Red Springs: The Littlest Baseball Town in America

 

Red Springs, North Carolina, was a unique place for a 1960s minor-league baseball team. It is a small town of approximately 3,000 people in historically impoverished Robeson County, in the southeast part of the state. Robeson County, a unique place itself, is the homeland of the Lumbee Tribe, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River. It is also racially diverse, home to significant White and Black populations. Red Springs is 90 miles southwest of Raleigh and 110 miles east of Charlotte, a fair stretch from the state’s population centers.

By the 1960s, professional baseball had practically left small-town America, and it appeared that towns like Red Springs were permanently shut out from organized baseball. In 1969, the Minnesota Twins challenged that assumption and placed their Class A affiliate in Red Springs.

For one season, Red Springs was the smallest town in America to host a professional baseball team.

THE HISTORY OF MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IN ROBESON COUNTY

Robeson County was no stranger to minor-league baseball, having hosted two teams in the Class D Tobacco State League from 1947–50. Red Springs was home to the Red Robins, an affiliate of the Philadelphia Athletics, while the county seat, Lumberton, hosted the Cubs, an affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, in 1947 and 1948, and the Auctioneers, an unaffiliated team, in 1949 and 1950. The Red Springs Red Robins were the most successful team in the short-lived Tobacco State League, winning championships in 1948 and 1949. The Tobacco State League hosted teams in other small towns in North Carolina—including places like Dunn and Warsaw in Harnett and Duplin Counties, respectively. Once the Tobacco League shuttered in 1950, many of these towns never again saw a minor-league team. Red Springs was the exception.

RED SPRINGS PREPARES FOR THE RETURN OF MINOR-LEAGUE BASEBALL

In October 1968, the Carolina League voted unanimously to allow the Twins to place a Class A affiliate in Red Springs, provided the local community could meet certain conditions that would ensure the town’s viability as a market.1 They included such items as a benchmark for advertising sales and the sale of 350 season tickets at $40 each. Red Springs was by far the smallest town to host a Carolina League team. Kinston, the next smallest, had a population of 23,020 in the 1970 census.

As outlined in a Sports Illustrated piece from July 1969, the conversation to bring minor-league baseball back to Red Springs formally started when Matt Boykin, the general manager of the Twins’ Carolina League affiliate in Wilson, about 50 miles east of Raleigh, placed a phone call to Tom Cope, a Red Springs resident and longtime follower of the game, to inquire about relocating the team there.2 However, the conversation had begun informally in the preceding months when Cope and fellow Red Springs baseball enthusiast Red Norris began courting the team and trying to lure them away from Wilson.3

It is important to know that Cope and Norris were not simply local baseball fans, and the Twins had reason to listen to them and believe in their ability to support the team. Both men had been part of the first minor-league team to play in Red Springs; Norris was the field manager and Cope the business manager.4 Norris had even scouted for the Baltimore Orioles and the Athletics after the Red Robins went defunct.5 They had experience working in local baseball and brought valuable knowledge that would be essential for the success of the Red Springs Twins. For Boykin, relocating his team to Red Springs represented a gamble. Could professional baseball thrive in small-town America in the late 1960s? He was determined to find out, and the enthusiasm of Robeson County’s residents provided a fertile ground for his experiment.

Within a month of the Carolina League’s vote, a local committee that included Cope as board chairman began working to prepare the town and its facilities to ensure that the conditions for the team’s arrival were met. By the end of 1968, the committee was able to secure $10,000 from a federally funded local economic development group to facilitate the upgrades needed to Robbins Park (which had hosted the Red Robins in the 1940s) to bring it into compliance with Carolina League standards.6

The community was enthusiastic to welcome the players and their families to town. Local businesses even rolled out the red carpet for the wives of Twins players. In May, First Union National Bank sponsored a party for them in their Red Springs board room and invited the public to meet them. The women were then taken by Southern National Bank to Lumberton to tour their facilities and dine in their cafeteria.7 One of them described the hospitality as being “treated like royalty.”8

In January, the team announced the hiring of former Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals outfielder and North Carolina native Tom Umphlett as field manager.9 The team prepared for the season by holding spring training in Melbourne, Florida, and an open house for fans at Robbins Park three days before their home opener against the Kinston Eagles, an affiliate of the New York Yankees.10

 

 

MINOR-LEAGUE BASEBALL ARRIVES BACK IN RED SPRINGS

On a clear, crisp North Carolina spring night, minor-league baseball officially returned to Red Springs. On April 16, 1969, an enthusiastic crowd of 2,185 turned out to Robbins Park to celebrate minor-league baseball’s first game in Robeson County after a 20-year absence. Tom Cope presided over pregame ceremonies, which featured speeches from general manager Matt Boykin, Mayor Pro Tem Duncan McGoogan, Red Springs Chamber of Commerce President Ray Liles, and Carolina League President Bill Jessup. McGoogan threw the ceremonial first pitch.11

Fans were treated to a close game that went into extra innings. The visiting Eagles carried a 1–0 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning, only for the Twins to tie it up, when Steve Brye doubled and scored. Unfortunately for the home crowd, the Eagles took a 3–1 lead in the top of the 10th and quickly quelled any hope for a comeback.12

