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