I am saddened by the news that the Baltimore Orioles have ended their affiliation with their minor league club, the Bluefield Orioles. At 53 years, it was the longest such affiliation in baseball, and one which has effectively spanned my entire life. It’s hard to think of my home town without certain things — like the Ridge Runner, or Mitchell Stadium. But it’s impossible to think of it without the Orioles.
I spent much time wandering around the outside of the stadium with my dad (mostly the old one before it burned in the 1970s) looking for discarded foul balls in bushes and finding mostly briars (with plenty of blackberries to be had on a good day). In fact, I probably spent more time exploring around the stadium as a kid than I did inside the park, but I’d say that most every boy of my generation paid their respects at that park either by playing, watching or exploring.
Some of us are old enough to remember the Baltimore Orioles on WHIS AM radio and the glory days of the Birds. Others just know that there was always baseball to be played at Bowen Field on the warm and not-so-warm nights in city park. How many of us imagined ourselves as major (or minor) leaguers while we played in that stadium? I can smell the peanuts and the thin chili hot dogs in paper holders. I can feel the wool of the Orioles cap. I can tell you where there was a little hill at the outfield wall in both left and right field. And we can see Mr. Fanning down on the side yelling at us one minute to stay off the infield dirt, then encouraging us about a good play the next. I’ve been on that field in the heat of the Virginia summer and the damp cold of a Bluefield summer night. And we can all tell of the stories of major league players we saw, each paying their dues, winding through the small towns of Appalachia to play in places like Pulaski, Bristol, Kingsport, Covington and others now gone by the wayside of American life.
It’s a sad day. Not because we did not expect it to come sometime. Rather, it’s sad because it means we’re grown up and the world we knew is largely gone behind.
Mike Simmons
Denton, Texas
Letters to the Editor
September 3, 2010
Orioles’ departure marks end of an era
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