War Memorial Stadium will host its last professional baseball game next weekend. This morning, N&R reporter and Greensboro historian Jim Schlosser offered a great story about how the Bat's departure will leave a hole in my neighborhood, how some of my neighbors feel about that departure and, perhaps unwittingly, why it is damned short-sighted shame for Greensboro to have allowed it to happen.
Read the legendary names of those who hit baseballs so hard over the years that some of their homers and fouls put permament dents in the clapboards of my neighbor's homes: "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth, Johnny Mize, Josh Gibson, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Curt Schilling, Bobby Murcer, Mel Stottlemyre, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, Jim Bouton.
Schlosser stopped there but could have kept going and included other names like Cal Ripkin, Sr but the point is made: In a sport that elevates great players to god-like status, one of the old cathedrals in which they attained their divinity is being abandoned for the glitz of new construction and the promise of "economic development"
Sure the new stadium will be nice. Sure it will draw people and money and development closer in to downtown. Sure, people will point to us "naysayers" and say "I told you so", but all of that misses the point.
If just a few people who lead this town understood that history, tradition and preservation can be strong economic engines, we would still be reading in our local paper about how our minor-league baseball team is finally going to play in a modern, first class facility. We would still be reading about the promise of new development money that a multi-million dollar stadium can attract. The only difference would have been the location of where the millions of dollars had been committed.
Those with the stadium money just didn't get it. People would have flocked to hear the echos of Jackson, Mantle, Ruth, Robinson and the others in a world class renovation of War Memorial Stadium. The proper promotion of such an historic venue to the tourism trade alone would have made Greensboro unique in our efforts at differentiating ourselves from Louisville, Oklahoma City, Memphis and all of the other cities that our community leaders say we are in competition with.
Yes, the new stadium will be nice... of that I have no doubt. But the one thing that $20M can't buy is what War Memorial Stadium offered in abundance for free - history.
8:40:17 AM 
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