I think it was on the Fourth of July, back in 2004, and it was the last year for the Greensboro minor league baseball team, at the old War Memorial Stadium…
The team was called the Greensboro Bats back then, and on that night, Fourth of July 2004, the Rome Braves were town to play the Bats, and Rome was led by their manager Rocket Wheeler…
That has to one of the best Fourth of July names that I have ever heard…The Rockets Red Glare, The Bombs Bursting In Air, and you have Rocket Wheeler in town for the Fourth of July baseball game…
The weather did not look all that good, as the gates opened up, and the fans began filing in…And the fans just kept on filing in…This was the 4th of July game, and this was the biggest baseball game of the year at War Memorial Stadium…
It was sort of like today, with the temps and humidity both reaching the higher levels….And when those clouds get packed with all of that humidity, that moisture has to go somewhere, and it started falling to the ground, right after the game got started….
We had several rain delays that night, but on the Fourth of July, you have to get that Fireworks Show in, and that meant the game must go on…
So we went on…And then we would have to stop for a Quick-Dry Break…The Bats field technician Jake Holloway was on the wagon that night…
Jake Holloway had a wagon, and they would roll that wagon onto the field, and that wagon had up to 50 bags of Quick-Dry powder on it…
And they just kept on pouring more Quick-Dry around the pitcher’s mound area…Rocket Wheeler started to sound like a broken record…He just kept repeating the same old line…”We need another bag of Quick-Dry out there”….
Jake “The Snake” Holloway, and his grounds crew, knew just what to do, and here comes that Quick-Dry Wagon, rolling back out to the mound…There was so much Quick-Dry dust in the air, you could barely see the baseball field…It was like a Quick Dry dust storm had rolled in, from the wheat fields of Montana…
We were going to get that game in that night, and we did…And I may be underestimating the number of bags of Quick Dry that Jake and his helpers dropped on the field that night….
The dust was flying out there around the pitcher’s mound, it was also very dusty out there in the right and left field corners…The dust was all over the ballpark, and the old War Memorial Staduim looked more like a Dust-Bowl….
But, like I was saying, the show must go on, and we got the game in, the Fouth of July Fireworks Show did roll on too…
Jake Holloway and his men left the stadium some time real early the next morning, and they knew that they had been in the Battle of the ‘Boro, and they won the battle, they won the war, and they won over the hearts of capacity crowd of nearly 6,000 fans that night at the old War Memorial Stadium….
And as the dust from all those bags of Quick Dry began to settle, you could still hear Rocket Wheeler yelling, “We don’t need a new pitcher, we need another bag of Quick Dry out there”….
As the years go by, the number of bags of Quick Dry that save the game that night has grown, and this story has taken on a life of its own too…Was it 50 bags of Quick Dry, which I do feel like is a safe and fair assessment, or was it 75 bags of Quick Dry, which seemed to be what the old Referee Joe Lee said he was seeing, or was it more like what John Henry Moss, the South Atlantic League President wrote in his game journal…John Henry Moss said he saw over 100 bags of Quick Dry save the Fourth of July, last night at the War Memorial Stadium, in Greensboro, N.C.
Take your pick, and if you ask me, in 2023, the FNB, will be the place to see your Fireworks for the Fourth…FNB Field, that’s First National Bank Field, home of your Greensboro Grasshoppers….
**********And as a Quick Note piece from the game back on the Fourth of July in 2004, the Greensboro Bats manager that year was Steve Phillips, but he was out of town that night, and the Bats manager for that game, was Brandon Hyde, the current manager for the fast-improving Baltimore Orioles….**********