Playing Ball with the Athens Pirates
As Local as the National Pastime Gets
originally published July 2, 2008
Michael Goethe
“Get to know tomorrow’s Major League players today!” That’s the first sentence the Athens Pirates, the area’s college summer league baseball team, throws out in its promotions. Area players do indeed go on to make it at the top. Talk to a Pirate, though, and you learn that the operative word in the sentence is “know.” As in, get to know the players. Bill Park, the team’s General Manager, says, “We’re doing this to help the next generation get the love of the sport. There is nothing that pleases me more than seeing a little kid looking up at one of our players like he was Chipper Jones.” What makes the Athens Pirates unique is that a child can meet, play catch with, and get autographs from players who may go on to the pros. Families and players connect in an atmosphere that could not be more, as Park puts it, “like baseball was 125 years ago.” The games are suffused by a community ethos that begins with a local field created on a whim and players who are recruited by pro scouts and college coaches who use the word “character.”
Park himself delivers pocket schedules to local businesses with his 12-year-old daughter, confirming his belief that “baseball is a sport that connects the generations.” The Athens Pirates themselves have been playing for almost a generation - 16 years. Park began a league with Gerald Decker as the Athens-Oconee Adult Baseball League; after a few years he realized his desire to create a team specifically for college players. The Pirates alternately played Stan Musial AABC league ball or played as independents until becoming affiliated with the Southern Collegiate Baseball League. The team then transitioned to the Georgia Collegiate League. Throughout its growth, the team has been a nationally known resource for college and pro scouts who send players to the Pirates. Since the team’s inception as a college league, 90 schools have sent players to the Pirates. The demand for high-quality wood-bat summer baseball in the South led to further expansion: in 2006 the Georgia Collegiate League morphed into the Great South League, which is now a three-state league (Georgia, Alabama, Florida) comprised of 12 teams, including the Pirates. Bill Park also is the president of the Great South League, and promises expansion to 20 teams in at least four states next year.
Michael Goethe
Years ago, beginning with UGA baseball’s Coach Robert Sapp, first college coaches, then pro scouts, began referring players to the Pirates for pre-professional college summer baseball. The Major League referrals have become a steady source of recruitment; on the current roster, 10 players have been drafted, eight of them right out of high school who elected to go to college instead. There are players from at least 15 colleges on the 2008 Pirates team. “If you sit on the bench you hear accents from everywhere. Long Island, The Virgin Islands, Brooklyn, Miami. All up and down the East Coast and a player from Canada, too,” says Park. In accordance with NCAA rules, none of the players are paid. They volunteer their time to the Pirates and live with host families in the community - 16 host families for 21 players.
Michael Goethe
Park explains that major league scouts contact the team and ask that it take the players and develop them. The players are talented when they arrive; the Pirates are responsible for developing pro potential. The game they play is not like college ball. The Athens Pirates use wood bats, as do the big-leaguers, use major league balls, which are less forgiving and harder for pitchers to direct, and play according to American League rules. The only exception is that they abide by the college slide rule, which discourages physical contact - “We don’t want anyone getting hurt,” says Park. The romance of the wood bat is not only nostalgia and a link to the pros, but a genuine barometer of talent. You can really see what a swing is made of using wood. The summer league uses wooden bats to hone players’ skills as they strive for the pros.
The Pirates have had four players drafted into the Major Leagues in the past five years: Chuck James of the Atlanta Braves, Jeff Keppinger of the Cincinnati Reds, John Lannan of the Washington Nationals, and Brett Campbell, formerly of the Nationals and now with the Milwaukee Brewers organization. Three more players are playing AAA ball. The head coach, Ricky Jones, had his 10 years in the pros with the Baltimore Orioles, but as a backup for Cal Ripken, Jr. he didn’t see the playing time he might otherwise have.
Obviously, there’s a lot to look up to for a kid watching the Pirates. But the kids aren’t looking from afar. Smith Field is a reminder of the fact that ball fields are called “parks.” There’s gently rolling grass on which fans set up blankets, chairs and even a chaise lounge or two to watch the game. Three and sometimes four generations of families are out there on the blankets. Children move from place to place to follow the ball. The dugout is a fluid concept; players will often get down on the grass with the crowd to watch the game. During opening ceremonies the field is thronged with kids, who are invited down to join the players. As they stand on the field and say the pledge of allegiance, their eyes shine as they look up at the players. A few of the children are in uniform; any kid who gets there early enough is eligible to be a bat boy (or girl). Prior to the game, players hang loose and mingle with the children, playing catch and signing autographs.
