Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina sits the historic 101-year old McCormick Field in downtown Asheville, the current home of the Houston Astros’ High-A affiliate, the Asheville Tourists. Built in 1924 and hosting a number of minor league affiliates since that time, the famed baseball park gained national attention when it was featured in the 1988 movie “Bull Durham,” which starred Kevin Costner as Crash Davis, an aging minor league catcher.
As far back as 1946 to 1955, the Asheville Tourists were a Brooklyn Dodger affiliate in Carolina’s Tri-State League that sent to Ebbets Field such players as the crafty relief pitcher Clem Labine and the beloved catcher from Bay Ridge, Joe Pignatano.
While at Asheville, the Cyclones split their six-game road trip to improve their record to 20-12, still holding on to third place in the division. One of those three wins turned out to be a memorable game for the North Carolina native Noah Hall.
Pitching in front of family and friends from Charlotte, the Mets’ 2023 seventh-round pick out of South Carolina pitched five innings, striking out seven and giving up one earned run on just two hits. After giving up an early home run and an infield single, Hall settled down and retired 14 straight batters until he reached his pitch count in the Cyclones’ 5-2 win.
Hall admitted that he didn’t have his best stuff that night.
“My best pitch, the changeup wasn’t working, so I had to rely on my sinker and cutter to get soft contact and fly balls,” he said.
Currently, Hall is the workhorse of the Cyclones’ rotation with a pitching line of 3-2, a 1.83 ERA, a 1.17 WHIP over 34 innings, and a team-leading 37 strikeouts.
“It was a real thrill to pitch so well in that historic ballpark and to have so many family members come to see me, many who were seeing me pitch for the very first time,” Hall said.
“Hall was outstanding,” said Cyclones radio broadcaster Justin Rocke. “He had roughly 20-plus family and friends at the ballpark, to the point where it felt like a Cyclone home game. It’s been very impressive to watch him execute this year after an injury-plagued season last summer.”
The road trip was also meaningful for Cyclones manager Gilbert Gomez. Taking a trip down memory lane, Gomez, a New York Met minor leaguer in 2012, revisited McCormick Field to reminisce at the site where he hit one of his two home runs that season.
“I circled that on the calendar once I saw Asheville on the schedule,” Gomez said.
Describing his own “Crash Davis moment,” the skipper detailed his own memorable home run to right center field just beyond the field’s tall signage. From his seat behind his clubhouse desk, Gomez swung his hands across his chest to demonstrate his swing, saying, “I went op-po [opposite] to right for that home run off the current L.A. Angel pitcher Tyler Anderson.”
After spending a week of calling Cyclone games at the famous southern venue, Rocke compared his Coney Island home base to Asheville, saying, “McCormick Field is so extremely unique and quite literally the antithesis of Maimonides Park. It’s a beautiful park cut right into the Blue Ridge Mountains with residential houses beyond the fence in right with many future improvements to come for 2026.”
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