ASHEVILLE, NC (828newsNOW.com) – Ty Cobb hit a home run, but that wasn’t enough to ruin a housewarming party in Asheville.
It was almost one hundred years ago, on April 3, 1924, when Cobb’s mighty Detroit Tigers fell to a scrappy Asheville Skylanders squad, 18-14, in an exhibition christening the brand new McCormick Field.
A century later, home plate still is in the same spot. Hitters still stare into the untamed hillsides beyond the outfield walls. And with a shallow right field wall still a tempting target, the setting remains so intimate that players can hear conversations in the stands.
“One of the things I love about this ballpark is it still has the charm of a minor league park,” said Doug Maurer, director of broadcasting and media relations for the Asheville Tourists. “Yeah, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but look how close you are… Players can literally talk to you from the field.”
The Asheville Tourists are preparing to commemorate the centennial with a sold-out exhibition game on Wednesday against the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, followed by their official season opener Friday, April 5, hosting the Winston-Salem Dash.
The 100th anniversary game was offered up at 1924 prices: 75 cents per ticket. It sold out in 45 minutes.
Last year, the Tourists set a team record with 13 sold-out games as the Southern Atlantic League (High-A) affiliate of the Houston Astros. Their average attendance of 3,001 was a more than 9 percent increase over the prior season, according to Ballpark Digest.
Last year, anxiety might have fueled some of the turnout. Prior to the 2023 season, Major League Baseball reportedly threatened to take away Asheville’s minor league team unless the City of Asheville, Buncombe County and the Tourism Development Authority would commit to spending $30 million on renovations to the McCormick facilities.
Fans rallied to the lobbying effort. The agencies came through with funding for major upgrades that will take place after the end of this season. And fans crowded the ticket booths, too.
“It could have been a little bit of a wake-up call,” Maurer said. “This team has been in this community so long, the support is unmatched.”
With the cloud of uncertainty gone, the Tourists can focus on playing ball and celebrating history of their longtime home.
McCormick Field was named after an unconventional hero of his era, Dr. Lewis McCormick, a bacteriologist in Asheville who started a “Swat that Fly” campaign in 1905 to rid the town of a buzzing scourge, according to a history by Bill Ballew for MiLB.com.
McCormick died a few years before his namesake field was dedicated for the start of the 1924 season, when Skylanders quickly changed their name to Tourists. That field would host countless legendary players stopping for exhibitions on their way from spring training sites to their big city openers.
Babe Ruth caused a shudder through the sports world in Asheville in 1925, when he was scheduled to play an exhibition at McCormick Field but reportedly collapsed while getting off a train, sparking rumors that he had died. It came to be known as “The Bellyache Heard ‘Round the World.”
He’d return to play exhibitions in Asheville in 1926 and 1931, and offered up an assessment of McCormick Field that the Tourists will never let anyone forget: “My, my, what a beautiful place to play. Delightful. Damned delightful place!”
Baseball legends like Lou Gehrig, Dizzy Dean, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella are on a long list of famous visitors. And there’s an even longer list of players, managers, coaches and, yes, bat boys who played in Asheville and reached the Major Leagues.
Many are pictured throughout the stadium, like former manager Sparky Anderson, or sluggers like Willie Stargell or Nolan Arenado. Cal Ripken Sr. managed in Asheville, so the team’s batboys included sons Billy Ripken and now Hall of Fame “iron man” Cal Ripken Jr.
Over the past century, the Tourists have been affiliated with at least 10 Major League teams: the St. Louis Cardinals, Brooklyn Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Texas Rangers, Houston Astros (twice) and Colorado Rockies.
The magic of Minor League Baseball, however, is that the players aren’t yet famous. They’re still down to earth and, quite literally, look eye-to-eye with the fans. In some ways, that makes the old stadium itself the star of game night.
Sure, McCormick’s star doesn’t glisten as much as the new stadiums in some other Minor League towns. But do those stadiums have a towering, colorful billboard in right field, concealing a retaining wall from a stock car track that took over the field during a baseball hiatus in the late 1950s?
And can those other stadiums claim the ghost of “Crash” Davis, who broke the Minor League home run record in an Asheville Tourists’ uniform? It was only a Hollywood record in the fictional “Bull Durham,” but still…
The Tourists’ stadium operations manager Mike Mueller said his favorite place to sit in McCormick Field is in the grandstands, looking straight up the third base line. That way, when a batter slices a drive down the line, he can watch the spin of the ball and guess whether it will land fair or foul.
He also enjoys the reaction a few times during the season when the team brings in a team of mountain climbing goats to chew through the thicket on the hills behind the outfield walls.
Chanting fans implore the batters: “Feed the goats! Feed the goats!”
And the players can hear them, because McCormick still is the intimate setting it always has been.
