Ron Saunders Quotes

Imagine someone with an actual beating heart, who claims to love baseball, looking at a spreadsheet on a computer at a Fifth Avenue Starbucks and deciding that the national pastime in the very places where it truly touches the hearts of that nation might be better off without McCormick Field. Without the next Ron McKee or Gary Saunders. Without James the Mountain Man bracing snakebites to retrieve baseballs. Without the Circuit Rider and the Two-Eyed Redeemer galloping in to save souls before a Sunday-afternoon matinee. Without jazz saxophone national anthems, panty-less miniskirt haircuts atop the home team dugout, and mascot fights. Without a McCormick Field sunset, settling in over the ballpark as fireworks explode overhead and-sure-, why not?-Alabama's "Cheap Seats" reverberating off the trees, the forest, and the honeysuckle vines that line the magnificent little bandbox carved into a nook of the Blue Ridge Mountains. That's the imagery I carry in my head. It's what I see in my mind's eye the very instant someone mentions the Asheville Tourists or McCormick Field. It has been that way every single day of my life since the summer of 1994, and it will be that way until I depart this Earth to be rejoined by Julio the Cat.