The Greenville Drive

Single A : Greenville, South Carolina

I started this year's baseball Odyssey with a trip to Greenville South Carolina.  When I first planned my various trips South Carolina wasn't even on my radar. Then I started plotting out my travels and my first couple weekends were in the area of Charlotte, North Carolina and I had one empty night. In fact, I couldn't get any western North Carolina team to fit the first night of the first weekend. Then, I widened my horizons a bit and tripped over the Greenville Drive.

I am glad I did.

The Drive play at Fluor Field in the middle of town. It may well be the only single A team that I've gone to that does not have any of its own parking which means you will be $5 - $10 to park on a private lot. To be fair, that's not much more burdensome than the $4 - $6 that most single A parks charge for their lots, but it is a little more. If you get there a little too early (to make sure that you can get decent parking) the souvenir shop is actually outside the front gates so you can browse to kill some time.

Once you get inside,  the park feels brand spanking new.  One of the ushers told me that it was modeled on Fenway (the drive are a Red Sox affiliate). I don't know how accurate a model it is since I've never been to Boston, but it was still pretty cool. They have their own "big green monster" in left field and the scoreboard is an old fashioned hand placed system.  I saw two home runs go over the "big green monster" during the game, so it may not be quite as monstrous as the name implies. Still, it was a really nice stadium.

The game itself wasn't the best I've ever seen, but it was the second day of the season and it was single A ball. In the end the game was 9-6 in favor of the visiting Augusta GreenJackets. There were thirty hits in the game and 4 errors charged (many more actually occurred). The game never quite felt like a blowout because the Drive kept pecking away at the lead, although they never quite got there.

Best Part: The stadium

Worst Part: Parking (which was not too bad).

The Logo: A red G with the arm of the G sweeping back in silver with the word "Drive" across it. As logos go, it is a little on the weak side. I think it is supposed to be modeled on the logo that goes on the front grill of a car. In reality, it just looks generic. The shame of it is that their nickname used to be the Bombers and that offers all sorts of interesting logo possibilities.