A Solumn Good Bye to Joe.

Average Joe is leaving Anderson, and the leave is as sudden as the homecoming.

Around last summer, Anderson welcomed home minor league baseball after 20 years. The independent run South Coast League gave Anderson the minor league team, The Anderson Joes.
Other teams, like the Charlotte County Redfish, South Georgia Peanuts, Aiken Foxhounds, and Bradenton Juice made up the rest of the league.

I remember the opening day (I was covering it for the weekly Anderson Journal at the time). The almost football like weather, the crack of the wooden bat, the smell of the dust, the fireworks afterward. It was a good ole time at the ball park. Heck, the first souvenir foul ball came on the third live pitch.

After that, the Joes were a pretty mediocre team record wise, but improved the second half of the season. The SCL looked to make its second run this summer, but now the league has folded, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

The first sign of trouble should have been the Juice, a team which shared a field with a junior college that didn't allow alcohol to be sold, a staple for minor league baseball. This forced the Juice to become a travel team.

Next came the cancellation of the All-Star game that was played after the season. That, along with all the teams being under a single entity, unlike associated minor league clubs, may have also added to the eventual demise.

But, instead of looking at the bad, I'll focus on the positives. For one summer, the Joes gave Anderson something to do in the dry spell between spring football and the regular season.
Also, it gave the city a little boost in the economy, as well as affordable entertainment in its own backyard, and kept the "baseball money" in Anderson, instead of ending up in Greenville with the Drive (associated with the Boston Red Sox).

So, I wave good-bye to the mascot named after the upstate's "Shoeless" one.

Joe, it was fun while it lasted. Wish you didn't have to go.
Maybe we will meet again some day....but I doubt it.