Blue Ridge Country - January/February 2014 - 6

E

From the
Editor

Kurt Rheinheimer

One More Kind of Travel Guide
There's a mild controversy here in the
metro area where we create Blue
Ridge Country magazine. The Salem
Red Sox, Class A farm team of the
Boston Red Sox, have suffered in
recent years from declining attendance, edging toward the bottom of
the Carolina League figures.
Some wags have attributed it to
the tarps that management placed
over more than 1,000 seats, but then
Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium
comes within that number of being
filled only on opening night and fireworks nights.
Others have pointed out that it's
the name - that while lots of people
love the parent Red Sox, lots of people
also hate the parent Red Sox, and
won't show their faces in the stands to
watch a team with that name.
Full disclosure: While I do not boycott the stadium because of it, I'm not
particularly fond of the Red Sox
myself, and generally attend only
games where the opposition is the
Frederick Keys, Class A farm team of
the Baltimore Orioles, my favorite
team since they were re-admitted to
the American League in 1954 (more
than a half decade after this team that
would soon become the New York
Unmentionables moved Baltimore's AL
franchise to Manhattan and would
first be called the Highlanders, but
then that's another story).
But which brings to mind a little
baseball-travel-guide quiz:
Name the town that goes with
each of these team names (all towns
are in our mountain coverage area):
Lookouts
Smokies
Power
Hillcats
Keys (see huge hint above)
Suns
Tourists
Yes, the mountains are also home
to the aforementioned Red Sox, as
well as some Astros, Cardinals, Twins,
Mets, White Sox, Blue Jays and Rays,

6 | BlueRidgeCountry.com

Hagerstown Suns
Frederick Keys

WV Power
Princeton Rays
Salem Red Sox
Bluefield Blue Jays
Bristol Sox
Lynchburg Hillcats
Kingsports Mets
Pulaski Mariners
Johnson City Cardinals
Elizabethton Twins
Greeneville Astros
Asheville Tourists
TN Smokies
Chattanooga Lookouts

though the guessing there is not as
much fun given that the link is to the
big team rather than the geography.
Yes, Chattanooga is home to
Lookout Mountain.
And the Smokies are right there
just outside of Knoxville.
West Virginia Power is a nifty play
on the word, but not so much a tie to
home runs or Charleston as it is to the
name of their stadium - Appalachian
Power Park.
Lynchburg (Va.) is known as the Hill
City.
Frances Scott Key was born in
Western Maryland near Frederick, and
grew up to write the song that in
Oriole Park at Camden Yards gets a
huge boost of extra sound at the very
beginning of the phrase, "O say can
you see . . ."
The Sun appears to be setting in
Hagerstown as the town failed to
make good on a promise to replace its
83-year-old stadium in time to prevent
the team from planning to move right
on out of our coverage area into
Fredericksburg, Va., for 2015.
And no, Asheville has never been
shy about feting, celebrating and flattering its many visitors.
The other mountain minor league
baseball teams?
Tennessee: the Greeneville Astros,
the Johnson City Cardinals, the

Elizabethton Twins, the Kingsport
Mets, the Bristol White Sox (Tenn./Va.).
West Virginia: the Bluefield Blue
Jays and the Princeton Rays.
And the point? Well, this issue contains a year's worth of travel plans in
the contexts of food, festivals and allthings-retro. We'd be remiss to leave
baseball out of the mix for your 2014
travels. Minor league parks have come
a long way over recent years, with
many new ones, better food and drink
and more fun (though sometimes at
the expense of a focus on the game).
So build a game or three into your
2014 travels in other contexts. And
don't forget that you might get to
watch a future star.
In fact, how about one more quiz:
Match the name of the major
league star with the mountain city he
played in as a rising minor leaguer:
1. Dwight Gooden
2. Eddie Murray
3. Babe Ruth
4. Jim Palmer
5. Wade Boggs
a. Asheville
b. Hagerstown
c. Lynchburg
d. Bristol
e. Bluefield
Lesson being? Get out there and
watch somebody who might be somebody this summer.
Answers: 1c, 2e, 3a, 4b, 5d
http://www.BlueRidgeCountry.com
Blue Ridge Country - January/February 2014

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