Baseball has been part of High Point’s social fabric for decades. From industrial league teams during the Great Depression, to minor league ball in the city’s outskirts, the new downtown chapter reveals how the sport – and its purpose – have changed.
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HIGHWAY 109 SEEMED LIKE A FEW HOURS AWAY FROM DOWNTOWN HIGH POINT, not a few miles. The topography along the two-lane thoroughfare was painted with rural charm. Main Street’s sidewalks and furniture showrooms were replaced by the rolling hills and the cornfields of nearby Davidson County. In front of homes’ mailboxes were signs saying “Member: Voluntary Agricultural District.” One man made rounds with his lawnmower, making sure to avoid his Trump-Pence “Make America Great Again!” sign. High Point is the only North Carolina city stretching across four counties – two that voted for Donald Trump and two for Hillary Clinton. The 2016 election was 18 months in the rear-view mirror but lifestyle differences were clear. This wasn’t a zone for bars, high-rise rental apartments, restaurants or boutique hotels. It was a zone for peace, quiet and baseball.
Memorial Day weekend is the official start of summer, and for the locals around Ball Park Road, it means the first pitch for the legendary High Point-Thomasville HiToms. As I pulled up to Finch Field, it felt like Wrigley Field with a suburban twist – a rickety vintage grandstand and a manual wooden scoreboard, minus the El Train and Lake Michigan. There were no parking spaces, just grassy knolls and 85 years of up-and-down existence. The baseball diamond’s address is in Thomasville, about a mile away from the High Point border. But both cities have shared interests and struggles over the years, led by an economy rooted in furniture. Back in 1935, workers’ spirits hit rock bottom as the Great Depression gripped the region. Industrial league baseball provided a morale boost, with up to three dozen teams competing after work and on weekends. The Finch family, owners of Thomasville Industries, deployed its staff to build this 3,500-seat centerpiece. Over the next four decades, affiliates for the Indians, Dodgers, Braves, Red Sox, Reds, Phillies, Twins and Royals all rounded the bases. But in the 1960s, Finch Field lost a consistent tenant in its home dugout. A century of manufacturing progress was peaking and the stadium’s legacy was on life support.
When Greg Suire bought the HiToms in 1999, the outlook was still bleak. “The place was just empty, man,” he tells me by phone on a recent Sunday afternoon. A team captain at Loyola University in New Orleans, Suire’s vision for revival was lofty but attainable – restore Finch Field and its funnel for pro talent. Just a few years earlier, the Triad’s three major cities banded together for a $700 million effort to lure a Major League Baseball team to the region. Business leaders were on board but voters said no. Suire is confident a $100 million payroll would not make sense in today’s North Carolina. He still sees High Point as a launchpad for top-flight prospects, the names gracing the banners along the HiToms’ main concourse, like Eddie Mathews and Curt Flood. “I’ve got to make us more mainstream in High Point, which we’re not,” Suire told the News & Record in 2002. “This is their team.” His words still resonated in 2019, with one caveat. Another team, a fancy stadium and a new vision of baseball were coming to town.
Mathews and Flood were too talented to stay very long in the minors. At age 18, they were just teenagers, but were also everything a small-town team could hope for. Their bats were loaded with pop. In 1949, almost 100,000 fans came to games to see Mathews, a top Boston Braves prospect, in a HiToms uniform. He captivated the crowd with 17 home runs in 63 games. By 1954, Mathews starred on the cover of the first issue of Sports Illustrated, and by 1978, he had a bust at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Flood’s experience in the South was far less idyllic but equally memorable. In 1956, he sped past his HiToms teammates in batting average (.363), home runs (29) and hits (190). But as one of two African-Americans on the roster, Flood had to use a separate restroom and struggled to find meals in town. He lived with a teacher on Underhill Street near High Point College, who provided him with refuge from the realities of Jim Crow laws. “Look at what Curt Flood did for the LeBron James’ of the world,” Suire says.
