McCrary Park
Asheboro, NC
Review by Gary
On the final stop of my 2021 road trip to Florida, I visited historic McCrary Park in Asheboro, North Carolina. This old mill town lies half an hour south of the Greensboro, home to the famous sit-in lunch counter, now home to an International Civil Rights Museum. McCrary Park was built in 1946 by McCrary Mills as a home for the factory’s Industrial League team.
The Eagles played their first game at the park in 1948 and it remained their home until the industrial league semi-pro era ended in the late 1950’s. The ballpark became home to Asheboro Legion Post 45 following the revival of the program in the late 1950s. After the sale of the Acme-McCrary Corporation in the 2000s, the McCrary Foundation donated the park to the City of Asheboro. Today, the Asheboro Copperheads of the Coastal Plain League call the locale their viper’s nest.
With a capacity of about 1,400, fans can choose from a nice variety of viewing options at McCrary, from the yellow and blue fold-down seats under the main grandstand, metal bleachers down either base line beyond the dugouts, or by storming a uniquely long redoubt of a hill down the right field line where one can perch while staying alert for attacking foul balls.
Both dugouts are at ground level and feature the same brickwork as the grandstand. The classic design of these buildings is juxtaposed by the synthetic field surface that covers both fair and foul territory, except for the base paths.
McCrary Park boasts two scoreboards, one more than usual for collegiate-level ball. A modern electronic scoreboard in right center field provides game info while a dormant, but vintage manual scoreboard resides amongst the advertisements in left-center. This, coupled with the classic covered grandstand, offers a nostalgic reminder of the past in this sleepy Southern town.
2021
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