Hickory sticks

Sporting News, The, August 15, 1994 by Pat Jordan, Mark Newman

Darrell admits that before the Crawdads, he wasn't much of a baseball fan. He played first and outfield for a Little League team, and that was it. "I'd never even heard of the Sally League," he says. "But now baseball has brung up Hickory. You know, every little kid dreams of playing baseball in the minor leagues, but then you get out of college and have to go to work. Now I can go to a baseball game. I have a hot sandwich and a good time. I love to be entertained. If I don't support the team the town dies. It's something I fell in love with." Darrell looks up and smiles. "You know, this year I won a flower basket."

While Darrell finishes his leisurely dinner in the restaurant, people come by to greet him. Everyone knows Darrell. He's the Crawdad fan who fills out every program at every game in the hope that his program will be drawn for a prize. It's his distinction in a world in which, before, he was anonymous.

Darrell is right. There isn't much of a reason to go to downtown Hickory anymore, unless you're a lawyer or a stockbroker. There are still the stately, old red-brick mansions lining the street into town. But they are mostly lawyers' and doctors' offices now, and no one sits on their expansive front porches, rocking away in the summer afternoon heat. There are no more country stores downtown, with old men in straw hats and bib overalls, chewing tobacco. The pool hall is gone, and the town green in its place is Union Square, a complex of high-rise, glass-and-chrome office buildings and a few modern chain restaurants such as the Hickory Station version of the Victoria Station Chop House. And then along came the Crawdads, with their cute name that offended no one, and then Conrad, their own version of the San Diego Chicken. There was very little thought of calling Hickory's new team "The Rebels," with its unpleasant connotations.

"We thought the name Rebels was passe," says Dan Beaver, the Crawdads' majority owner. "Passe" isn't a word that was much in vogue in Hickory when "The Rebels" played. But then again, Beaver is more a man of the new South than the old. He's trim in his 40s or 50s, and he doesn't much resemble that skinny, big-eared 10-year-old who pitched and lost in the Little League World Series for Mooresville in 1952. "If I couldn't play baseball, I didn't want to live," he says. "Then I discovered girls and pool and running around." In later years, he discovered making money with a string of nursing homes throughout the South. Now he has become a sort of small-town H. Wayne Huizenga, buying up minor league franchises in Hickory, Winston-Salem, N.C., and Knoxville, Tenn. Someday, like Ted Turner, Beaver would like to buy into the major leagues, and he's using his Crawdads as his own personal training ground, and to prove to major league owners that he knows how to run a team for a profit.

"In the last five years, the minor leagues are making a heck of a comeback," Beaver says. "This is baseball country. I remember when every town had a team. (At one point, there were 40 minor league teams in North Carolina; today there are 10.) My daddy used to take me to see the old Statesville Owls in Class D. They had this typical, old minor league stadium with a tin roof overhang behind homeplate, and wooden-plank seats." He smiles and shakes his head. "No," he goes on, "there was no thought in calling the team 'The Rebels.' It was appropriate today. We were lucky to catch on with our logo. It helped the team become part of family life. Kids go to the park instead of the mall. It's a chance for a father to spend quality time with his son 71 times a year. As for me, well, my love for baseball turned into a good economic thing. It's paid off."