As most of y’all who follow this blog know, I’m an avid baseball fan. I’ve shared many of my experiences of following the Atlanta Braves with you here at this site, especially my following Hank Aaron’s quest to break Babe Ruth’s home run record and the introduction of baseball to my wife and son who are from the Philippines. And just last month, we were invited to the historic final game at Turner Field to help celebrate the closing of the field, looking forward to the opening of a new venue next year.

As a fan, it was just last week that I got to experience some more baseball history, though it was just watching it on TV, and that was the Chicago Cubs finally winning the World Series for the first time in 108 years, breaking the curse of the Billy Goat. But I’ve seen baseball history made to a certain extent right here in my own hometown by seeing the career beginnings of many famous players.

There’s a minor league team here, the Asheville Tourists, who had their beginnings back in 1897, playing under the name the Moonshiners, then later on as the Mountaineers, celebrating our legacy of being in the mountains where much moonshine has been brewed over the years. The first reference to the Tourists came in 1915 because Asheville has always been a tourist destination.

The Tourists play at picturesque McCormick Field, the oldest minor-league park in regular use. The first game I ever saw there was in 1961. The team was a farm team of the Pittsburgh Pirates and one of the players was a young Willie Stargell, and at that game, I got to see him hit the longest homerun ever hit at McCormick field. I don’t recall the distance but in my years of seeing games there, by looking I figure it was almost 500 feet. Stargell went on to a 21 year career with the Pirates becoming known for his tape-measure blasts. The famous Cincinnati Reds manager Sparky Anderson said Stargell had “power enough to hit home runs in any park, including Yellowstone.” Once he smacked a ball completely out of Dodger Stadium, not just out of the playing field, but out into the parking lot itself, about 507 feet. And in 1978, he hit one into the upper deck of  Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, an estimated 535 feet. During the Pirates years in Asheville, I also got to see Gene Alley, Orlando McFarlane (using Jesus as his first name while in Asheville), Dock Ellis and Bob Oliver, players just beginning their Pirate careers.

In 1968 the the Tourists became a farm team of the Cincinnati Reds, managed by Sparky Anderson, who would later take the Reds to four World Series as manager, winning two in a row, 1975-1976. He also went on to win a World Series in 1984 as manager of the Detroit Tigers, becoming the first manager to win a World Series in both the National and American League, later to be inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. While Sparky was managing Asheville,  two of his players were Dave Concepcion who became the shortstop for the dynastic Big Red Machine teams of Cincinnati,  and Bernie Carbo, who played for the Reds and later for the Red Sox, hitting a game tying homerun in the sixth game of the ’75 World Series against his former manager and team, setting up Carlton Fisk’s famous game winning, walk-off home run in the bottom of the twelfth inning.

In 1972, the Baltimore Orioles came to Asheville. The manager for the next three years was Cal Ripkin, who later went on to manage the big Orioles team and take part in a couple of World Series. He was father of the later great and famous Oriole player Cal Ripkin, Jr., who during these Asheville years was a bat boy for the team, who at that time were known as the Asheville Orioles. A few later famous players made their appearances on these Oriole teams: Al Bumbry; Doug Decinces; and Eddie Murray, a future hall of famer who hit 504 homeruns during his big league career. One thing I particularly remember during this time is seeing a player hit a homerun while the opposing pitcher was attempting to give him an intentional walk. I believe the player’s name was Jim Fuller, the first baseman, and I kept thinking that the pitcher was throwing the ball too close to the plate. And sure enough, on what would have been ball four, I think, Fuller reached out and crushed that slow pitch. That’s something I’ll never forget. Poor pitcher!

I’ve been fortunate to see so many great players begin their careers, right in my own backyard, to have seen their beginnings before they became big-name players. But it was so great to see the Cubs finally break the so-called curse, just as the Red Sox finally broke the Babe Ruth curse, going 86 years without winning a World Series until 2004. And now, by losing the series to the Cubs, The Cleveland Indians have a cursed streak of their own, not winning a World Series for 68 years. And as the ol’ Brooklyn Dodgers used to say after losing another World Series to those damn Yankees, “Wait till next year!”