The local enthusiasm that helped Red Springs so thoroughly prepare for the team’s arrival was noticed by other cities in the Carolina League. On April 22, the Daily Times-News in Burlington, North Carolina, home to the Alamance Senators, responded to a Senators-Twins game at Robbins Park drawing more than 1,000 fans by noting, “Baseball isn’t dead, it just moved to Red Springs.”13

The team’s early success at the gate also attracted the attention of Sports Illustrated, which profiled the club in July 1969. In its profile of the team, SI noted that by the midpoint of the season, the Twins were averaging 750 fans per game, had drawn up to 4,157 people (larger than the population of the town itself) to one game, and had already outdrawn Wilson (which had a population of 29,000) for the entire year.14 The Minnesota Twins even tried to tap into the local talent pool by holding a tryout camp at Robbins Park on June 11.15

STRUGGLES IN A SMALL TOWN

The people of Robeson County were enthusiastic about the Twins, and people were taking notice. However, enthusiasm alone was not enough to ensure the success of this kind of endeavor.

The Twins struggled on the field. While they hovered around .500 for the first month of the season and had a .446 winning average as late as July 25, they ultimately finished the season with a 57–84 record. Their .404 winning average was last in the Carolina League’s Eastern Division, 23 and a half games behind division winner Rocky Mount. For his efforts, Tommy Umphlett finished third in the Carolina League’s Manager of the Year voting.16

The on-field struggles were not the only issues that Twins players faced. Many simply had trouble adjusting to the mundane nature of small-town and rural life. In the Sports Illustrated profile, players and their wives lamented that there was not much to do, the entertainment options were lacking, and it was difficult to receive more than one channel on television.17 Single players also found the local dating scene lacking.

However, for Matt Boykin, the lack of entertainment options in Robeson County was a feature that would help the team and others like it in the future. As he mentioned to Sports Illustrated, he had previously been competing against other entertainment options in the Wilson area. He said that towns like Red Springs would be the future of the low minors because baseball would have a monopoly on local entertainment options.18 Unfortunately for Boykin and the fans of Robeson County, others did not share that point of view.

THE END OF BASEBALL IN RED SPRINGS

On Labor Day, September 1, 1969, only 317 fans ventured out to Robbins Park to watch the final minor-league game in Robeson County’s history, as the Twins lost 5–1 to the High Point-Thomasville Royals.19 In October, the Minnesota Twins withdrew their Carolina League affiliate from Red Springs and looked elsewhere. Norris and Cope were optimistic they could find another major-league club to come to Red Springs for the 1970 season and beyond.20

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this saga is that a fan base lost a team through no fault of their own. In their decision to withdraw from Red Springs, the Twins cited the lack of entertainment and housing options as their primary reason.21 There was little that the Robeson County faithful could do to change either situation. Their enthusiasm and hospitality were not enough to convince the Twins to stay.

For Boykin, his experiment was ultimately a failure. Putting a Carolina League team in a small town in North Carolina was an admirable thought, and the people of Robeson County rose to the occasion and welcomed the team with open arms and generous hospitality. However, small towns just did not have the amenities demanded by minor-league ballplayers of the 1960s.

The Twins ultimately landed in the much larger city of Lynchburg, Virginia, population 54,083 in the 1970 census, and Norris and Cope were never able to land another major-league affiliation for Red Springs. Minor-league baseball in Robeson County was officially gone.

CHRISTOPHER CHAVIS is an amateur baseball historian and history buff. His research interests include New England and North Carolina baseball history, and he is an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox (a possibly unhealthy obsession picked up during his time living in New Hampshire as a college student). He is originally from Robeson County, North Carolina, and a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, daughter, and two cats, Teddy and Yaz.

 

Notes

1 “Red Springs May Become Carolina League Member,” Robesonian (Lumberton, NC), November 1, 1968, 12.

2 “A Bonanza in Red Springs,” Sports Illustrated, July 28, 1969.

3 Dick Brown, “Red Springs—Baseball’s Boom Town,” Raleigh News and Observer, January 5, 1969, 71.

4 Tom Cope, “Norris and Cope to Be Managers of Red Robins,” Robesonian, January 20, 1947, 6.

5 Brown, “Red Springs—Baseball’s Boom Town.”

6 “Red Springs Given Carolina Team,” Robesonian, December 13, 1968, 11.

7 “Wives of Red Springs ‘Twins’ Given the Red Carpet Tours,” Robesonian, May 12, 1969, 5.

8 “A Bonanza in Red Springs.”

9 “Umphlett Named Manager at RS,” Robesonian, January 16, 1969, 12.

10 “Open House Scheduled.”

11 “Opening Red Springs Game Had Its Moments, Robesonian, April 17, 1969, 15.

12 “Opening Red Springs Game.”

13 “Nats at W-S Tonight, at Home Wednesday,” Burlington Daily Times-News, April 22, 1969, 16.

14 “A Bonanza in Red Springs.”

15 “Tryout Camp,” Robesonian, May 22, 1969, 13.

16 “Manager of the Year Chosen in Carolina League,” Robesonian, October 28, 1969, 7.

17 “A Bonanza in Red Springs.”

18 “A Bonanza in Red Springs.”

19 “Red Springs Loses by 5–1 to Conclude Carolina Year,” Robesonian, September 2, 1969. 8.

20 “Red Springs Loses Working Agreement with Minnesota,” Robesonian, October 13, 1969, 9.

21 “Red Springs Loses Working Agreement.”