Michael Goethe
Some of the players have grown up with Smith Field. Over the years the field has hosted little league, high school ball, and now collegiate ball. Some of the boys who played on it went on to play college ball and became Pirates. Players from Athens and surrounding counties include Carl Della Torre, Luke Rogers, Jonathan Newsome, Taylor Hart and Blake Haagen. The field is behind the backyard of the Smith Family, who decided years ago that they had the land, Oconee County had no fields, so the solution was obvious. Part of the throwback experience involves the quiet setting of the field, out in what feels like the middle of nowhere. There is a corn field beyond the outfield, and a horse pasture behind left field. Yet the lights are professional and the field is as good as any.
The players are also hosting weekly summer camps for players ages five to 17 through July 24 ($100 for a four-day camp). There is one Pirates player for each two campers - All-Conference and All-Division players, most from Division 1 schools, working with young people to pass along their skills. For information or to register, call Bill Park at (706) 296-4054.
Admission to all Pirates games is $5 a game; $3 for students and seniors. Ten players are returning to the Pirates from last year’s championship team; the Pirates have won two league championships over the past three years. Winning is important, but it’s not the only thing, according to Park, who brought up his team’s winning record almost as an afterthought. His priority is clear. “We do it for the kids. We want these kids as part of our team.”
| Friday, July 4, 5 p.m. | East Alabama Big Train |
| Saturday, July 5, 4 p.m. | East Alabama Big Train* |
| Tuesday, July 8, 7 p.m. | Mentium Athletics |
| Friday, July 11, 7 p.m. | Florida Legends |
| Saturday, July 12, 3 p.m. | Florida Legends* |
| Tuesday, July 15, 7 p.m. | Mentium Athletics |
| Wednesday, July 16, 7 p.m. | Mentium Athletics |
| Friday, July 18, 7 p.m. | Augusta Nationals |
| Saturday, July 19, 4 p.m. | Augusta Nationals* |
* = Doubleheader. All home games are played at Smith Field on Old Epps Bridge Road in Oconee County. Locations for this season’s post-season games have not been announced.
Find the complete Pirates calendar, directions to Smith Field and a link for Internet radio broadcasts of games at www.eteams.com/athenspirates. For more information, visit www.greatsouthleague.com.
My Weekend at HeroesCon
Or, Why I Missed AthFest for a Comic Book Convention
originally published July 2, 2008
Jared Brown
Most (but not quite all) of the Browns’ haul from the convention.
“Kong & Narnia Statue Liquidation,” read the banner in proud letters. “What in the everloving hell have I gotten myself into?” I wondered, as nerds paraded past me holding huge boxes containing dinosaur figurines. This was Heroes Convention, HeroesCon for short, founded in 1982 in Charlotte, NC by Shelton Drum, owner of the Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find comic shop there. It was also my very first real comic book convention, not to mention the reason I skipped AthFest this year.
That’s not strictly true. I’ve been to Fluke, held in Athens in the early spring, but Fluke is a very different and much cuddlier animal. It’s held in a bar, and even a weakling such as myself would have no trouble throwing a ball from one end of it to the other. The only costume present is the standard one of jeans, t-shirt and Chuck Taylors. HeroesCon, on the other hand, is held in the Charlotte Convention Center, and its Indie Island section alone - the area of the hall in which the organizers cluster the kinds of artists and authors published by presses like Marietta’s Top Shelf or Oni Press - runs to 10,000 square feet. You get a map as part of your program, and you’ll need it.
So was it worth missing AthFest? It actually turned out to be surprisingly similar. It may have been held indoors, but it was still hot and fairly sweaty. Physical exhaustion was a factor that needed to be accounted for. No matter how well you think you’ve planned your route, there’s a fair amount of zig-zagging across the floor, leading to aching feet by the end of each day, and even if you didn’t mean to keep getting out your wallet, your shoulders will be killing you from dragging around the ever-larger, ever-heavier bag of stuff you’ve bought. (Note: The guys with rolling suitcases might not look very cool, but at the end of three days they don’t have shoulder bruises.)
Jared Brown
Getting books signed by their makers - in this case the Queen-obsessed Mike Dawson - was one of the coolest parts of going to the convention.
