Asheville Tourists / McCormick Field

They've played under the Tourists name, on and off, since 1915 — when local sportswriters stopped calling the team the Mountaineers and started calling them what they were, visitors in a town that lived on visitors. Professional baseball came to Asheville in 1897; the Tourists moniker stuck because it was true. The current club has held the field at McCormick since 1976, when a Western Carolinas League expansion team took up the name after the Orioles moved to Charlotte. Asheville won three South Atlantic League championships — 1984, 2012, 2014 — and before that, earlier Tourists teams won four more.

McCormick Field opened in 1924. It seats 4,000. The stadium was renovated in 1959, again in 1992, and is currently being renovated through 2026. The club is affiliated with the Houston Astros; before that, the Colorado Rockies and the Texas Rangers.

The stadium has that classic Carolinas profile — one of the oldest professional ballparks in continuous use. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson all played here. *Bull Durham* filmed here. In 1968, the Tourists won the Southern League championship under manager Sparky Anderson, who went on to manage the Reds and Tigers for 26 years.

In the 1940s, McCormick Field was shared by the Tourists and the Asheville Blues, an independent Negro leagues team. When the South Atlantic League returned in 1959 after a hiatus, fans voted overwhelmingly to keep the Tourists name. The team is owned now by the DeWine family. Brian DeWine runs it as president. They paid $7 million for the club in 2010.

You go because it's High-A ball played in a ballpark where a century's worth of professionals learned how to hit a curveball, and because the stands still fill with people who know what they're watching.