The second game of the first-ever weekend homestand of the Greenville Yard Gnomes found the Davis family in the third row at Guy Smith Stadium behind home plate.
Tim Davis sat between two of his boys, Bryce on his left, Cole on his right. Ashley Davis sat between Cole and the youngest boy, Lincoln, watching the action in the top of the seventh inning on Sunday evening.
The Grimesland family attended the home opener on Friday as well because they are hosting one of the new team’s players, Andrew Hansen, a pitcher from Aurora, Colorado.
“They’ve been really excited to come to cheer them on,” Ashley said about the boys. “They made signs for them and everything. It’s been a lot of fun.”
The Davises were among several hundred in the grandstand at historic Guy Smith on a warm Sunday tempered by a steady breeze as the Gnomes got their inaugural season underway. About 500 attended the opener, according to the team, which also had a home game set for Memorial Day on Monday.
The city and the Coastal Plains League team set aside $1 million for renovations at the ballpark and it showed over the weekend with lots of fresh paint and shipping containers converted into air-conditioned bathrooms and concession stands along the right field line. The new $10 bleacher seats on that side were empty Sunday but awaited the next night game with taps of cold beer flowing nearby.
A cadre of fresh-faced Greenville youth and some older folks too had found summer employment tending to the fans.
Under the shade of the grandstand, where seats are $12 for most people, Tim Davis said his crew saw on Twitter that the team was looking for host families for players, who are college athletes getting their first taste of life in the minor leagues.
The Davis boys play baseball and the parents thought hosting a college student pursuing his big-league dream would be a good experience for the boys and provide them a good role model, so they signed up and got Hansen as a roommate.
Bryce, the oldest boy, has to give up his bedroom for the season, but it’s a small price for discounted tickets and merch and having a new friend stay with them. “He moved into the bonus room, which is bigger,” Dad said about Bryce. “So now he’s living large.”
Davis said hosting has been easy so far. Between travel, practice and home games, the team keeps Hansen busy. “He comes home, goes to bed, gets up, eats a little and goes to practice,” Davis said. The team provides most of his meals.
Hansen tossed a football with the boys outside one night and was the winning pitcher of record after helping the Gnomes to victory in the ninth inning of Friday’s home opener.
Davis said he and Ashley moved to the Greenville area from Pennsylvania 10 years ago. They were looking for better weather and a less hectic pace and found it here after Tim took a job with the state as a pharmacist, he said.
They have not looked back.
Ashley and Lincoln peeled off from Tim and the other boys after singing God Bless America and Take Me Out to the Ball Game in the seventh-inning stretch. They signed up to be in a dance-off on the field, among many fun activities the team hosts between innings.
The Gnomes were down 11-1 to the Peninsula Pilots of Hampton, Virginia, and couldn’t muster a run in the bottom of the seventh.
The 10-run rule ended the game in the Pilots’ favor and Ashley got out of the dance-off.
Tim said she didn’t really want to do it, anyway. At the Gnomes games, you win even when you lose.
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