Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 15, 1995 TAG: 9509150048
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Poor posture is the culprit.
So is advice from Mother dearest.
Apparently, I sit up too straight in my seat and, misinformed wretch that I am, try too hard to maintain an erect carriage when standing.
This is very, very unfortunate, according to Karl Kroemer, the commandant of Tech's medical-ergonomics lab. Kroemer isn't specifically familiar with my case (although after hearing what I've been hearing, I'm thinking maybe he should be), but he was talking about lock-spined sorts like me when he told the Wall Street Journal, ``Don't sit up straight; Mother was never right about that.''
Should I run into Kroemer on the way to my apparently inevitable appointment with an orthopedic surgeon, I'll tell him to leave Mother out of this. Besides, I don't think Mother is to blame for my sour mood.
Nor are my pathetic and apparently dangerous attempts to sit up straight at my desk. What folly all these years! To think that I'd be better off to assume the posture of one who takes his cocktails while reclining in disarray on a public bench.
No, the truth of the matter is that I am in a dark mood because another summer has passed without professional baseball in the New River Valley. And that's a shame.
Every Pulaskian knows the heart-rending details. Three years ago, The fickle Atlanta Braves' Appalachian League farmhands loaded up the trucks and split, coattails flying, into the perfumed arms of young, beautiful, and glamorous Dan Daniel Memorial Park in Danville.
Calfee Park, whom the years had been less kind to, was left sobbing, the tears coursing toward her double chin and uncertain waistline.
Pulaski has come close to finding a replacement team since, but always something has fallen through.
``I miss baseball,'' said Pulaski's Tom Compton, one of those who made the sport work here, against long odds, all those years.
Steve Avery, the Atlanta Braves lefty, can thank Compton for the water skiing lessons. Mark Wohlers owes him a favor. Turk Wendell should be grateful for the teen-age scrapes Compton got him out of.
The whole community should thank Compton and his associates for the good times.
Good times that can and should continue.
``I saw you were writing about Pulaski again the other day,'' a Danville guy sneered that last time this summer I visited the D-Braves' luxurious digs. ``Give it up. They'll never get baseball in that dump again.''
After resisting the uncivilized urge to set upon this boor with the closest blunt object that came to hand, I had to concede, he was right.
Unless there are some changes made.
So once and for all, here's the plan:
Step 1: Raise some money, probably $3 or 4 million, maybe a little more. Raise it any way you can. Choices include cash, bond issues, cooperative financing from town as well as Pulaski County and Dublin, private money.
Step 2: Use the dough to build what will be known as New Calfee Park on the site of the old one. Retain the stonework on the facade; save the new bleachers and press box; level most everything else. Build a new covered grandstand. Build new clubhouse and office facilities. Take a tour of some other new ballparks to see what kind of features you'll want. Make Pulaski's ballpark nice. You're never sorry when you spend money to go first class.
Step 3: Make friends in high places in the Appalachian League.
Step 4: Drum up a new tenant. Potential clients will be lining up around the block when they get a load of the new Pulaski palace.
Step 5: Secure a license to sell beer. This is key to attracting the educated young adults from Blacksburg, Radford, Wytheville, and Galax areas that you're going to want.
Step 6: Hire a free thinking and energetic general manager to cook up schemes to entertain the children of the aforementioned educated young adults as well as other marginal fans, a guy like Bruce Baldwin of the Richmond Braves. You won't get Baldwin, though. He's already worked the Pulaski gig.
Step 7: Start counting the gate receipts.
It'll work, given the right circumstances. Should you doubt it, check out Danville. Examine Salem. Over 2,000 a night came out this summer to sit in cramped but almost brand-new seats to watch a sub-.500 team in Danville. Attendance in Salem more than doubled in the 21 games the Avalanche played in the new Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium.
It can happen here.
``All they have to do is get some of those same 8,000 people who will show up for a high school football game to go some baseball games,'' said Durham Bulls manager Matt West, once pitching coach here.
He's right.
But it ain't going to happen with people waiting and sitting, no matter what their posture is.
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times sportswriter.
by CNB