On July 14, 2025, how did I spend the evening of my 26^th anniversary as a full-time journalist covering Pickens County? Attending and taking photos of a baseball game, as the Easley American Legion Post 52 (the only Legion post in Pickens County with a baseball team) celebrated 100 years of American Legion baseball in the United States, complete with fireworks following Post 52’s win. I took nearly 1,100 photos and published more than 250 of them with a story…..I love baseball.

On that same field, I had ridden a go-cart and mini bike, when I lived in the neighborhood as a child. It was a dirt field at that time. Many years earlier, it had been the Alice Mill baseball field, and now it is used for American Legion baseball. I would have loved to have attended baseball games there as a child. I do have my memories of riding a go-cart and mini bike there, but I’m glad that the field was restored and is being used for its original intended purpose, as a baseball field.

As a child, I enjoyed watching the television show The Baseball Bunch, with Johnny Bench and Pete Rose of the Cincinnati  Reds and Tommy Lasorda, Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Years later, when I was the Editor of The Pickens Sentinel, Tommy Lasorda would be in attendance as the ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson statue was unveiled in Greenville in July of 2002. (Tommy Lasorda once played Minor League Baseball for the Greenville Spinners, and his wife, Jo, was born and raised in Greenville.) 

I’m glad that, two months ago, this past May, ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson’s name was removed from Major League Baseball’s ineligible list by the current Commissioner. My good friends the late Joe and Kate Anders would have been pleased. They, along with others, fought hard for a long time to get Jackson reinstated. Pickens County-born ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson is now eligible for Baseball’s Hall of Fame. I’ve enjoyed visiting the ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson Museum (across from the Minor League’s Greenville Drive baseball stadium) several times through the years. I’ve enjoyed attending and taking photos several times at the friendly rivalry vintage baseball games between the ‘Shoeless’ Joes (supporters of the ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson Museum) and the Georgia Peaches (supporters of the Ty Cobb Museum), played both in Greenville at the ‘baseball field at the Shoeless’ Joe Jackson Memorial Park and in Royston, Georgia at Cobb Field at the Ty Cobb Museum. (Click here for more information on the ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson Museum in Greenville and the vintage baseball games between the ‘Shoeless’ Joes and the Georgia Peaches and for more information on ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson.)

When the Little League’s Big League World Series first came to Easley more than 20 years ago, I was the Editor of The Pickens Sentinel and covered it. For the past several years, Easley has been home to the Senior League World Series.

My favorite Major League teams include the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Atlanta Braves, the Cincinnati Reds, the Detroit Tigers, the Boston Red Sox, and the New York Yankees. A friend of my mother’s was the one who got me interested in watching the Atlanta Braves, in the early ‘90s. But, when he died, in 1994, I could not bring myself to watch anymore, as it didn’t seem the same. I had loved to watch the World Series each year, but I didn’t want to watch that year. As it turned out, there ended up being no World Series that year, due to a players’ strike. It took awhile to start back watching baseball, but I think of him whenever I watch the Braves.

My favorite current baseball player is my cousin Matthew, who lives on the coast in another state. I loved watching him play when he came to Pickens County in August of last year to Tiger Baseball Camp at Clemson University’s Doug Kingsmore Stadium (home of the Tigers, my favorite college baseball team). He graduated from high school last month and is getting ready for his freshman year of college, where he will play baseball.

My late maternal grandfather played baseball when he was a teenager in school. I have an old photograph of him and his teammates I once published in The Pickens Sentinel. In his later years, he enjoyed tossing a ball around in his front yard with his young grandchildren.

During my last vacation, 11 years ago in July of 2014, I enjoyed visiting the Field of Dreams baseball field, in Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie Field of Dreams, released in 1989, was filmed. I took photographs of the ballfield itself, but I wished that a family with small children would come, so that I could take some action shots of the kids, for the magazine article. I walked out to the cornfield and took some shots of the baseball field from a distance. A few minutes later, not one family but two families with children drove up and began playing a friendly game of baseball. So, after asking them, I was able to take a few hundred shots from their game and also took a group photo of each family. I even played a little catch with one of the small boys from one of the families. Afterward, two local men who had portrayed baseball players in the film Field of Dreams, and who had also played in a ‘ghost players’ baseball game at the site the previous Sunday, and who had also been at the 25th anniversary celebration and cast reunion at the site the previous month, came out to the site dressed in their vintage uniforms, because the owner of the farm had asked them if they would come out on that particular day. After I took their photo together, with the farmhouse from the movie in the background, I took some shots of them playing baseball with children on the Field of Dreams baseball field. 

Seven years later, in August of 2021, I watched on television a Major League baseball game, between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees, played on a ballfield built by Major League Baseball adjacent to the Field of Dreams site, on the other side of the cornfield. Before the game began, Kevin Costner (from Field of Dreams) walked out of the cornfield and onto the ballfield, followed by the ball players from both teams. (A video is available to watch below.)

I highly recommend watching the movie and visiting the Field of Dreams site in Iowa. They both are magical.

But there is always something magical about baseball.