Baseball in Huntsville - Paperback

by Mark McCarter (Author)

The Rocket City Trash Pandas, who made their Class AA South debut last summer, rekindled the interest in professional baseball in this area. As a journalist, it rekindled my interest in looking at the team with some historical context, to the first baseball team in the area (in 1903, with Ty Cobb as a visiting player) to the arrival of the first affiliated team (in 1985) and its ultimate demise. I discovered interesting characters of the early days (the first "graduate" from Huntsville to the majors once placed a dead rat in a sportswriter's bed, perhaps a precursor to the horse's head in The Godfather). The Huntsville Stars era was populated with some legendary players, like Jose Canseco, who was the league MVP in the first year of the franchise, Mark McGwire, Tim Hudson, Ryan Braun and Nelson Cruz. The Huntsville area also produced some fascinating players like Gabby Street, famous for catching a ball dropped from the top of the Washington Monument, Jimmy Key, Craig Kimbrel and our "Mr. Baseball," Don Mincher, who homered in his first World Series at-bat, enjoyed a 14-year career in the majors, became a team general manager, owner and, ultimately, president of the Southern League. Even as people embrace the freshness of the Trash Pandas, so often the conversation will turn to "I remember when..." moments from the Stars' era.

Author Biography

Mark McCarter was the sixth sportswriter presented with the prestigious Mel Allen Award for "lifetime contribution to sport" by the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. A four-time Alabama Sports Writer of the Year by the National Sports Media Association, he was inducted into the Alabama Sports Writers Hall of Fame in 2022 and named one of the "50 Legends" of the organization. He covered the saga of professional baseball in Huntsville for seventeen years for the Huntsville Times, having previously worked for the Chattanooga News-Free Press and the Anniston Star. His work has been published in Sports Illustrated, Fortune, the Sporting News and numerous newspapers across the country.