Road Trip:Greenville SC & GreenEville Tennessee!

Day two continues with a stay in Greenville before we move on to Johnson City and Greeneville.

Confused?
Well, there are two cities in minor league baseball named Greenville or Greeneville, if you please, and we would be leaving one and entering another before the end of the night!
The day would start in South Carolina, where Fred had booked a private tour of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum across the street from Fluor Field.

The museum (and the house Jackson lived in) is on a side street, located directly across from where we had parked the previous day, so it was easy to find.
The home is only open for a few hours on Saturday, so you have to book things through them if the need is on other days.

Our host Bill was both gracious and knowledgeable about Jackson, and after his talk, we were given the run of the place for as long as we wanted.
It was interesting to see all the Jackson items and hear about Greenville's favorite son from such a nice gentleman.
It's a nice place and enough to keep the attention of an average baseball fan, but I think you could (if you had the place to yourself) comfortably see everything in an hour.
Thanks to Bill for opening the place up for us and to Fred for the legwork in hooking us up, along with the twenty-dollar donation for doing so!

After our time at the Jackson Museum, we decided on lunch in Greenville before leaving town, and I gave Fred a list of four or five places that looked interesting on Trip Advisor for him to choose from.
I do the same with Mike Oravec sometimes, and it usually seems to work out well.

Fred selected Chicken Salad Chick, a specialty place that almost all of the main menu features various Chicken Salads.
I loved it as you received a scoop or a sandwich as your main course, and could select one of many sides to go with it, or another scoop on the side if you wished.

I selected a scoop as the side choices didn't seem to be my style.
I had a sandwich on wheat with "kickin Kay Lynne" (you can click here for exactly what is in each one) with a side scoop of "Jalapeno Holly".

It was delicious, and for lunch, Chicken Salad Chick was rocking with customers, so others must be fans as well.
If you see one of these-make sure you stop as it hits the spot for a light lunch!

Next stop was scheduled to be Greeneville, Tennessee, but Fred and I called an audible as we were going to go to Greeneville that night and Johnson City the next day for an 11 AM game, but we decided to try to finish Johnson City and then hit Greeneville.
If this worked out well, we could clear out the next morning and have more open time on our way to Burlington,North Carolina,which was over three hours away.

The main target was former Cardinal first-round pick Delvin Perez, whom Fred wanted on a baseball and who had a top 100 for me, but we would be quickly foiled as Perez had been injured two nights before and was no longer in Johnson City.

Fred waited outside for the visiting Elizabethton Twins, who appeared in uniform since they only traveled 15 minutes to get to Johnson City, and was able to get Wander Javier, a player that the Twins signed to a four-million-dollar bonus, and coach Jeff Reed, who was a long-time journeyman catcher in the big leagues.

As the rain began to fall in Johnson City, I was able to get a card signed that had been in my box for years as Cardinals hitting coach Brandon Allen signed his 2008 Carolina League top prospect card, along with three more.

The rain was dropping harder and harder as we jumped into the car and drove the 40 minutes or so to Greeneville, Tennessee, for the Astros against the visiting Kingsport Mets.
Kingsport never made a team set, and Greeneville skipped 2016 and 2017 sets, so I had just a few cards for coach and former Astro Cesar Cedeno, and one for the manager, Danny Ortega, along with a Tri-City card for outfielder Reid Russell.
It was just as important to knock Greeneville off the stadium list as to get cards signed.

It was easy to find the stadium, but students were back in school at Tusculum College, where the Astros share the field with Tusculum, and parking was in short supply.
We wasted several minutes riding around trying to find parking until a team employee told us to park in a certain area.

The game was in a rain delay, and I was stunned to find such high prices for an Appy League team.
Food was quite high, and four dollars for a program?
Give the Astros credit for a nice gift shop though, that sold hats for all the teams in the league.

As we finally neared the field, warmups had begun with the rain stopping, but Cedeno and Ortega parked themselves in the dugout and never moved.

 I did get Reid Russell as he walked to the dugout, so it wasn't a total loss.
We watched for a while, but with the late start, we realized dinner might be hard to come by in Greeneville, which turned out to be correct.
There was next to nothing open, and we had to settle for a Mexican place, which is never my preferred meal.

Those of you who know me know that I love hot and spicy foods, but the soft bread that seems to be part of so many Mexican-style dishes leaves me less than thrilled.
I ordered nachos that weren't bad, if they had more nachos.
They were the opposite of so many dishes-lots of toppings, few nacho chips.

A drive back to the hotel in Johnson City concluded the day with an evening with no television, as some genius (not me) had disconnected it.
Combining that with the fridge being unplugged when I checked in and I wasn't thrilled with the hotel on this night.
The odd thing was that of the three nights, I liked this room the best; it was just the other things that ruined it.

