The sun sets on Buck Bowman Park in Clover Hill, Virginia as a member of the Broadway Bruins of the Rockingham County Baseball League warms up in the bullpen. Photo courtesy of Martha Gisriel.
This blog entry falls under the heading of a picture being worth 1,000 words. We attended the Clover Hill v. Broadway game this past Tuesday and after telling Martha that the photo wouldn’t look as good as what we were seeing in person, she took this gem.
This photo captures magic and magic cannot be explained, so you either get it or you don’t. I hope you do.
Oh, and for my baseball lovers out there, you owe it to yourself to attend a game at Buck Bowman Park. You drive southwest of Harrisonburg through ever deepening farmland, when suddenly, you’ve arrived in 1954. That was the year that the park was built and nothing seems to have changed. The quirky wooden fence surrounds and protects a timeless place.
Austin Gisriel 
Well, I am old enough to remember Buck Bowman and to have played in a Little League game there in about 1961 and the RCBL a few years later.. This ballpark is truly a gem. I particularly love how the pick up trucks back up to the outfield fence. Talk about suites! Another notable feature is how close homeplate and the catcher are to the wooden stands. When you are seated behind homeplate, you are totally enclosed and looking right at the umpire’s back. All serious baseball fans should trek to this classic ballpark.
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Hunter, I sincerely doubt that anything has changed since 1961, at least as far as the field itself. You can’t get closer to the action than at this park.
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It was fun calling games from the Clover Dome, where the salty exchanges between the hitter and umpire are about 12 feet away. The corrugated metal press box, complete with school bus seat for 2, adds to the fact that baseball doesn’t care about luxury or pretense. Dig in and Play Ball!
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Nope, there is no pretense at the Clover Dome!
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