Knights Stadium still stands in a South Carolina suburban town called Fort Mill (though, as far as I know, it has neither a fort nor a mill anymore) off an Interstate highway by water tower painted like a baseball. In a way, that stadium helped launch my career as a sportswriter. Well, it launched my career and almost ended it at the same time. I’ve loved the place deeply for a quarter century, and I probably have not even been inside it for 20 of those years. It’s complicated.What isn’t complicated is that now I’ll never get to go inside it again. The stadium had been home for the Charlotte Knights minor league baseball team since 1990. And it just closed. Next year the team moves to a new stadium in downtown Charlotte. It will probably be better for the team and for the fans and for just about everybody. But it breaks my heart just a little.When I was still in college, I got my first full-time sportswriting job. It was technically for the Charlotte Observer, but really I was working in the bureau in Rock Hill, S.C. My job was to write about every sports story that moved in what we called the YLC -- the York, Lancaster and Chester counties in upper South Carolina. And by “everything” I do mean EVERYTHING. I wrote a weekly cycling column where I would write about people who, you know, bicycled. I wrote a weekly softball column about people who played softball. Little league? Yep. Pick-up basketball? Why not? If you made a hole in one, you were big news. If you came close to a 300-game in bowling, I was on the scene. There were some decent sports stories every now and again. Jeff Burris played for a high school team in Rock Hill, and he was one of the nation’s best prospects. Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz tried to secretly fly into town to talk with him (there were no secrets in the YLC). In Lancaster, Earl Cunningham was a high school baseball phenomenon who hit home runs that flew over shopping centers -- I’ve had a couple of scouts tell me that to this day he’s the most talented young hitter they ever saw. He was a first-round pick of the Chicago Cubs, and he flamed out, but not before I had written dozens of stories about him. Melvin Stewart, my good friend, lived in Fort Mill on the PTL grounds -- that would be Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s ministry, a very long story -- and he went to the 1988 Olympic swimming trials in Austin. I went with him to write about it. Big news. I wrote multiple stories every day about him. Melvin eventually won two Olympic gold medals, a bronze medal and set the world record in the 200-meter butterfly -- he now runs the
Goodbye to a ballpark
Goodbye to a ballpark
Goodbye to a ballpark
Knights Stadium still stands in a South Carolina suburban town called Fort Mill (though, as far as I know, it has neither a fort nor a mill anymore) off an Interstate highway by water tower painted like a baseball. In a way, that stadium helped launch my career as a sportswriter. Well, it launched my career and almost ended it at the same time. I’ve loved the place deeply for a quarter century, and I probably have not even been inside it for 20 of those years. It’s complicated.What isn’t complicated is that now I’ll never get to go inside it again. The stadium had been home for the Charlotte Knights minor league baseball team since 1990. And it just closed. Next year the team moves to a new stadium in downtown Charlotte. It will probably be better for the team and for the fans and for just about everybody. But it breaks my heart just a little.When I was still in college, I got my first full-time sportswriting job. It was technically for the Charlotte Observer, but really I was working in the bureau in Rock Hill, S.C. My job was to write about every sports story that moved in what we called the YLC -- the York, Lancaster and Chester counties in upper South Carolina. And by “everything” I do mean EVERYTHING. I wrote a weekly cycling column where I would write about people who, you know, bicycled. I wrote a weekly softball column about people who played softball. Little league? Yep. Pick-up basketball? Why not? If you made a hole in one, you were big news. If you came close to a 300-game in bowling, I was on the scene. There were some decent sports stories every now and again. Jeff Burris played for a high school team in Rock Hill, and he was one of the nation’s best prospects. Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz tried to secretly fly into town to talk with him (there were no secrets in the YLC). In Lancaster, Earl Cunningham was a high school baseball phenomenon who hit home runs that flew over shopping centers -- I’ve had a couple of scouts tell me that to this day he’s the most talented young hitter they ever saw. He was a first-round pick of the Chicago Cubs, and he flamed out, but not before I had written dozens of stories about him. Melvin Stewart, my good friend, lived in Fort Mill on the PTL grounds -- that would be Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s ministry, a very long story -- and he went to the 1988 Olympic swimming trials in Austin. I went with him to write about it. Big news. I wrote multiple stories every day about him. Melvin eventually won two Olympic gold medals, a bronze medal and set the world record in the 200-meter butterfly -- he now runs the
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