Flood’s southern chapter was a precursor to the national changes that were coming. In 1960, black voices in Greensboro and High Point set the tone for desegregation, with sit-ins at their downtown Woolworth drug stores. Four years later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, and by 1970, Flood was the force who forever reshaped professional sports. At age 31, the 3-time MLB All-Star, seven-time gold glove winner and two-time World Series champion was traded from the Cardinals to the Phillies. He didn’t want to play for Philadelphia, and sued the league over its reserve clause. The rule prohibited players from joining other teams unless traded – red tape Flood said violated antitrust laws and 13th Amendment protections against slavery. “After 12 years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes,” Flood’s letter read – words synonymous with his experience in North Carolina. While he lost the case, MLB tossed out its reserve clause a year later, paving the way for modern free agency.
Suire doesn’t sugar coat it. He has yet to replicate the rush stars like Mathews and Flood brought to the ballpark. The rules on the field haven’t changed much, but expectations around stadiums have. By the early 2000s, the HiToms lost their minor league affiliation, but kept up with their nearby rivals. The Greensboro Bats and Winston-Salem Warthogs had aging facilities. War Memorial Stadium, one of the parks featured in “Bull Durham,” still opens its iconic triple-arched entrance for North Carolina A&T college games. Ernie Shore Field has also stayed alive, hosting home tilts for Wake Forest University under a new name, David F. Couch Ballpark. If you went to a Bats or Warthogs game, the focus was on the tickets, the seats and the action on the field. “We held our own with those guys,” Suire says. “If you would have gone to a midweek game in Winston and then come to our park, there would not have been a huge difference.”
The bar is higher now. The frills of a 21st-century trip to the ballpark deviate from the statistics found in a box score. As free agency inflated salaries across the sports world, cities faced increased pressure to keep their stadiums up to date, even at the minor league level. Over the past 15 years, the Bats and Warthogs morphed into the Grasshoppers and the Dash. Their home fields are named not after wars or former players, but banks. Naming rights deals with First National and BB&T help fund these state-of-the-art facilities shaping the small yet recognizable skylines of the Triad’s mid-sized cities. There are now luxury suites and birthday party decks, with private buffets and craft beers on tap – amenities far above the popcorn and playground at Finch Field. I couldn’t find beer on the menu at the HiToms game. “They did not have all of the bells and whistles modern minor league baseball has,” Suire says of his rivals in Greensboro and Winston-Salem. “Once they built their new ballparks, they skyrocketed past us.”
Back in 2015, it was Suire – not Qubein – who pushed to play catch up. As kids took swings at a Finch Field summer camp, so did Suire, pitching the idea of a multi-purpose stadium in downtown High Point. It would seat 2,500 to 3,500 fans, at $18 million in taxpayer funding. Finch Field didn’t have the best hot dogs or IPAs, but Suire thought this would keep the amenities as fresh as the on-field talent. The new Rockers downtown stadium has double the number of seats (5,000) and taxpayer responsibility ($36 million), and Suire says he was effectively nudged out. In late January, he challenged the new Atlantic League Rockers to a rivalry game. The local baseball map is crowded, so much so that Suire sees room for only one team in High Point. “You’re splitting the market, which has already struggled with attendance,” he says. “Now, you tell me how this is going to work?”
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IT’S HARD TO ARGUE WITH SUIRE’S EYE FOR TALENT, especially after seeing one of the HiToms giants on his roster over Memorial Day. While the team no longer carries a minor league affiliation, the semi-pro Coastal Plain League still draws top prospects to Thomasville. Josh Nifong is one of them. As the fourth inning got underway against the North Wake Fungo, the towering reliever and No. 5 pitcher in North Carolina glided out of the bullpen. I’m 6-foot-3, but from the back row behind home plate, he made me feel small. As Nifong took the rubber, he stretched out his long arms like a human windmill. The ball left his fingers as if it were fired out of a slingshot, hitting the catcher’s glove with extra gusto. “I told you, it was ea-sy to pick him out as he was warming up down there in the bullpen,” said the baritone voice of HiToms play-by-play man John Thomas. “You can imagine why.” Nifong is a “hometown HiTom,” a native and a graduate of High Point Christian Academy High School, about a mile away from the new Rockers ballpark. If he was convinced of the stadium’s potential, maybe Generation Z would be too.