I'll be working on day three in Burlington and day four in Charlotte soon!

Road Trip:Greenville SC

I have had a bunch of trips this month and more to come so these road trip recaps will be dribbling out over the next week or two,but I wanted to get started as quickly as I could.

We moved from Hagerstown to our first stop in Greenville South Carolina at 5;30.Greenville is about seven and a half hours away from home,so we left in plenty of time for a 4;00 start for the Greenville Drive (Boston) and the visiting Rome Braves (Atlanta) game in the final game of their series.

We stopped for lunch in North Carolina at a fast food place called "Cookout".
I had never stopped there before,but Ryan and Battlin' Bob had both recommended Cookout as having good food,lots of it and at a great price,so Fred and I decided to try it.
It was excellent and a large burger,two sides and a drink for 4.99 is a great deal.
The exploding price at fast food places is a major issue for me and why I don't eat a lot of it anymore-which isn't a bad thing,I suppose!
There is just one Cookout in Maryland (Salisbury),so you have to go deep into Virginia to start to see them,but if you do-give them a shot.

Rolling into Greenville a bit early,we managed to nab a good parking space and walked around Fluor Field for a while.
We got our tickets at the front of the stadium and took the above picture of the Shoeless Joe Jackson statue at the front of the field.
I'll have more on Joe Jackson in my next post,but Greenville has done a terrific job of remembering the legacy of Jackson.
I didn't spend very much money at any of the souvenir stands at any game I attended on this trip,so I didn't buy anything at the Drive's shop,although Fred continued his hat buying!
Actually,I didn't spend any money on myself at any of the team shops-I'm quite proud!

Greenville's Fluor Field is designed by field dimensions to echo the parent Red Sox' Fenway Park and it does so well.
The only real difference that struck me was the "little green monster" looked so bare and I couldn't figure out why.
I figured out later why that was-the Fenway board also has out of town scores from around the league and the Greenville board only has the Drive game.

I found something else that I had never been asked to do before-I was metal wanded.
Fortunately for me,my card total was smaller than usual and even though I worked out of the briefcase for the trip,I didn't bring it inside to any of the stadiums that we visited-I missed it though.
I like having everything in front of me and visual,so I feel a little bit lost without it...
We would later be wanded again in Charlotte,which makes me wonder why some do this and others do not.
I don't have a problem being wanded,it's just that it slows everything up-As I will discuss more in a future post.

When you enter Fluor Field from either side,you have a straight look at the field and the field quickly fills the field of vision.
Everything is in front of you and well laid out and it's easy to see where you need to go.
Fred and I needed to autograph more in this series than any of the others really and needed a fast start.
The Greenville Drive does not come to Hagerstown this season and the Rome Braves came in May before the release of their team set,so I had plenty to do with the main targets being Rome's Ian Anderson and Greenville's Jason Groome.
Anderson had been a great signer earlier in the season,but his Top 100 card had not been released yet and Groome,as noted,had not been around at all.

Fluor Field's layout for autographs was very reminiscent of State College,but even better.
Where at State College,the visiting team comes out of a third base chute and the Spikes have a dugout tunnel,but warm up near the chute,in Greenville-both teams come out of the chute!
Makes player access easy and for both teams.
I was able to get many of the Greenville players and some of the Rome players (I had team set stuff for Mike Oravec) with the surprising hardest player being Rome outfielder Christian Pache,who I was only able to get one of his SAL prospect and All-Star cards done.
Ian Anderson came out very late and Fred was by the chute as opposed to my being closer to the field.
I quickly got my top 100 to Fred and held the rest of my cards in case Anderson had time to sign by my spot.
Fred got the most important one knocked out and when Anderson came to me,he signed four of five,so I consider that successful!
Jason Groome came out even later and I thought he might even be charting,but he signed my top 100,SAL prospect and Mike's SAL prospect and asked how many more I had.
I said 4 and he said "I'm really late,I'll get the rest after the game".
I had little doubt that he would have,but we would not be around....

The heat in the South is different than that here in the North and I could tell in was quickly taking its toll on Fred.
He looked a bit out of his comfort zone,so after we sat in our seats (shaded) and he still didn't look great,we decided to go back to the hotel to let Fred get back into the swing of things.
After a rest and an average dinner at a place called Italian Gardens,we were finished for the day.

I would definitely return to the Drive for a future visit.
The ballpark is great,the staff was very friendly and you can do well autographing there.
I'll have more on day two on the town of Greenville in the next road trip post,hopefully tonight or tomorrow morning!!!