Charleston Road Trip

While most of your are at sporting events on Saturdays, yours truly is working at his regular job. But, it evens out in some ways.

During my mid-week "weekend," I'm often able to take in baseball games, too.

I decided to do a Charleston road trip on Tuesday for a day-night doubleheader at a couple of stadiums I'd never visited before.

First up was Buccaneer Ballpark for the Furman-Charleston Southern game. The school has been upgrading the facility in recent years and it has a nice, new-looking feel.

The forest behind the outfield fence and behind first base gives a nice natural background. On Tuesday, there was a hawk, eagle or some other large bird of prey flying overhead for much of the game.

I have no idea if school officials are hopeful of adding lights or not, but it would probably be a nice setting for night games, too.

On a side note, I give two thumbs up to the hamburgers at the concession stand.

There were perhaps 100 people there and a listed capacity of 500, so seating was not an issue. Those who were there were treated to a couple of dandy defensive plays by Furman second baseman Marcus Rose. On one, he charged a dribbler just beyond the mound, fielded it and fired a strike to shortstop Connor Lind to get a forceout at second. On the other, he made a nice catch of a line drive, whirled and threw to first base to double off a runner.


I don't know if the sign at left was added by first-year coach Stuart Lake, or was pre-existing, but each time a batter leaves the CSU dugout he gets a reminder of the program's goal: getting to Omaha for the College World Series.

Tuesday night, I took in the South Carolina-College of Charleston game at Patriots Point. My only previous trip to Patriots Point was when the USS Yorktown was the only attraction there.

College of Charleston now has baseball, soccer and softball facilities there.

The listed capacity for the baseball stadium is 2,000, but it seemed smaller than that.

The view from the reserved seating area is far better than the general admission -- which is all that was available when I got there. I moved into the reserved seating for a couple of innings after the crowd thinned out.

It had been sunny and comfortable at CSU. A stiff wind coming in off the Atlantic Ocean contributed to the chilly night at Patriots Point.


I wasn't aware of the 20-foot wall down the short left-field line until I got there. It came into play a few times in the second inning, when the Gamecocks hit a couple of balls off of it and one over it. Hitting a ball in the air to right was an excercise in futility. Several sharply-hit balls were knocked down by the wind for easy outs.

I'm heading home Wednesday, but I'm hopeful I can hit one more new stadium (for me) on the way back to the Upstate.