With a runner on first, Bobby Dixon, a stalwart for the Fungo, stepped into the batter’s box. Nifong reared back and delivered a huge fastball – a called first strike. On the 0-1 count, the hit-and-run was on but Nifong was overpowering Dixon, who fouled off the pitch. In a blink of an eye, I heard the grunt from the home plate umpire. Punched out. Called strike three. “I wonder what you have to have in your gene pool to make you 6-foot-7,” remarked Thomas on the broadcast. Nifong recorded one more strike out before hitting the showers, but something was missing. Off to the left, a line of kids in bathing suits were waiting to use a Slip ‘N Slide. Three girls from the marketing team meandered their way through half-empty rows with big smiles, pumping up fans with coupons for 99-cent hot dogs and ice cream sundaes at Sonic Drive-In. The talent on the field was still there. But where was that same energy in the crowd from 70 years ago? Is the magic of baseball gone? It’s a slow complicated game.
Almost a year later, I stood at the foot of Jack Coombs Field on Duke University’s west campus. Renovated in the early 2000s, the grandstand’s signature stonework looked good as new. The towering pine trees along the outfield fence gave off the feel of a private backyard. Like Finch Field, there was a 1930s-era charm that was irreplaceable. But like the HiToms, the Blue Devils knew what was missing – concessions, souvenirs, and a field inspiring fans to pay premium ticket prices. This wasn’t Cameron Indoor Stadium, where President Barack Obama sat among a sellout Duke-UNC basketball crowd the night before, with some tickets going for $3,000. Back in 2016, Duke organized a deal with the Triple-A Durham Bulls to play a majority of their home games at DBAP (Durham Bulls Athletic Park, pronounced Dee-BAP). The 10,000-seat stadium transformed the city’s Main Street landscape in the mid-1990s. After 100 years of tobacco serving as Durham’s primary employer, baseball anchored a new generation of commercial growth. An old cigarette factory is now a historic district, with bars, restaurants, concerts and more. For a 19-year-old like Nifong, the chance to pitch here gets his heart going. His hometown is now trying out the same recipe.
Forecasted rain kept Nifong and his teammates from practicing at DBAP today. But he’s one of the first out here, taking laps and stretching along the third base line. He pops out from under protective netting around home plate, in limbo-like fashion to support his monstrous frame. He pounds dirt off his black Nike cleats and fixes his royal blue windbreaker, as the chance of storms lingers overhead. We grabbed seats in the first row under the grandstand, as the clank of aluminum bats picked up inside the batting cages. “You’re walking into downtown,” I say. “There’s this stadium…” Before I could finish, his smile blooms. “Yeah, it looks pretty sweet,” he says. “There were multiple times where I drove by this summer, wanted to go look at it and see what’s going on.”
Nifong may never set foot on the mound of BB&T Point field, but he’s confident the stadium is a step in the right direction for High Point. After games at DBAP, Nifong relishes gathering with family and friends in Durham, at Mellow Mushroom pizza or Tobacco Road Sports Café. I kept forgetting that just because he’s 6-foot-7 doesn’t mean the legal drinking age shrinks to 19, too. After HiToms games, it was different story – family and friends sometimes deciding to go toward Greensboro. If HPU President and downtown revival mastermind Nido Qubein could see Nifong’s youthful face when he ponders the aspirational Main Street, the one he’ll visit at age 29 or 39, he’d smile. “People walk downtown, you have dinner, maybe there’s an arena or something where people have concerts,” Nifong says. “It just brings out people from their homes and creates popular places for people to be, to hang out and have conversation.” I wondered if the two of them secretly met beforehand.
For players, those conversations are still driven by the game and the atmosphere around it. Nifong sees excitement about the Rockers starting to pick up on online. When he clears out his Facebook notifications, he’ll find friends talking about buying T-shirts. That’s the vibe after Bulls or Blue Devils games – an identity for the masses. And for Qubein, could HPU join the ranks of a top-25 Duke team, attracting top prospects with home games at a downtown stadium? It’s half as large as the DBAP, but the intended purpose for players, fans, and the city is the same. “It’s the ultimate stage,” I say. “For sure,” Nifong agrees. “What happens to your adrenaline right there?” “It’s … yeah.” “What’s the difference?” “When you have a ballpark like that, it’s definitely the best of the best,” he says. “You want to play there. It breeds competition.”
