Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 29, 1994 TAG: 9408290078
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It started even before Dewey Owen, 96 later this week, arrived by ambulance and then delivered the ceremonial first pitch from his wheelchair at what might be, what could be - what was? - the last pro baseball game in the history of the creaking ballpark.
Say, how long is Salem going to wait before starting construction on its new yard by the Boulevard, anyway? The Buccaneers' home opener next season is April 14.
But we're getting way ahead of ourselves. The last pro game at Municipal in one way was a reprise of the first 55 years earlier - Salem beat Lynchburg - but that would be selling it shorter than the fence distances.
``Leaving this park,'' said Pittsburgh instructor and former Buccaneers skipper Rocky Bridges, ``will definitely lessen the number of heart attacks by managers.''
Yes, the too-friendly confines did provide a Rocky horror pitcher show some nights in 1989, but mere presence of Owen and probably a bunch of other folks who hadn't seen Bucsball earlier this year said this steamy night would be unique.
It wasn't only a one-run baseball game. It was a festival in the park that became a 7-6 drama on the diamond.
Owen, a longtime season-ticket holder and ballpark regular for years, hasn't been able to attend a game this season because of his health. He fittingly made the goodbye game, and his lob rolled to catcher Marcus Hanel, who made the scoop.
That was just one of the nostalgic nuances at a site where baseball has been played since 1927, when the Salem Kiwanis Club laid out the first diamond, with home plate at the corner of Sixth and Florida Streets.
So, maybe it's more than a coincidence that the baseball diamond being bulldozed over for the new ballpark is Salem Kiwanis Field.
Municipal Field wasn't dedicated until Oct. 15, 1932, when Salem High - already the Wolverines but not yet named for Andrew Lewis - and Roanoke's Jefferson played to a 0-0 football tie.
Longtime scout ``Kid'' Carr has been watching games at Municipal for decades. But he's been doing that in the opposite direction from which he first played on the same sod, in 1935.
The first pro game was played at ``new Municipal'' - as The Roanoke Times called it then - on the afternoon of May 20, 1939. The cement bleachers that are now under roof were there, occupied about about 1,000 spectators - the same number of chairs that fill four sections today.
In Salem's home debut in the Class D Virginia League, the Friends - Salem was called the Friendly City, of course - beat the Lynchburg Grays 9-2. Salem wore shirts with ``A's'' on the chest.
The Friends uniforms didn't arrive in time, so they borrowed old duds from Ashland, Ky., of the Mountain States League. The newspaper reported that ``girls were in a local department store two days with tickets on sale, and tickets have been available at cigar stores.''
It also made clear that only whites were welcome in the cement bleachers, with ``a colored section reserved along the sidelines.''
The first night game was played 51/2 weeks later, on June 27. Salem beat Harrisonburg 5-4 before 1,200 squeezed spectators under the lights, which went up before the grandstand roof.
That day, the Roanoke Chamber of Commerce athletic committee met to seek a return for minor-league ball, gone since 1914, to the Magic City - no star shone yet. Roanoke proclaimed it didn't want any ball below Class C.
Roanoke World-News sports editor Roland Hughes said Detroit scout Billy Doyle asked why Roanoke didn't have a club in some league. Hughes wrote: ``The usual lame excuse of no available athletic field had to be given.''
See, some things really don't change.
Salem has played minor-league baseball for 43 of the past 55 summers, through the Friends, Rebels, Pirates, Redbirds and Buccaneers - the last 27 seasons in the Carolina League, which is finishing its 50th anniversary.
Municipal Field, one of the 10 oldest parks in the minors, will always be a special place. It might matter to some that the Pittsburgh farmhands have played 13 straight losing half-seasons, but the attendance has risen more than 250 percent in the past decade, too.
``It's really sad,'' said cowhide-lunged regular Robley Stearnes, 81, the fan who put ``SNAKEBIT!'' into Salem's baseball vocabulary. ``I was here for the first Carolina League game in '68 and I'm thankful to be at the last one.''
From Section B, Row 10, Seat 28 for virtually every home game for 27 years, Stearnes has seen baseball generations come and go. The players, owners and nicknames have changed, but the most beautiful sight to Stearns is always there.
``Those mountains behind the outfield wall,'' Stearns said, pointing like Babe Ruth once did. ``I feel like the Good Lord has really blessed this valley, and this place.''
That isn't to say Stearnes won't be at the new park, in as close to the same location as he now sits. He's already given a $175 check to the Bucs as a deposit for his '95 season ticket.
``I voted `yes' in the referendum,'' he said, ``and if I could have figured out a way to vote 50 times, I would have.''
No doubt, there were many other ``yes'' men and women in the concessions lines that were 20 people deep by the fourth inning. Some of them were among the 50 fans paying $35 for first-day autographed prints of Eric Fitzpatrick's watercolor print of the ballpark.
Some of them were standing on the grassy banks behind the bullpens. Some of them, about 200 at each entrance, were waiting outside in line for the gates to open one hour before the 6 p.m. first pitch.
Some of them stood before the game, in the box seats, using a screwdriver to remove the nameplates from their season chairs. The Buccaneers brought in extra security to make sure no one tried to bolt with a whole seat.
It wasn't that kind of crowd, however. These were people who maybe once got their first foul ball at the ballpark, who maybe once had their first date at the ballpark, who maybe even once had a foul ball for their first date at the ballpark.
These were 5,467 fans who were hoping one more time to see an outfielder wedge between the wall and a light pole to catch a fly ball at a ballpark whose longest gap spanned the generations.
Municipal Field always has been a homer haven. And on a hot August night - like Reed Secrist's crowd-thrilling, game-winning, pinch-hit, three-run blast in the bottom of the eighth - the place was going ... going. ... gone.
by CNB