Rowan Legion fans are going to enjoy their trips to Asheboro’s McCrary Park on Friday, Monday, and if necessary, Wednesday.
First, it’s a great old ballpark with great food. There’s everything from old-fashioned Kiwanis-furnished hotdogs to new-fangled colored snow cream that will delight any kid who has a loose $3 jangling in his or her pocket.
Second, Asheboro’s a genuine baseball town that provides plenty of atmosphere and a mostly full grandstand. The fans are into it. Asheboro supporters actually got on their feet for the last inning of the South series.
The local radio station does all the games and there are dozens of headsets tuned in to Asheboro’s 1260 just as there are loads of loyal listeners to WSTP1490 and WSAT 1280 at NewmanPark contests.
Rowan fans may not like those Asheboro announcers very much, however, because compared to these homers, even rabid Rowan rooter Howard Platt sounds neutral.
There’s also the Asheboro PA crew, guys who get a bit more involved in the action than they do at Newman Park. At Newman, Jeff Vail offers, “Now batting, the rightfielder Joe Smith.” Asheboro gives you a whole lot more — whether you like it or not. They let you know enthusiastically every time the count goes full and shamelessly award hits to Asheboro batters, but not the opposition, when routine plays aren’t made — “Hey, gotta give him a hit on that one!”
Then there were those krazy K cards. Most every strikeout by an Asheboro pitcher— and there were 68 of them in the five-game series with South Rowan — is followed by a “Let’s put up another K card!” from the PA guys, who hang Ks outside the pressbox like they’re doing the laundry.
The K cards are cheerfully provided by the aforementioned radio station which has a K in its call letters. They are literally all over the place.
South coach Allen Wilson got annoyed enough at the infamous K cards that his guys collected some and started hanging them up on the South dugout whenever an Asheboro hitter fanned.
“Yeah, we were getting a little sick of it,” said Wilson. “This was our way of retaliating.”
One more thing that makes Asheboro different is that 80 percent of its between-innings music is provided by what had to be the worst band of the ’70s — The Village People.
While the People’s “YMCA” is a necessary evil at all baseball games these days, a steady diet of perfectly awful and better-left-in-the-attic selections like “In the Navy,” “Macho Man” and “Young Man” are going to have Rowan fans longing for Vail’s oldies collection before the end of Game 2.
We say that even though it should be mentioned that Vail dusted off some moldy memories (Wolverton Mountain?) during last spring’s Easter Tournament that were even worse than the Villagers’ tunes.
WILSON’S WORLD: After his ejection from Game 3 of South’s series with Asheboro, Wilson found out that baseball really is a team effort.
Wilson may have been banished to the McCrary Park parking lot, but still enjoyed all the comforts of home as he took in the game from long distance.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Wilson said. “The Aldermans brought me a chair, the Earnhardts brought me a radio and the Shores brought me a bag of peanuts.”
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DOUBLEDUTY: South’s Jeremy Alderman got one of his team’s two hits in a5-0 Game 5 loss. That hit, which sailed past first baseman Michael Stefanacci by inches, kept him above .300 for the season.
Alderman checked in at .302, quite a jump from his .227 in 2000.
Alderman and Aaron Safrit, who tied the South single-season homer record this year with seven, are among a handful of players who have played for both Rowan and South Rowan. Alderman was Brad Canipe’s backup in 1999, while Safrit batted 34 times for Rowan teams in 1999 and 2000.
Safrit may be the only player to hit a homer for both county Legion teams, as he launched one for Rowan in 2000.
One of Alderman’s 15 Rowan at-bats resulted in a homer, but he never connected for South in 160 at-bats.
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SHAKEITOFF:South rightfielder Raymondo Brady, who suffered a torn ACL in his high school days, experienced an ER-episode Legion summer in which he pulled a quad, sprained an ankle and got hit by pitches everywhere from his ribs to his toes.
Then, prior to Game 3 of the Asheboro series, Brady was nailed above the eye by a pre-game throw.
One band-aid and a little ice later, Brady started anyway and delivered two big hits.
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DEADLINEPRESSURE:After his Game 3 ejection, Wilson called the Post the next morning to report that he’d been suspended for Game 4, a fact which was hastily inserted in the story about Game 3.
At 11:15, 15 minutes after the paper had gone to press, Wilson called back to announce he’d been reinstated after a series of phone calls on his behalf.
“I’m coaching,” he said.
“Uh, not in today’s paper,” he was told.
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NEVERKNOW:Asheboro coach Tony McKee said his top-seeded North team was leery of South Rowan, No. 7 seed from Area III South, because of what it had gone through in its first-round series with Siler City.
“Siler City was supposed to be the No. 8 team, but they weren’t a No. 8 team,” McKee said. “All their players were in Cancun for the first month of the season, so they lost a bunch of games. When they got back, they had a real good team. We were worried maybe South’s guys had been on vacation, too.”
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SMALLWORLD: McKee’s son, Derrick, is a pitcher for N.C. State and served as ex-Rowan star Daniel Moore’s host when Moore took his official recruiting visit to NC State, prior to signing with UNC.
McKee also spent last summer pitching for the Harrisonburg Turks of the Valley League, where Rowan assistant Sandy Moore, Daniel’s brother, was on the coaching staff.
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HOME, SWEET HOME:It’s not like Rowan catcher Drew Davis minds playing second base on occasion. He knows it helps keep him from wearing down and also realizes it gives coach Jim Gantt a chance to get the power of Ben Hampton, who’s also primarily a catcher, in the lineup.
Still, Davis always breathes a sigh of relief late in games that Rowan is leading. That’s when he goes back behind the plate and Michael Gegorek comes in at second for defensive purposes.
“Behind the plate — that’s always gonna be home,” said Davis, after Rowan’s Game 2 win at Burlington.
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RUN TODAYLIGHT:Gantt accepted tons of good-natured grief from his assistants after running Aaron Rimer into two outs at the plate in Rowan’s wild 12-9 Game 2 win in the Burlington series.
On one play, Rimer was at second base when Spencer Steedley hit a one-out screamer through the right side. Gantt waved Rimer, who is fast but not Carl Lewis, homeward, even though a strong throw was winging its way to the plate before Rimer had even touched third.
Rimer was out by 20 feet or so.
“(Assistant coach) Michael Lowman asked me on that one, ‘Uh, Coach, what exactly did you see there?’ ” reported a sheepish Gantt.
Fortunately, Gantt’s aggressiveness on the bases has paid off more often that not with Rowan runs.
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Contact Mike London at 704-797-4259 or mlondon@salisburypost.com
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