Professional Baseball in North Carolina

Hundreds of major leaguers—including the Hall of Fame’s Hank Greenburg, Johnny Mize, Rod Carew, Carl Yastrzemski and Joe Morgan—got their starts in North Carolina, where baseball has been a fixture in the state for nearly 100 years—in Charlotte and Durham (whose Bulls were in the 1988 film Bull Durham) as well as Red Springs and Snow Hill. Following an historical statewide overview, year by year summaries and histories are provided for each of the 72 towns, from Albemarle to Zebulon. Notable players and club records are listed for each year, and the causes for the rise and fall of baseball in the different towns are discussed. Biographies of 20 prominent minor leaguers are included, as is an appendix of nearly 2,000 major leaguers who played for a North Carolina team. The state’s Negro League and textile league histories are also related.

J. Chris Holaday is a fulltime copywriter and photographer in Durham, North Carolina. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research, he is the author of several other books on baseball history.

J. Chris Holaday

Foreword by Miles Wolff

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 259
Bibliographic Info: 78 photos, appendices, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2006 [1998]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-2553-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0868-6
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgements     v
Author’s Note     vi
Foreword     1

Introduction     3
The Towns and Their Teams     9
Appendix 1: The Negro Leagues     197
Appendix 2: The Textile Leagues     200
Appendix 3: Biographies     201
Appendix 4: About the Team Names     221
Appendix 5: North Carolina Major Leaguers     223

Bibliography     239
Index     241

• Winner, Sporting News–SABR Baseball Research Award
• “the best-looking book I have seen yet from McFarland…an essential reference for anyone interested in North Carolina professional baseball…a very useful reference book…thank you, McFarland! Thank you, Chris Holaday!”—Nine
• “easy to read…likeable”—SABR Deadball Committee Newsletter
• “[Holaday] presents his gratifying full information clearly and concisely…comprehensive index…many photographs”—The North Carolina Historical Review
• “a reader-friendly reference work”—News & Record
• “a masterful job…fascinating reading”—Winston-Salem Journal
• “definitive”—The Diamond Angle