Greenville Drive

On a hot summer day in 1908, the Greenville Spinners were set to play ball. The only problem? They were short on players. The team's coach asked one young man to lace up his cleats and hit the field, in spite of the terrible blisters he had been nursing. That young man, who had grown up working in Greenville's textile mills since his 6th birthday and playing in the mill leagues since his 13th, listened to his coach—sort of. He did indeed get out on the field, only he didn't lace up his cleats. Joseph Jackson, known simply as Joe, played that day with nothing but a pair of socks on his feet. Thus, out of Greenville, South Carolina, a baseball legend was born by the name of Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Today, Greenville's history of textile mills and its love of baseball meet at Fluor Field in downtown's West End. This 5,000-seat stadium, built in 2006 from reclaimed textile mill bricks, serves as the pulsing heart of everything both old and new in town. Even though it's recently built, the architecture blends seamlessly with the West End's historical feel. Modeled after Fenway Park, a 30-foot replica of the ""Green Monster"" sits in the outfield along with a hand-operated scoreboard. It is here that the Greenville Drive, the Class A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, gather to play ball in front of a town that embraces the rich, intertwining histories of textiles mills and baseball.