On the Road: Keeping It Simple in Buies Creek
Buies Creek was the fourth and final stop of my August 2017 Carolinas road trip. To see all posts from the trip, click HERE. To see all “On the Road” posts, click HERE.
My 2017 road trips had to end eventually, and eventually end they did. The last ballpark I visited was, in many ways, the most anomalous: Jim Perry Stadium, home of the Buies Creek Astros.
As the poorly composed photograph seen above illustrates, Jim Perry Stadium is the home of Campbell Baseball. The ballpark is located on the campus of Campbell University, and the Astros are just passing through, really. 2017 was their first season here, 2018 will be their last. After that, the team is slated to move to a new ballpark in Fayetteville.
For more on the B.C. Astros and their unique operation, please peruse my MiLB.com article. For more of this blog post, please keep reading.
Campbell University is a private Baptist school whose “Fighting Camel” sports teams compete in the Division I Big South Conference. When I arrived on campus, Campbell University associate AD of external affairs Ricky Ray gave me a tour. This season, Ray was largely responsible for handling the external affair that is the Buies Creek Astros.
Students had just returned for the fall semester. An outdoor street fair was taking place, and one of the highlights of this street fair was the opportunity to ride an actual, presumably non-fighting, camel.
There is also a Fighting Camel statue on campus. According to the accompanying plaque, this camel is “approximately 9 feet tall from hoof to hump and 16.5 feet long from nose to tail. It weighs 2,800 pounds.”
The John W. Pope Jr. Convocation Center is in close proximity to the camel. At this particular moment in time, a welcome dinner for the school’s athletes was taking place.
Locker rooms, including those hosting the Buies Creek Astros, are located one level below the arena floor. The Astros don’t use the locker rooms that are in Jim Perry Stadium, as these are in the possession of the Campbell University baseball team.
The Astros have full access to the home dugout, however. They put their bags on the benches and everything.
In the upper level on the third base side, in the Jim and Daphne Perry Pavilion, one finds an homage to stadium namesake Jim Perry. (Jim’s Hall of Fame brother Gaylord also went to Campbell; the school’s Fighting Camel mascot is named after him. Both are into spitting.)
See that Buies Creek Astros banner hanging off of the light pole? That is the only piece of standalone Astros signage in the entire ballpark.
Astros games are run in an exceedingly simple fashion, with Ray overseeing a handful of game-day employees. This, for the record, is Ray. He’s a Zebulon, North Carolina, native and a former employee of Zebulon’s Carolina Mudcats. He knows the world of Minor League Baseball well.
Team merchandise — get it while the team still exists — is sold out of a trailer.
The lone concession stand is located down the first base side.
The visitor’s bullpen is located across the way from the concession stand. On this particular evening, the bullpen was occupied by Lynchburg Hillcats.
After the playing of a canned organ recording of the National Anthem, the game began.
Truly, this was the quietest environment I’d ever experienced at a baseball game.
As you might imagine, this was an evening at the ballpark in which I had very little on my to-do list. I spent a few innings with my Designated Eater (to be documented in my next post), but for the most part I just idly walked around.
The visiting Lynchburg Hillcats are managed by Tony Mansolino, a man whom I once wrote about after he published a children’s book.
By the time the seventh-inning stretch rolled around, Tony and his charges were enjoying a 5–3 lead.
As the bullpen huddled together in the darkness…
…the Hillcats won the game.
After the ballgame ended, I was having a real hard time thinking of a Groundbreaking and Subversive Joke. I began wandering around the campus, racking my brain, desperate for a creative spark.
At one point I took a picture of a fountain. I don’t know why.
I eventually settled on a kinda lame “making a joke about trying to make a joke” joke. It’s better than nothing.
Thus concludes this, my penultimate “On the Road” blog post of 2017.
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