 1941) went on to be the regular second baseman on the 1970 Cincinnati Reds, who won the NL pennant. He was a 9-year MLB regular with the Reds then the Astros. A good glove man, he enabled Pete Rose to switch from 2B to right field. Tommy's nephew Wes Helms is an ex-major league player and formerly managed the Charlotte Knights.
• Dickie Noles (b. 1956) was a journeyman pitcher, a reliever and spot starter. He spent 16 seasons in the pros, pretty evenly divided between the minors and the majors, mostly with the Phillies and Cubs systems. He earned a World Series ring with the 1980 Phillies. Noles and Ray Durham are both alums of Harding High School in Charlotte.
• Ray Durham (b. 1971) came up with the Chicago White Sox and later played with the A's. Giants, and Brewers. He was damn good; I had him on fantasy teams a couple of years. He had some power, stole some bases, and drew walks. He was a plus fielder at second base, at least in his younger years. Durham was named an All-Star twice (1998 and 2000), had six years of over 100 runs scored, and had a long MLB career: 1975 games, 2054 hits.
• Alex Wood (b. 1991) is a lefty power pitcher, currently with the San Francisco Giants. He pitched in three World Series with the Dodgers, winning a ring in 2020. He was an NL All-Star in 2017, amassing a 16-3 won-loss record. He has dealt with injuries off and on since high school, but he is mighty good when healthy.

Asheville Tourists, McCormick Field

In their final home game of 2022, the Asheville Tourists trounced the Bowling Green Hot Rods by a 16-6 score on Sunday evening, September 4. Gray skies and intermittent drizzles were not going to stop the game nor the postgame fireworks show. Angela and I were there along with our daughters Lily and Molly.

Our love affair with Asheville and its environs continues. I grow fonder of this city every time I visit, and I have my kids to thank. Two of them matriculated at UNC-Asheville and each then stuck around for a year or more after graduation. Hannah has since moved away, but Lily is still an AVL resident. This being Labor Day weekend, we made a nice 2 1/2 day visit of it. We selected a hotel in the Biltmore Village area, which I was unfamiliar with, and spent Saturday afternoon shopping and wandering that area. Saturday dinner was at Nine Mile on Montford Avenue. Sunday afternoon we took an excursion to Cherokee and the museum there, about an hour's drive west of Asheville. Then Sunday evening we went to the ballpark. 

McCormick Field was first built in 1924. It is tucked into a hillside in a neighborhood a mile south of downtown, near Mission Hospital. This is one of my favorites among the ballparks we've visited. The park was renovated in 1991-2, replacing wooden grandstands with brick and concrete. So McCormick combines character with modern comfort. The rows of seats rise at a steep angle, and there is plenty of leg room, which was my only mild criticism of Grainger Stadium in Kinston. It was a nearly full house, incidentally, full of high spirits, with a lot of families, some gray heads and many children and youth. 

Behind the outfield fence is a ring of trees. You can see the corner of a football field looking over from a plateau beyond left-center. The distance down the right-field line is only 297', partly mitigated by the 36-foot-high fence there. But center field is only 370' and right-center 320'. It sure seems like a great place to hit. 

McCormick had a wide selection of foods for sale (though execution varied somewhat) and a deep lineup of beers on tap. Ballpark beers enjoyed were both from Asheville: the French Broad River Kolsch, and the Hi-Wire Bed of Nails brown ale

Minor league baseball first emerged in Asheville around the turn of the 20th century. For a few years the team was nicknamed the Moonshiners, then the Mountaineers. In 1915, sportswriters began to refer to the team as the Tourists. This article claims that the nickname was simply due to most of the players being from somewhere other than Asheville. Anyway, the name has stuck; in spite of a couple of efforts to rename the team, it has always reverted to being the Tourists. It's one of the most enduring brands in the sport. 

