COLUMBIA SC...A BASEBALL TOWN

CAROLINA GAMECOCKS WIN THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES AGAIN

The City of Columbia is pondering the sale of Capital City Stadium, Kahn Development considered incorporating a ball park in the Northeast at Sandhills, and the developer of the State Hospital grounds mulls the construction of a new stadium for a professional baseball team. These events speak to the love  people making their home in the Midlands have for the game, going back at least to 1892. With previous interruptions and absent from Columbia since 2004 when the Bombers departed for Greenville, professional baseball has been a part of living in Columbia for 69 of the last 119 years.

The 1892 Columbia Senators lasted only one season when the early version of the South Atlantic League folded. They came back in 1896 for another season. It was a shaky start, but in 1904, when the Columbia Skyscrapers became a charter franchise of the re-invented South Atlantic League, that the game began to be a part of the cities identity. The team name changed to the “Gamecocks” the next year and six years later, they were the Columbia Commies, followed by the Comers the next year. Under that name and with the help of legendary Goose Goslin, the Comers were contenders for the league title over the next 15 years. Several more name changes were to come…Sandlappers, Senators, Reds, Gems, Mets and Bombers, and through the years Columbia saw many of its players leave for the Majors, even in that first year.

Columbia is a baseball town. Irmo recently sent its Little League to the southeast regional tournament with hopes of getting to the next level in the World Series in Williamsport. Some of the best high school baseball is played in Forest Acres at Flora High School, a perennial state champion. The Columbia Blowfish of the Coastal Plain League gives unpaid college players a chance to refine their skill at Capital City Stadium. And, of course, there is the University of South Carolina, returning the Gamecocks to Omaha for its second national championship at the College World Series in 2010.