CAROLINA BASEBALL: GAME 1
Greenville Drive
The Greenville Drive (the Boston Red Sox Minor League High-A affiliate) host the Hickory Crawdads (a Texas Rangers affiliate) at Fluor Field in Greenville, SC.
Dad and I walked from the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum to the left-field gate at Fluor Field, which features a nice statue of Shoeless Joe looking out on Main St. in downtown Greenville. The Drive Official Store is just outside the gate, and we popped in to have a look and do some shopping.
The gates now open, we stepped inside the ballpark to see several electric vehicles on display, from the mundane to the exotic, sponsored by the Upstate Mobility Alliance, a collection of public-private partnerships to improve transportation in the area.
Fluor Field is a 6,700-seat, baseball-only ballpark that opened in 2006 at a cost of $15 million — a pretty fair price for a facility that is helping to revitalize Greenville’s West End District.
The ballpark mimics several characteristics of Boston’s Fenway Park (home of the Drive’s Major League affiliate), including a Green Monster in left with an embedded manual scoreboard and a version of Pesky’s Pole in right. The ballpark also utilizes reclaimed bricks from defunct textile mills in the area to give it a more nostalgic feel.
Greenville has a long baseball tradition. Between 1907 and 1972, the Greenville Spinners (they were the “Edistoes” for the inaugural season) played in five different leagues, including the South Atlantic League, their current home. Shoeless Joe Jackson, who grew up in a nearby company town called Brandon Mill, played for the team in 1908, hitting .346 in 87 games. The Spinners enjoyed affiliations with the Senators, White Sox, and Dodgers. The team then adopted the names of their parent MLB teams (Braves, Mets, Red Sox) from 1963-1972.
A new Greenville Braves franchise played here from 1984 until 2004, when it moved to Pearl, Mississippi, to become the Mississippi Braves.
The current team began in 2005 as the Greenville Bombers, one year after the Capitol City Bombers relocated from Columbia. The Bombers rebranded as the Drive the following year. The name was chosen due to the presence of BMW US Manufacturing and Michelin in the area and, more generally, to Greenville's rich automotive past. A popular alternative, The Joes (for Shoeless Joe), was nominated but denied by Minor League Baseball due to the gambling connotations. The team has won one league title as the Drive, in 2017.
The players filtered onto the field for warmups, and thick clouds began to dominate the sky. The Drive had put up a winning season thus far in 2021, but the were some distance from a playoff spot. Their opponent tonight, the Hickory Crawdads — High-A affiliate of the Houston Astros — were quite a bit further back.
Hickory jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first, but it would be a long night for the visitors after that. Greenville starter Chase Shugart settled down and gave up nothing further through five innings, notching seven strikeouts without a walk.
Seth Nordlin, the Crawdads starting pitcher, had a very different evening, giving up three runs in the third inning and five more in the fourth, all of them earned — 10 hits in two innings, leaving the game 8-1 Drive.
Chase Shugart
Seth Nordlin
Time for refreshments. I had been looking forward to having as much great ballpark barbecue in the Carolinas as possible, and so opted for a brisket sandwich. It was pretty disappointing, tasting just OK and miserly on the meat. Dad had a pulled pork sandwich he described as “Good!” But I knew we would eat better on this trip.
My brisket sandwich
Dad’s pulled pork sandwich
The game went on cruise control for the middle innings, with no scoring but an upbeat mood amongst the $1-drink-night crowd. The temperature had dropped to 80 degrees as night began to fall, but the humidity had risen to 80%. I wiped an astonishing amount of sweat from my forehead just sitting in the stands, perfectly still. How could my head have this much to sweat?
At my first game since COVID, this Minor League baseball experience felt like a real return to normal, a lively feeling of community: a good-sized Thursday night crowd singing “Sweet Caroline”; fans playing silly games on the field between innings; players representing this town, giving their all in pursuit of their dreams, with athleticism and strength.
A fan plays Plinko and wins the prize on her final try.
We were handed balls from the old South Atlantic League by a groundskeeper who heard the story of our trip.
Hickory manage to push another run across in the eighth, but Greenville answered with two more in the bottom half. The Crawdads went gentle into this good night. Final score: Greenville 10, Hickory 2.
I walked a few blocks to the parking lot to pick up the car for Dad, dripping sweat and vibrating with a happy intensity. As I drove back to the hotel, Dad and I jabbered about the night — what we liked (the ballpark, the entertainment, the people we met), what we noticed (a younger crowd than expected, which may have been influenced by dollar drink night). We marveled at the humidity. We planned for the next day.