I like Tourists; it fits. It may not inspire fear or awe; it may be pedestrian like Tars or Tobs or Furnituremakers. But Asheville is about people coming and going, exploring, exchanging, perhaps daydreaming a bit. Wikipedia says that the Cherokee used it as a meeting ground. Hernando de Soto noted the presence of a settlement here. People are attracted here by the natural beauty and outdoor recreation. Two rivers have their confluence in Asheville. It became a regional railroad hub. A scion of the Vanderbilts visited Asheville, was enchanted by it, built a big home here, and transformed the city and the region. There was manufacturing here, but it has also been a center of visual arts, architecture, and music. 

Asheville was home to a Black team (i.e. part of the Negro Leagues) for a couple of years in the 1940s, although I don't have much information on them. 

Asheville has been a fixture in the South Atlantic League since 1980. The movie Bull Durham wrote the Asheville Tourists into Crash Davis's story, and used McCormick Field as a shooting location. The area produced top players a century ago, and produces its share of top players today. 

• Ham Hyatt (1884-1963) grew up in Candler and was recruited by his uncle to enter pro ball. He was an outfielder, and is identified by baseball historian Steve Treder as the first pinch-hitting specialist in the majors. This was with the 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates, who stormed to the National League pennant. Hyatt was summoned off the bench in the first inning of Game 7 of the World Series to replace an injured regular, and played well as the Pirates clinched the world title. Although mostly a reserve in the majors, he was a star in an 11-season minor league career.
• Cliff Melton (1912-1986) broke into pro ball with the Asheville Tourists in 1931. He made a big splash in his major league debut season, 1937, winning 20 games and helping the New York Giants win the NL pennant. He battled arm trouble in later years, and wound up winning 86 games in the majors and 136 more in the minors. 
• Ken Holcombe (1918-2010) grew up around Asheville. His father was a furniture and cabinet maker. Right after high school Holcombe pitched for a year in the King Cotton Textile League, for the Greenville, SC club. He played 17 years as a pro, had some good years in the high minors, and pitched 99 games in the majors, scattered over six seasons. When his playing days were over, he settled in Swannanoa, raised his family, and worked as a supervisor for Beacon Manufacturing, a textile firm specializing in blankets.
• Sammy Stewart (1954-2018), from Swannanoa, was a colorful and effective utility pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles in the late 70s and early 80s. He allowed 0 earned runs in 12 postseason innings as an Oriole. 
• Greg Holland (b. 1985) was active with the Texas Rangers until earlier this season. A pitcher, a right-handed closer, a three-time All-Star. Holland grew up in Marion, in McDowell County, and starred at Western Carolina University. He appeared in the 2014 World Series for the Kansas City Royals, who fell in seven games to Madison Bumgarner and the Giants.
• Cameron Maybin (b. 1987): Born and raised in Asheville, Maybin was still an active player in 2021. A fast, rangy center fielder, he was a big-league regular for about four years, and a useful MLB sub for about 10 more. He played in 3 games as a defensive sub in the 2017 World Series, for the Houston Astros. 

Photos by JBJ

Gastonia Honey Hunters, Caromont Health Stadium

SATURDAY, AUGUST 20: In Atlantic League of Professional Baseball action, the Gastonia Honey Hunters knocked off the visiting High Point Rockers, 11-5.

Photo by JBJ

As a repeat customer I feel qualified to say, ALPB baseball is a pretty good product. The Honey Hunters are strong this year; they will be competing in the championship playoffs in September. It seemed that every guy in their line-up is sporting an OPS in the 800 to 900 range. Possibly the 304-foot left field dimension contributes to that potent offense. The Honey Hunters jumped out to an early lead, then let the Rockers get back into the game in the middle innings, before putting the hammer down to extinguish the threat. 

We have a friend here in Raleigh who is a native of Gastonia, and she briefed us prior to our trip, enthusiastically, about things to see and do. We tried to follow her advice, failed in some cases. But our visit was animated by our friend's civic pride and hope. Most of us, certainly Angela and I, know the feeling of loving a small town, seeing the best in it, the untapped potential amid or alongside the decay. 

