1993 Polecats ticket.jpg

I have always been a packrat. It is not difficult for me to throw away trash, but if something is related to an experience, I tend to hang on to it. The shed at my mother’s house has several boxes of programs and tickets, dating back to seeing The Ringling Brothers circus at Tallahassee. There are several from sporting events and when I rummaged through the contents of one recently, I was not surprised to see a handful from Albany Polecats games.

The Polecats were not the first minor league baseball team in Albany. They weren’t the longest-lasting, nor were they the last. Georgia was once filled to the gills with minor league clubs, but nearly all had faded out by the end of the 1960s. South Georgia baby boomers had teams in Tifton, Douglas, Valdosta, Moultrie, Thomasville, Albany, Cordele, Fitzgerald, Waycross and Hazlehurst. All I had were the offerings of Albany and those sweet few years of the Polecats.

They were first an affiliate of the Expos, then the Orioles. The Expos years saw the most talent make its way through. The 1995 team alone had Hiram Bocachica, Vladimir Guerrero, Brad Fullmer, Javier Vazquez and Fernando Seguignol, who all had long Major League careers. My favorite, though, was Jayson Durocher.

Durocher only pitched in parts of two seasons in the big time, both with the Milwaukee Brewers. He was not a major force in Albany, just 3-7 that year, but he did something nice for a gawky, skinny kid. I had wandered down to the dugout, hoping for a few autographs. I didn’t care who, it was just the idea of signatures from professional ballplayers.

It was Durocher who walked over to the fence. He saw the battered old baseball I brought. He offered me a better one, one from the bucket of baseballs they had, a genuine South Atlantic League product. I found it just a few days ago. He would spend 55 innings in the Majors — nine years to get there and three more fighting to get back.

It was my first game in Albany that I learned the fine art of heckling. The Polecats were playing the Charleston Wheelers, a Cincinnati Reds affiliate. In the starting lineup for the Wheelers was an outfielder named Wayne Wilkerson. After two strikeouts, a few individuals decided they liked the sound of Wayne. Perhaps they had heard it from the dugout, but it was verbally tossed back at him.

Wilkerson struck out a third time. The calls of “Wayne” grew slightly louder and he voiced some slight displeasure. Perhaps at the crowd, perhaps at himself, but it was clearly getting to him.

He was up a fourth time and fanned again.

“Wayne!”

This time, Wilkerson turned out and faced the stands and let loose a tirade that would make a sailor blush.

Whatever the intended result of his ranting, it backfired. The crowd laughed at him, then heckled him more. Wilkerson just slowly headed back inside the dugout.

Albany made it more than a game. It was an experience. Lots of contests and giveaways. I remember one that awarded the dirtiest car in the parking lot with a free car wash. Dad won two contests in one night, though I can only remember one. There was a trivia question asking for the winning pitcher of the first night World Series game. He had grown up a Pirates fan, so it only took a little rattling of the brain to get Bruce Kison, who won game four in 1971.

That was his first prize win of the night. The other would come at the conclusion of the game. I cannot remember what the actual prizes were, but I doubt they were significant. Albany never seemed to operate much in the black.

The Polecats would leave us. There would be a couple of independent ventures and the two years of the South Georgia Waves. I attended a Waves game, still have a T-shirt in the closet. But we knew they were not there to stay and little disappointment was felt over their departure.

Baseball at every level is everywhere these days, all over our television sets. MLB has apps for electronic devices that let you experience every pitch. But I am still nostalgic for our boys of summer, baseball in our backyard.