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The Charlotte Knights, a Triple A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, play in Knights Stadium in Fort Mill, SC. Fort Mill is just south of Charlotte, NC. With a game start of 7:15pm we were thinking about going out to dinner and looked out the window about 5:00pm. What we saw was a rapidly approaching very dark band of clouds from the SW. Turning on the TV we saw across the bottom a storm warning announcement and then heard the same announcement preempting the regular program. The storm hit with 65+ mph winds and accompanying torrential downpour of rain. The storm lasted for 2 hours as the front passed. We were lucky in our area, but there was widespread damage and power outages through the whole area that the storm passed through. We called the ballpark as the rain was finally letting up about 6:45 and they said that they were planning on starting the game late. We went to dinner and on to the game with it beginning at about 8:05pm. The field surprisingly was in excellent shape. The grounds crew obviously got the tarp down in time and was able to recover from the rain. Tonight was supposed to be a Boy Scout campover after the game, but it was postponed until later in May. Troop 82 from Cornelius, NC provided the colors for the national anthem. Because is was rather dark, still overcast, some of the pictures did not come out very well. The concrete stadium was built in 1990 and seats 10,002. It has flags flying from the top so it somewhat resembles a medieval castle. The Knights were playing the Rochester Red Wings. The game was back and forth for a while, but the Red Wings pulled ahead in the 7th for the last time and really stomped the Knights 16-6. There were 10 homeruns tonight, 7 by the Red Wings, which was surprising in the heavy, damp air. The box score was Red Wings R-16, H-15, E-1 and Knights R-6, H-11, E-0. The field lines are RF-325', RC & LC-347', CF-400', and LF-325'. Cal Ripken, Jr. played in Charlotte in the 1980 season and his picture is featured on the front of the stadium. Each seating section has the same colored two seats on each side of the section so you can find your section by color as well as number. Homer the dragon is the mascot. There is a restaurant in the upper glassed-in area above the press box. That is really a baseball water tower, not a huge baseball flying over the trees. We passed another water tower on the way to Greenville that was painted like a peach, which would be perfect for the story "James and the Giant Peach".
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