Gastonia has its challenges, as a former textile town, like so many towns in the Carolinas. (You're close to the South Carolina border here.) Something particular to Gastonia is that Loray Mills was the site of a famous strike and episodes of union-related violence. This is a complicated legacy. 

Renewal efforts are underway in Gastonia. Loray Village is a project to re-purpose the massive red-brick mill building into apartments, retail shops, and a museum. The Esquire, where we ate breakfast on Sunday, is a boutique hotel occupying a former bank building downtown. We had post-game drinks and nachos at Pita Wheel, which was a gas station in its former life. And the Honey Hunters ballclub, its stadium, and the FUSE District represent a broad-based plan to bring sports and entertainment to the area between Loray and the downtown center.  

Photo by Upstateherd (CC 3.0)

Caromont Health Stadium is a nice ballpark in only its second year of existence. It has the wall-to-wall carpet that High Point's home park has, which I dislike, but it's well-designed for multi-sport potential, with seating close to the action. We sat immediately behind the home team dugout, which added to the fun; we felt we were part of the players' conversations. 

Photo by Milbpics (CC 4.0)

Caromont has a friendly, efficient staff, including the EMTs who dressed Angela's wound after she fell and skinned her knee while crossing the street to enter the park. This was our first significant injury of the year, but Ange was a gamer and spectated through the whole contest. 

Ballpark foods consumed included a chili dog, Cracker Jacks, and a SunDrop soda. Local beer enjoyed: an Olde Mecklenburg Copper Altbier, out of Charlotte.

The crop of big-league ballplayers from around Gastonia is impressive. I was surprised. There are a bunch of All-Stars, 20-game winners, and MVP vote getters here. Gastonia is a bigger town than I tend to realize, for one thing.

• Jake Early (1915-1985), from Kings Mountain, was a catcher and longtime teammate of Buddy Lewis's with the Washington Senators. After leaving the Senators, Early played several more years in the minors. He had stints as a manager in Rock Hill, SC and Statesville, NC, and appeared as a pitcher for the Gastonia Rippers in 1960, aged 45.
• Buddy Lewis (1916-2011) was an outstanding player for the Washington Senators in a career shortened by WW2 military service. Lewis served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, flying supply missions over the Himalayas. He played third base, then later right field for the Senators. After retiring as a player, he returned to Gastonia and ran an auto dealership.
• Whitey Lockman (1926-2009) played first base and outfield for the New York Giants. He was a regular on the 1951 and 1954 pennant winning Giant teams. Lockman was born in Lowell and attended Gastonia High School. After his playing days, he coached, managed, and worked in player development for many years.
• After a shoulder injury threatened to end his pitching career, Ted Abernathy (1933-2004) adopted an unorthodox submarine delivery. The change transformed him from a marginal starter to an excellent relief pitcher. Abernathy led the NL in saves in 1965 and 1967. He was born in Stanley, in Gaston County.
• Jimmie Hall (b. 1938) had a sensational, almost freakish batting year as a major league rookie in 1963: 33 home runs for the Minnesota Twins, way more than he had ever hit in the minors. He had a good five-year run from '63 to '67, then fell off sharply. An outfielder, Hall was born in Mt. Holly and went to school in Belmont.
• Lincoln County native Tony Cloninger (1940-2018) pitched 12 seasons in the National League, mostly with the Braves and the Reds. He went 24-11 for Milwaukee in 1964. He started and took the loss for Cincinnati in Game 3 of the 1970 World Series, against the Orioles. But he later collected four World Series rings as Joe Torre's bullpen coach with the Yankees. 
• I remember Kevin Millwood (b. 1974) from my circa-2000 fantasy baseball days. Big right-handed pitcher, a good guy to draft with good fantasy "fundamentals" (HR, BB, K). He came up with the Atlanta Braves and teamed with Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine late in their reign of dominance over the NL East. He bounced around after leaving the Braves but wound up with 169 big-league victories. Born in Gastonia, Millwood went to high school in Bessemer City.