NC Baseball cont. & MORE!

Moving on down the list of North Carolina Minor League Baseball teams:

3. The Charlotte Knights-Knights Stadium (Fort Mill, S.C): That's right; there's no typo there. The Charlotte Knights play in Fort Mill, South Carolina. They have tried and tried to get a stadium in downtown Charlotte, but the future looks bleak. With the economy in its current state, there's less hope than ever. Either way, the team is considered a North Carolina team. The most interesting dynamic going on with the Knights is that they desperately want to move downtown, so the front office wants to point to discouraging attendance facts as incentives for the team to move...However, they also still want to maximize profit. The easiest way to do this...more fans. A catch-22. This is one of those places you go just to say you've been there.

4. The Durham Bulls-Durham Bulls Athletic Park: I was a fan of the old Durham Athletic Park (DAP), but after overwhelming popularity, the Bulls moved to a bigger nicer facility (the DBAP). Solid stadium; questionable management. You have to go to see the bull above the left field wall that shoots fire out of its nostrils after a home run.

5. The Greensboro Grasshoppers-NewBridge Bank Park: The best part about no longer working in minor league baseball, is that I'm not worried about burning bridges any more. NewBridge Bank Park is top notch; a must see. The management however, is unfriendly and terribly inefficient. Their business like approach is overkill in the world of FAN-ENTERTAINMENT. But again, I love the ballpark. The beer garden beyond the leftfield corner is the nicest you will find in the state and arguably in the entire country. It's huge and accessible, and the prices are right on a Thursday night. The designers finally had a the foresight to put a beer garden in a proper location. A beer garden shouldn't be along the left or right field line where foul balls can pick off drunks. It also shouldn't be somewhere where patrons can't see all the action. The one in G-boro is neither; it's perfect.

6. The Hickory Crawdads-L.P. Frans Stadium: Misters to keep fans cool in summer...80-year-old dancing ushers keeping the mood right...one of the first new stadiums to infiltrate the South Atlantic League. The Crawdads have it going on.

Still to come: Kannapolis, Kinston, Winston-Salem, Zebulon

IN OTHER NEWS

*The Southern 500 in Darlington was awesome. From the 55-year old Mark Martin fan who probably still lives in his mother's basement, to the female South Carolina student wearing an American flag-themed bikini without a pool or watering hole within 2 miles, to sleeping in the back of trucks and sleeping in camping chairs, it couldn't have been better.

*The Carolina Hurricanes are still going! Am I a bandwagon or fair-weather fan? No. I don't care if they win or lose and I don't go nuts over the 'Canes, but YES I love following their progress and supporting their best effort. If it wasn't a sport full or Canadians, French-Canadians, and Yankees, maybe I'd really love the NHL.

* The North Carolina State Senate just voted down a 2-cent reduction in gas taxes...Ridiculous. Fellow North Carolina natives, we are the second-highest taxed state in the union behind California I believe. Join me in writing critical but humane (just barely) letters to this group of A-holes in our Senate.