This is the 11th part of a series on John Ringley, a trusted confidant of the late Jim Crockett Sr. and an influential force in Jim Crockett Promotions during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. While pro wrestling was the bread and butter of Jim Crockett Promotions, baseball would also play a major role in the Crockett family history.
The Crocketts got into the baseball business in the mid-1970s when Jim Crockett Jr., his siblings and their mother Elizabeth bought the Asheville Orioles, the Double-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles, and relocated the club from Asheville, N.C.
, to Charlotte as the Charlotte Orioles. A decision to tear down Clark Griffith Park , replacing it with warehouses on the site of the park, had prompted family friend and Charlotte sports writer Bob Quincy to ask the Crockett clan to save the historic structure from destruction and buy a baseball team in Asheville. The stadium was part of Charlotte’s rich and diverse history, Quincy argued, and was worth saving.
The old home of the defunct Charlotte Hornets baseball team had been owned by the Minnesota Twins and had not had baseball since the 1972 season when it operated two teams at Griffith Park, one in the Southern League and the other in the Western Carolina League. The Crockett family answered the call, paying off the Asheville team’s $20,000 indebtedness and moving the club to Charlotte. Jim Crockett Sr.
Memorial Park, formerly Clark Griffith Park, was a classic old wooden structure that had be.
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