But the thing that made HeroesCon seem the most like AthFest is exactly the thing that makes them both great: the coexistence of various factions in the aid of a shared greater goal. AthFest might feature The Buddy System alongside We Versus the Shark, Kyshona Armstrong and Son1, but HeroesCon had Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley (poised for stardom when the movie adaptation hits theaters next year), EC Comics legend Al Feldstein, new classicist Darwyn Cooke, indie hero Jaime Hernandez and The Fart Party’s Julia Wertz, who likes to make jokes about blowjobs, all in one room and all for the love of comics.
One thing I learned is that the bigger conventions, like Comic-Con International in San Diego, tend to focus less and less on comics and more and more on movies, TV shows, video games and toys. It’s not that those things aren’t great, but you might not need everything you’re interested in to be in one place, and the glamour of Robert Downey, Jr. kind of outshines that of current Iron Man writer Matt Fraction, at least to some people. Browsing through one of many five-dollar trade bins, I overheard a customer and a vendor in conversation about just this. “I’ve been to San Diego, but that’s all multimedia. I don’t know what that has to do with comics,” the vendor said. Athens’ own Patrick Dean, who happened to be walking the aisles as well, independently reiterated the point, adding that Comic-Con also draws 140,000 people by this point, making it unmanageably large.
Jared Brown
The guy in the Iron Man costume was about as hi-fi as it got. The focus, rather, was on the comics themselves.
HeroesCon may have the occasional booth with some imported DVDs, and there was, of course, a dude in an Iron Man costume posing for photos, but the focus really stayed on comics - from booth after booth of retailers selling both individual issues and trades to the back half of the hall, which was filled with tables for creators big and small, to the small presses dotted throughout - most of which also had people signing and sketching. Sure, there were a couple of Klingons running a booth to raise money for charity, but the media on display was almost entirely print.
Jared Brown
Artist Hope Larson personalized a copy of her new book Chiggers with a brush and a bottle of ink, which was a really nice touch.
One of the most interesting parts of the weekend was cataloguing the ways in which people sign/sketch in a book you’ve handed them. Hope Larson, for example, pulled out a brush and a bottle of ink to paint a s’more with painstaking care on the cover of her new book Chiggers. Jeremy Tinder, author of Cry Yourself to Sleep, uses a brush-pen and makes lines nearly indistinguishable from those already printed on the page. Mike Dawson, creator of the brand-new Freddie and Me, a memoir about his love of Queen, holds his pen practically at its point while drawing a great little picture of Freddie Mercury, while Jaime Hernandez writes almost upside-down. Some guests care deeply about their choice of writing instrument, frowning at their selection in thought when presented with a page, while others, like the prolific Jeffrey Brown, seem happy to use any old pen.
And despite the potential for excruciating awkwardness, the interactions tended to go sans hitches, although smiling and holding out a $20 bill while saying “I would like to purchase your book” probably facilitates that kind of smoothness. Liz Prince, author of Will You Still Love Me If I Wet the Bed?, was drawn to my Je Suis France shirt designed by Lauren Gregg, as was many another indie islander, leading to easy conversation and the usual proselytizing on my part about the greatness of Athens and the need for those who’ve never experienced it to come here. Expressing enthusiasm at someone will often result in a mirror effect, as it did with Josh Cotter, author of the recently compiled Skyscrapers of the Midwest, who not only chatted for a good while and signed multiple things, but waved nearly every time I passed by the booth. Matt Sturges, co-writer of Jack of Fables and House of Mystery with Bill Willingham, seemed lonely and positively thrilled to hear nice things, and Alex Robinson spent quite a while on a drawing in his Too Cool to Be Forgotten, as well as throwing in a promo pack of candy cigarettes that mimic the design of the book’s cover. While much on artist Derek M. Ballard’s table was (appropriately) highly priced, the purchase of a tiny $5 drawing of the He-Man character Moss Man led to a discussion of how North Carolina doesn’t really count as the South in many ways (Pepsi, people who walk fast, a strange number of Chicago-style hot dog places).
What I’m saying is that it kind of turns into a love-fest. You want to give these people money for making art that makes you happy and, in turn, they want to keep making you happy by making that art, sometimes right in front of you. It’s a widening spiral of mutual appreciation, in which many attendees are creators and almost all creators are fans, and it leads to the ATM in the building having to be refilled often. So did I miss AthFest? I kind of just got it in translation: sweaty, tired, empty of wallet, desperate to get back home to my couch and, in the end, totally happy to have been.
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