See the 2009 Schedule!
The Asheville Tourists are our minor league baseball team. The Tourists are a Class A team in the South Atlantic League and have been a farm team of the Colorado Rockies since 1994. Enjoy a game in historic McCormick Field near downtown. The park opened in 1924. It was renovated in 1959, and renovated again for the 1992 season. McCormick Field seats 4,000 fans, and is often joked about because of its scoreboard, which reads "Visitors" in the guest slot and "Tourists" in the home slot. Munch peanuts and Crackerjack and enjoy some good ole baseball. An average of 13 Thirsty Thursdays are on the Tourist's home schedule. Beer is just a buck on these nights, and the crowd loves it. McCormick Field itself holds a lot of history - scenes from the movie Bull Durham were shot here.
Accolades
With fans visiting McCormick Field at an unprecedented rate, the Asheville Tourists and their ballpark have received some lofty national recognition in recent days.
ESPN.com has named Asheville’s McCormick Field as part of the website’s “10 quintessential road tours that capture the best of the majors and minors.” Asheville is part of the fourth trip that also includes visits to Norfolk, Durham, Hickory, Augusta and Charleston.
Additionally, baseballparks.com ranked the Tourists and McCormick Field as part of the website’s Top 12 in its Best of Class A ratings. Ballparkreviews.com, meanwhile, gave the team and ballpark high rankings across the board, including an A- for atmosphere and B+ for the stadium. Ballparkreviews.com summed up its recent visit to a Tourists game by stating, “The setting is cool, the atmosphere is focused on baseball and the prices are cheap. You just can’t get this type of authentic minor league experience at too many parks these days.”
Noted among the rankings are the numerous improvements made to McCormick Field over the past year. The upgrades, made by new Tourists owners Palace Sports & Entertainment and the City of Asheville at a cost of more than $800,000, include a state-of-the-art scoreboard, box seats, picnic area and upscale suite. The results have the Tourists on pace for a season attendance mark of 170,000, which would eclipse the franchise record set in 2000 by more than 8,000 fans and represent an improvement of nearly 20,000 fans compared to the 2005 campaign.
Directions: Located at 30 Buchanan Place, Asheville, on the eastern edge of downtown. From I-240, take the Charlotte Street South exit, go south one mile on Charlotte, and turn left on McCormick Place (AAMCO Transmission on the corner). McCormick Field is on the left. From I-40, take Exit 50 (Biltmore Avenue), go north on Biltmore Av. past Mission St. Joe's Hospital, past the Ford dealer, through one traffic light and right at the next street, McCormick Place (gas station on the corner). McCormick Field is on the right.
More on their 2009 Season
The Asheville Tourists 2009 South Atlantic League baseball schedule features 70 home games, including a dozen Thirsty Thursdays and a Friday, Fourth of July contest that could be the biggest date of the year.
Asheville will open the 2009 campaign on the road for a four-game series at Greensboro, on April 9-12. The Tourists will then make their season debut at McCormick Field on Monday, April 13, when the Greensboro Grasshoppers visit Western North Carolina for a four-game set. The first homestand of the year will continue with a weekend series against the Hickory Crawdads that concludes on Monday, April 20.
In addition to the 12 Thirsty Thursday home games, the Tourists will also have 11 games on Friday and Saturday nights as well as 10 Sunday afternoon tilts. The schedule contains impressive balance, with Asheville hosting 13 games in April, 13 in May, 13 in June, 16 in July, 12 in August and four in September. The South Atlantic League regular season concludes on Labor Day, September 7, when Asheville will wrap up a four-game series at Greenville.
"We are very pleased with the way the schedule has worked out," said Asheville general manager Larry Hawkins. "Every team is always hoping to get as many weekend dates as possible, and we are fortunate that nearly half of our home games will be played on either Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Then when you add in the 12 Thirsty Thursday games, we really could not have drawn up a better schedule ourselves."
