As the few fans remaining at the end of a twice rain-delayed playoff game were leaving, the only noise came from the Fredrick Keys’ players celebrating the Carolina League championship over the Kinston Indians. But then, after the Keys started leaving the field, and a handful of fans meandered down the breezeway, someone yelled out “Let’s go Mudcats.”
That’s as good a moment as any I suppose to usher in a new beginning after a rather sad ending in Kinston. Next season, the Kinston Indians will be the Carolina Mudcats as the Mudcats move from the Double A Southern League as a Reds organization to the Single A Carolina League as an Indians organization.
Kinston still hopes to get a minor league baseball team to play at historic Grainger Stadium, built in 1949, but considering that its the smallest pro baseball market and that fewer than 1,000 people showed up for the final game, it’s unlikely.
I attended the last pro game at Grainger Stadium and I saw my childhood of watching the Rocky Mount Leafs and the Rocky Mount Phillies flash before my eyes. The two stadiums were similar, the league was the same and the type of fans in attendance were similar – just regular eastern North Carolina folk out to watch what used to be called the national pasttime.
As I sat through a one hour and 10 minute rain delay before the game, I thought about something my uncle once said, “It’ll be a rainy day when they put me in the ground.” I held out hope that Kinston would win the game and finish the series championship the next day. But it was a rainy day when my uncle was buried and it was a rainy day when the Kinston Indians were buried.
The Indians actually led 2-0 after two innings but they should have gotten more. A late signal from Manager Aaron Holbert, coaching third, caused the runner to overrun third base and get picked off the bag to end the second inning. Holbert did have a great season as he was named manager of the year by Baseball America but that wasn’t a shining moment.
The third inning proved disastrous for Kinston as Fredrick got all the runs they would need and all the runs they would get. Fourteen Keys players came to bat in the inning and 11 of them scored as the Indians made three errors and the pitchers gave up three walks and six hits.
A few fans left at that point and many more left in the fourth inning when there was another rain delay – this one for 61 minutes.
The game was never in doubt as the Indians managed only one more run, that in the fifth.
The crowd was so thin by the end there was no final round of applause for the Kinston Indians – the last 25 years Kinston has played as the Indians but before that they also were a Carolina League team for another 25 plus years, most as the Eagles.
The Kinston players, obviously down, dragged themselves to the locker – one or two stopped to sign autographs but there wasn’t really much of a demand.
The Fredrick Keys, an Orioles affiliate, celebrated heartily, hoisting the Hope Mills Cup trophy, in a sort of surreal moment. Celebration would not seem to be the appropriate emotion as a Kinston franchise and a way of life in small-town America died.
Probably about 15 of the Kinston Indians will be Carolina Mudcats next year. Here’s hoping the beginning is better than this ending.