I was driving home from work last Thursday and I passed by the Diamond, home of the Richmond Braves. It was raining and the place was all locked up of course, but I slowed down and pulled in and stopped for a few minutes on the entrance road.
I hopped out of the car and snapped a few photos of the sculpture that greets visitors to each baseball game.
Like many folks I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news that the Braves were leaving town. And for Gwinnett County, right outside Atlanta where the parent club plays?
Makes no sense to me.
I mean maybe they know what they’re doing down there, but why go to see the baby club when you can travel a few more miles and see the real thing?
Of course, to many of us here, the Richmond Braves were the real thing.
A few years back when the parent club was entering its glory years, big-time players like David Justice, Chipper Jones and Neon Deion Sanders passed through Richmond on their way to the “show,” to the delight of local fans.
Years earlier, in the stadium the Diamond replaced, Parker Field, with those infamous thick green columns that blocked your view if your seat was stuck behind one, you could watch the Richmond Virginians, farm team for the New York Yankees play.
Back in the 50s the Richmond team would host and also visit a team based in Havana, Cuba, when Havana and the team in Montreal, Canada made the International League, well, international.
There was something really neat and a little exotic about listening to the game on the radio on a warm summer night, being beamed up from a tropical island in the Caribbean, before Castro came to power and the Havana team moved.
And I’ll never forget a night in the 50s when my father, brother and I got ready to leave a game with Richmond behind by a couple of runs in the bottom of the ninth inning.
We were standing in the aisle, ready to try to beat the crowd, but we stopped to see the final batter.
Two outs, two men on base, and a left handed slugger at bat for the home team.
Frank Leja, I’m pretty sure his name was. A big strapping first baseman who batted around .200 or so most of the time, but he could jerk one out of the park at any time.
Was the count 3-2?
I don’t know. I like to think it was because it makes the story better, but when Leja drove the ball over the right field fence with a towering line drive, the crowd, as they say, went wild, as the home team pulled the game out at the last instant.
Moments like that make me think it’s worth trying to keep baseball in Richmond.
And maybe that’s why, even though it was raining when I took the picture the other night, I could swear I saw a tear in the Brave’s eye.
