Today is opening day for the Down East Wood Ducks. With a change in coaching staff and new additions to the team, the Wood Ducks are aiming high this season.
After a middling season last year, the Wood Ducks hope to pull ahead this year in the Carolina League with the help of new coach Carlos Maldonado and four top prospects for the Texas Rangers, their MLB affiliate.
Pitcher Brock Porter is one of those prospects.
“As a big young group of guys, we want to play loud and have fun out there and give it our all,” Porter said.
It's not Coach Maldonado's first year with the Wood Ducks. Three years ago he left his position as a development coach with the Woodies for a head coaching position in Arizona.
“We have a pretty good team, they’re young but they know how to play the game. They’re gonna play hard for the fans. And we’re excited to get the season going,” he said.
Also this weekend, the Minor League baseball team is celebrating 75 years of professional baseball. The Down East Wood Ducks play at Grainger Stadium, which has hosted a number of teams, and sports, through the decades and is one of the oldest Minor League stadiums in the nation. It opened in 1949, hosting the state’s Class A baseball state championships, where Kinston’s Grainger High School won.
As the team has switched ownership over the years, the stadium has hosted several teams, including the Kinston Eagles, then Expos and then Indians. It’s also hosted the Negro league team Kinston Grays during segregation and the 1970 state football championship game won by Adkin High, a segregated all-Black school.
Shivar Person does group sales and is an unofficial historian of sorts for the Woodies. He’s made videos that will play throughout the night to share the stadium’s history.
“Each inning will honor something different, something new,” Person said.
Vietnam war veteran and POW Captain Eugene McDaniel will throw Saturday’s opening pitch. McDaniel was on Kinston 1949 championship team.
The Wood Ducks play the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers tonight through Saturday. Opening pitch tonight is at 7:00 pm.
Start time for Saturday's anniversary game and celebration is set for 5 p.m.