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THE DURHAM BULLS EXPERIENCE IS UNPARALLELED IN NORTH CAROLINA. But Seth Maness knows an even bigger stage. Flash back to October 26, 2013. Thousands of flash bulbs are flickering across the sellout crowd of 47,432 at Busch Stadium. It’s game three of the World Series and the Boston Red Sox are closing in on the beloved hometown St. Louis Cardinals. “Right hander, Maness, still up in the Cardinal bullpen,” says longtime FOX announcer Joe Buck on the national broadcast. The camera pans to the pen, where Maness, the Pinehurst, North Carolina, native and East Carolina University grad looks cool as a cucumber. He lightly tosses the ball up and down in his right hand, wondering if he’ll be called to duty. Red Sox slugger David Ortiz flexes his massive forearms, fixes the Velcro on his batting gloves and pounds his bat on home plate. In a two-strike hole against left-hander Randy Choate, with the Cardinals clinging to a 2-1 lead, Ortiz smacks a single into right field. Manager Mike Matheny pops out of the dugout and signals for Maness, the “ground-ball-inducing specialist,” credits Buck. Maness gets Nifong’s burst of speed times 1,000, sprinting across the fresh-cut postseason grass. Even some Hall of Famers haven’t made it this far.
Maness blew the save. The Cardinals lost the series. But the story isn’t that simple.
Fast forward to Valentine’s Day 2019. The lockers at BB&T Point field are stocked with shirts and caps, rotating between the High Point Rockers’ signature blue, red and yellow colors. Maness didn’t plan to be center stage, but here he is, a few months shy of his 31st birthday, with plenty left in the tank. Few pitchers exit Major League Baseball with a 1.46 earned-run-average in 17 postseason appearances. In 2016, Maness’ elbow was giving him fits. He had ligament damage, and instead of opting for the well-known Tommy John surgery, he tried an experimental procedure. The normal rehabilitation time of 12-18 months was cut in half. But after a brief stint with the Kansas City Royals, Maness was released in May 2018, a few weeks after the Rockers stadium broke ground.
This is the first time any team faces have really been able to set foot in the clubhouse. The scene is so raw that construction workers in vests and hard hats are lingering behind the press conference table. Maness sits calmly in the center, flanked by Team President Ken Lehner and Director Coy Willard on one side, and Manager Jamie Keefe and Pitching Coach Frank Viola on the other. Lehner is the only one wearing a baseball cap. Maness is the only one without any Rockers garb, which may be a sign. With less than 90 days until opening day, he is their guy – the first player ever on the roster.
But for how long? Less than one minute into the press conference, Keefe adds an asterisk to the Maness signing. The plan is to get in a few good innings and help him back up to the majors. Keefe grabs a stack of paper. “All 18 pages,” he jokes, penning his name on Maness’ contract. “It says in there you’re going to win 20 games,” Willard quips, further loosening the room. Maness signs the dotted line, and sits up tall, with soldier-like pride. “I’m very excited to be here,” he says, with hints of his North Carolina roots in a faint southern accent. “After touring, the stadium is beautiful. I think there are a lot of guys that are going to want to play here.” If nothing else, Maness’ family will get to him more often than in St. Louis. His parents are schoolteachers and he hasn’t tossed an inning in North Carolina since playing down the road in Greenville at ECU. “My grandma’s getting up there in age and she won’t fly at all,” he says. “She’ll be able to get in the car now and get up here and catch a game. I’m very fortunate to play in a wonderful stadium as it is.” Stadium, stadium, stadium – that’s the draw.
(Photo by Chris Gentilviso)
Atlantic League baseball is different. Its nicknamed “independent baseball” for a reason. There are no intense analytics boards, or major league call-ups, or rehab stints by stars like Bryce Harper that send fans flocking for autographs. The Rockers are in their first season. But scan the rosters of league rivals like the Lancaster Barnstormers, and every team is under construction. “Well, I’ll go ahead and spill the beans,” Keefe says sneakily. Maness is going to throw out the first pitch at the Rockers’ home opener on May 2, with a second asterisk. He might be signed by another team before then. Over 900 players have seen their dreams realized over the Atlantic League’s 21 years of existence. They’re all ages, including Hall-of-Famer Rickey Henderson, who at 44, was named All-Star MVP with the now defunct Newark Bears. Strong play for Newark helped him land a final pro contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
So household names are possible in High Point. But is the stadium the right catalyst? The city is pouring millions into making the Rockers the strongest baseball (and downtown) chapter yet. The experiment failed in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which hosted an Atlantic League team for 20 years. But it’s succeeding in Durham, with minor league and college teams sharing the benefits of the happening scene. While proudly wearing his president’s cap, Lehner may have said it best. “It’s about the Rockers brand, and that brand is going to be the team that’s on the field and that brand is going to be this beautiful ballpark.” Ticket packages go on sale in late March, with everything Greensboro and Winston-Salem have to offer. The Home Plate Perch, just nine rows from the action. The “comfortable mesh seats” and easy access to the “craft beer room.” The “pulled pork sliders, wings, soda, water, and more” – all for $29 per person. The events center, the children’s museum, the rental apartments and anything else sprouting around it you can think of. Like Qubein said all along, it’s not about baseball.
