I noticed this week that the Shorebirds are making their penultimate trip to Kinston, North Carolina. Barring a meeting in the Carolina League playoffs, their return to see the Down East Wood Ducks in August will be among the final games venerable old Grainger Stadium will host for the foreseeable future. Last year the team was sold to an entity which will be moving the franchise, a Texas Rangers affiliate, to Spartanburg, South Carolina. (Another effect of that will likely be placing the Fayetteville Woodpeckers in our division next year, since Spartanburg fits better geographically in the CL South.)
I remembered a few years ago when Kinston lost its longtime Cleveland Indians affiliate (which was in the former rendition of the Carolina League) to Zebulon, North Carolina - that team still exists as the Carolina Mudcats, albeit under a different affiliation. But the contraction of the California League after the 2016 season allowed the Rangers’ management, which was looking for a new home for their high-A team, to shift their franchise to Kinston. (It was the same time the aforementioned Woodpeckers joined the league, although they were first known as the Buies Creek Astros.) So Kinston didn’t go without for too long.
But it’s a question of what will happen this time. The Wood Ducks lagged well behind in attendance last season as the only CL team to not reach 100,000 patrons - this for a team that won the Northern Division and lost in the league finals. The city of Kinston itself is perhaps the smallest in the Carolina League, with less than 20,000 inhabitants in a county that has a population of 55,000. As a comparison, here in Salisbury the Shorebirds are hosted by a city of about 36,000 and a county that edged over the 100,000 barrier in the last census. However, the Delmarva region - which, for the Shorebirds’ marketing purposes includes the six southernmost counties on the Eastern Shore of Maryland as well as Sussex County, Delaware and Accomack County, Virginia - has a year-round population of over 500,000 that can swell to as much as 700,000 on summer weekends.
Kinston’s fate may be similar to that of the towns that used to make up the Appalachian League, although those cities were placed in the collegiate summer league that maintained the Appy League name. Kinston would be the easternmost team in the league, but not too far from Burlington, N.C., which holds the distinction now. (There would have to be another team added or relocated to maintain an even number of teams, though.)
While there is also an Atlantic League independent team in their region, I don’t think Kinston would have the facilities or population to support such a team. On that end, I’m going to be interested to see how the new Hagerstown team in the Atlantic League (the Flying Boxcars) does since its local population is analogous to Salisbury’s but they’re playing in a presumably state-of-the-art facility.
One thing that sold me on moving here twenty years ago was the fact they had a minor league baseball team, albeit at a lower classification than the Mud Hens. As an affordable night out and having access to season tickets through my employer, I became a quick fan of the Shorebirds, starting with Opening Night of 2005. But even if I wasn’t a baseball fan, having a team is a source of civic pride that separates a boring little town from a place that’s going places. (The same was true for Harrington, Delaware, and their independent minor league hockey team that regularly sold out its facility at the state fairgrounds but lost its lease after the 2022-23 season. Now the team is slated to return once a new ice arena is built in nearby Dover.)
So I feel bad for Kinston going through this loss for the second time in a little over a decade. Hopefully there will be enough of a market for someone to place a new team in Grainger and keep some civic pride in their little town.
Postscript: Today also marks an anniversary that I’m going to expand on at my eponymous site as a Monday Memory next week.