Baby Birds learn to fly in Bluefield

By Candus Thomson and Monica Lopossay | Sun reporters

July 12, 2007

BLUEFIELD, W.VA. - The handshake, a quaint form of sealing a deal, has worked for the Baltimore Orioles and their Rookie-level team for half a century, an affiliation unmatched in organized baseball.

"We've never had a contract," says Bluefield Orioles general manager George McGonagle. "When the team leaves town Sept. 1, we say, 'See you next year.'"

In today's modern sports world, where moving vans come and go and owners change the name of their city of affiliation on a whim, a simple and dignified gentlemen's agreement is a throwback.

Just like the Bluefield Orioles and Bowen Field.

Forget about foam fingers and fancy food. You won't find them here.

When the umpire's call, "Play ball," rings off the deep, green woods that surround the field, "it's like a little trip back in time," says Dan Collison, an independent documentary maker who has been touring old ballparks for more than a decade.

An old-fashioned grandstand rises behind home plate, and individual voices stand out as they greet a neighbor, cheer a player or razz the men in blue. Programs are $1. Hot dogs, loaded, are $2.25.

Plunk down $20, not for a foam finger but for a Cal Ripken Jr. bobblehead in a Bluefield uniform, or a set of 50 baseball cards depicting some of Bluefield's most famous player-citizens.

Square one

Bluefield, with its 10-week season, is square one in organized baseball.

"We've had more than 100 players make the bigs. That sounds like a lot. But when you flip the numbers around, the percentage is horrible," McGonagle says.

Fewer than one in six Appalachian League players reach the top. The lucky and talented Baby Birds, as they are called locally, move up the ladder, perhaps to the Aberdeen IronBirds, the short-season Single-A team or the Delmarva Shorebirds, the low Single-A team.

But Bluefield's humble status belies its place in Oriole history.

"This is where Cal Ripken got on the bus to start his career," says Bruce Adams, who, with his wife, Margaret Engel, wrote the book, Ballpark Vacations: Great Family Trips to Minor League and Classic Major League Baseball Parks across America. "Bluefield is the one most people haven't experienced, and if they love baseball, they should."

In addition to Ripken, who played in Bluefield in 1978, there are Eddie Murray, Boog Powell, Don Baylor and Bobby Grich. Dean Chance, signed by the Orioles in 1959, passed through town on his way to the Los Angeles Angels in the 1960 expansion draft and a Cy Young Award in 1964.

Last Sunday, Grich returned to town for the first time in 40 years to celebrate the team's golden anniversary and conduct a baseball clinic for local kids. "It's the same old ballpark, it's the same place, it's beautiful," Grich told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "What a great place to play ball."

Powell is expected to make a guest appearance next week, and Chance before season's end.

Building on the past

This summer, the Orioles are averaging 1,135 fans a night. But it's more than fans in the seats that makes the baseball here special.

Over the past 15 years, the Bluefield Baseball Club has raised and spent $3 million, installing new lighting and a new field drainage system and replacing the antiquated clubhouse with a building that has indoor batting cages and pitching rubbers. The grandstand, rebuilt after it was gutted by a 1973 fire, has been fitted with 1,850 stadium seats salvaged from Anaheim Stadium.