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JANEE JARRELL HOPES SOMETHING EVEN SWEETER WILL BE ADDED TO THE STADIUM MENU. It’s a balmy 75-degree Saturday in late March, and a warm breeze shakes up a big, feather banner of a two-scoop cone. The sun is quite bright, bouncing off the “now open” sign over the front entrance at 144 N. Main Street. So are the smiles of the children who skip their way happily inside. “I want vanilla!” yells a young boy who was no older than six. He beats the chest of his Old Navy T-shirt, tasting victory. His two older brothers follow, making a beeline for the toppings case. There are tubs of Oreo cookies and M&Ms and KitKat shavings, but gummy bears and sprinkles emerge as clear favorites. Their parents finally make it inside, with mom wrapping up a video call on her smartphone. “I promised the boys ice cream, so we’ll call back in a little bit,” she says as she hangs up, with a sigh of relief. This is the Scoop Zone, the newest business keeping High Point kids (and adults) happy.
Jarrell’s ready for the workout behind the counter. She’s in rainbow stretch pants, tennis shoes, a casual black tee and a visor – two months into training as co-owner of the parlor. She puts on a fresh set of sanitary gloves, letting the kids know there are 12 Blue Bell flavors to sample in the cold case. “Do you want it in a cone or a bowl?” she asks with a big wide smile, knowing her youthful audience could turn on a dime.
It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, Jarrell was on her knees, ripping up the black and white checkered floor of the barber shop that formerly filled this space. She knew nothing about flooring, but with a little help from Miro, the German owner of the popular Penny Path Café & Crépé Shop down the street, Jarrell, 28, and her husband, Robert, 33, took a big leap of faith. Their connection to North Carolina was strong. She’s a Wilmington native and a UNC-Greensboro graduate and was working as a sign language specialist in Guilford County Schools. He’s still teaching in the system, but High Point was new territory for both of them. The African-American couple and their entrepreneurial spirit saw the potential. “Stadium,” says the traffic sign out their front window, with an arrow pointing left. It’s a 2-minute walk to home plate, putting Scoop Zone ahead of the curve. “We don’t know what a year of ice cream looks like yet,” Jarrell admits. But they’re ready for more lines starting with spring furniture market next week and the Rockers home opener on May 2.
As a train horn blows from the nearby railroad tracks, I took a moment to think back to High Point’s beginnings. Two historical markers sit footsteps from the Scoop Zone storefront. The first remembers Camp Fisher, a training ground for the Confederate infantry during the Civil War. The second points out a Confederate Arms Factory, where rifles were made for southern troops. Nearly 160 years later, Jarrell flips through pages and pages of a family photo album she leaves out for customers to peruse too. She remembers every compromise with her husband, every moment with her family, from the color of the walls (she wanted red), to the artsy portraits of rainbow ice cream cone hanging on them (his concession). She also keeps out the ribbon cutting certificate from the Chamber of Commerce, and a copy of the February 7, 2019 issue of the High Point Enterprise. “Couple opens a new downtown ice cream parlor,” reads the big news on the front page, with a smile from 33-year-old Robert and 28-year-old Janee. Their faces are the hope within the gamble of High Point’s new Main Street, the vision of a new generation working to change the community beyond the new baseball diamond. “[Folks] come in and say, ‘I want to speak to the owners,’” Janee recalls. “I go, ‘It’s me.’ They’re like ‘Really? You look 20, 21.’” She stays calm and thanks them, before getting down to new business opportunities. “I can talk to you at that level and I can be my millennial self.”