It was called Sutton Stadium for a short time – named for an oilman who donated money for a major renovation of the ballpark at 15th and Yale. There was a scandal about how the money had been earned, and it became Drillers Stadium.
The Tulsa Drillers don’t play there anymore, what with the fine new park downtown, but there were plenty of good times had at the old location. I didn’t realize it until now, but they plan to tear down the old park.
Kind of sad.
I’ll still have the memories I suppose, but I can’t help feeling something is lost when a place disappears, a spot where so many people came together to enjoy themselves.
Folks have asked me about the significance of a baseball I have in a clear cube near the checkout counter. It’s signed. A nice signature of someone no one has heard of. He played for the Arkansas Travelers and one of his foul balls went skyward near the first base dugout.
That’s where my wife and I were sitting, enjoying an afternoon Drillers game – sort of a rare thing for us, but she had tickets for great seats courtesy of her employer.
Everyone was craning back, watching as the ball finally reached the peak of its flight and started coming back down.
Hmm, I thought. That’s going to come down over here.
I kept watching it – I mean, it was a HIGH pop foul – and when I finally realized that it was going to land in our section it was too late.
Almost.
Without really thinking about it (didn’t have time to make a plan), I stabbed my hand out over my wife’s head and the baseball smacked into my palm. Immediately, I understood why ballplayers wear leather gloves.
The next evening my wife related how she overheard someone in the break room talking about the Driller’s game, and how someone had caught a foul ball an instant before it would have hit his wife’s head.
“That was me!” she told them.
And that’s the story of our personal, but fleeting, baseball fame at Drillers Stadium, and how I came to own an Officials Drillers Baseball signed by a now-forgotten Arkansas Traveler.
The kids and I used to enjoy games (although they might have enjoyed the ballpark ice-cream-in-a-tiny-plastic-helmet more than the action) – we sat near the third base dugout until I realized that those rocketing line drive fouls seemed to target that area. After that, I tried to get seats behind the screen.
My daughter was a little older when she and I went to watch Garth Brooks at one of several concerts at Drillers Stadium. I worked at a country radio station, but had never been much of a fan of the music until she widened my horizons. There was a time she would drive my car and I’d get back in to find a blasting radio at startup, blaring country music.
Once, as I was reaching to hit the station preset button, the singer hit the chorus and it punched me right between the eyes. I listened to the words and thought – He is singing about MY life. And he was. Or could have been. It turns out, a lot of country songs are that way and I became a reluctant convert.
Enough of one that I bought tickets and fought the parking and the crowd and sat with my daughter in the midst of all those Garth Brooks fans smiling and cheering and shedding tears during the sad songs. It was an experience.
There were other occasions, too. A media softball game where I discovered that I couldn’t throw a ball anymore. A Beach Boys concert. 4th of July baseball and fireworks. And I wasn’t the only one there.
A lot of us will have memories of Drillers Stadium – good memories.
But soon the stadium won’t be there anymore.
Hopefully they’ll replace it with something equally eventful that will produce a whole new set of memories for generations to come.
In the meantime – we have books about sports and books about music, so
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow, OK!