A lovely Friday evening brought us to Harry Grove Stadium in Frederick, MD. 29 years ago last night and we saw a big crowd watch a doubleheader between the Frederick Keys and the Durham Bulls. Dave Ziedelis wasn’t yet in Frederick but he has been in charge of keeping those crowds big for many of the seasons since.
Dave Ziedelis, the General Manager of the Frederick Keys since 2004 is my guest on this episode of the Low Mileage Tour on the 435 Voices podcast.
Kevin Heilbronner – Onetime Voice of the Prince William Cannons
Being the play by play broadcaster for a Class-A baseball team can feel pretty futile – even more so than being a player at that level. Major League players, after all, typically don’t play past the age of 40; major league broadcasters often work well into their sixties and beyond. But like many jobs in minor league baseball it is a labor of love and on today’s episode of the Low Mileage Tour on the 435 Voices podcast, we’ll hear from Kevin Heilbronner who has spent the last three decades doing some form of sports announcing work and was the voice of the Prince William Cannons when we stopped in Woodbridge, VA on June 6, 1991. Kevin talks about how he ended up in Prince William, what the life of a minor league broadcaster is like and some of the great memories he made over the years.
435 Voices
Low Mileage Tour Day # 16: Prince William - Woodbridge, VA
My guest on this episode of the Low Mileage Tour on the 435 Voices podcast is North Johnson. One of the great guys of minor league baseball, North is the new President of the Northwest League this season but in 1991 he was in the midst of a long run as the General Manager of the Kinston Indians. We talk about Grainger Stadium, the lovely old home of that Indians team and now the home nest of the Down East Wood Ducks. But our conversation eventually takes us beyond the Coastal Plain and we get to hear a lot about the Minor League Baseball landscape from North Johnson, a guy who knows it about as well as anyone.
About three hours north of Charleston we continued our run through the South Atlantic League on a Friday evening as the month of May drew to a close in 1991. Today’s guest on the Low Mileage Tour is Sammy Batten. Sammy is a longtime sportswriter at the Fayetteville Observer. He’s covered minor league baseball , among other things, for many years and takes us through the history of baseball in Fayetteville beginning with the park we visited in 1991,,,JP Riddle Stadium.
When I set out to begin a podcast to go along with the series of brief videos I was planning to correspond with the stops we made on “Bill & Sue’s Excellent Adventure in 1991, my vision was that the guests I interviewed would be people that would know the ballpark in question in a way I never could have..today’s episode fits that model to the tee.
Melissa Acevedo started working at College Park in Charleston at the age of 14 and worked there and later at Joseph P Riley Stadium for 30 years until moving on at the end of last season. Melissa’s passion for the old park and the game itself is infectious. Bonus points for anyone who remember’s Jim’s last name.
Tonight on the Low Mileage Tour on the 435 Voices podcast we’re paying a virtual visit to Augusta, Georgia and talking about the stadium that the Augusta Pirates began play in when they relocated from Macon in the 1998 season…Heaton Stadium.
My guest is longtime Augusta Chronicle Golf Editor David Westin, who, in addition to golf, talks passionately about baseball.
Today’s podcast on the Low Mileage Tour on 435 Voices looks back at a baseball landscape that is now long gone. May 25, 1991, brought Sue Easler and I to our 50th park of that season, Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach, Florida. The Montreal Expos stopped playing after the 2004 season and the West Palm Beach Expos moved to nearby Jupiter, Florida even before that in 1998. Four years later, Municipal Stadium was torn down and a Home Depot sits on the site today…but as you will see in the video, it was a lively place on that Saturday night. A big part of the reason for that was Rob Rabenecker, the General Manager of the Palm Beach Expos who also ran spring training operations for the parent club in Montreal. Rob is my guest on this edition of the Low Mileage Tour on the 435 Voices podcast.
This episode of the Low Mileage Tour on 435 Voices looks back on a stadium that is gone from the ballpark map, Wolfson Park in Jacksonville, Florida.
We stopped in Jacksonville on a beautiful May Friday evening in May and happened to visit on the same night as the Famous Chicken, which resulted in one of the largest Minor League crowds we saw all season.
In the podcast I’m chatting with Kevin Derby, a local political writer and longtime baseball fan who spent many a night at Wolfson in his younger years. We hear about some things that made the old park special and get some tips on ways to enjoy games in the city’s lovely new stadium – the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville.
This episode of the Low Mileage Tour on 435 Voices includes the second part of my interview with baseball historian and sportswriter Rob Grubbs. This time we’re talking about the second of two stops we made in historic Georgia ballparks, this one, unfortunately, washed out by rain – we’re visiting about Grayson Stadium in lovely Savannah.
We learn about one of Rob’s favorite baseball memories as a kid, the differences between Luther Williams Field and Grayson Stadium and Savannah’s colonial roots. Myron Noodleman even shows up.
In this episode of the Low Mileage Tour on 435 Voices we visit with Rob Grubbs. Rob grew up in Middle Georgia, just outside Macon and was interested in Luther Williams Field from an early age. I found his blog at https://sportswriterrob.com/ when I was looking through Twitter for some folks who might remember the park. He had a great post about managers that started their career in Macon, which included Mike Quade – the manager of the Macon Pirates in 1986, the year I worked for the team.
We cover several of Rob’s great baseball memories and he also fills me in on what’s going on with Macon baseball today. Here’s a hint – It sounds tasty.
