“Cleveland County’s Community Newspaper”
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Tracy Whisnant 704-477-7391
www.shelbyinfo.com Our 43RD Year • Issue No. 28 • July 16, 2026
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Ballpark built for Pro Baseball is Shelby’s third Legion baseball home and the permanent home of ALWS By Richard Walker Shelby’s love affair with American Legion baseball is well-documented. But 50 years ago, this past March, the city built a venue that would eventually help make it the permanent home of the American Legion World Series. Ironically, the stadium wasn’t originally built for Legion ball at all. The push came from then-Kings Mountain mayor and former Western Carolina League president John Henry Moss, who wanted to lure minor league baseball back to Shelby. A year before Shelby cut consecutive twoyear contracts with the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, and New York Mets to host Western Carolinas League and South Atlantic League teams from 1977 to 1982, the new stadium was already being broken in by Shelby High School and Shelby American Legion Post 82. Then called Veterans Field — renamed Veterans Field at Keeter Stadium in 2002 — it replaced two fields that are no longer used for baseball. After a groundbreaking in November 1974,excitement built quickly for a stadium designed to be impressive enough to host professional baseball. “Oh my goodness, there’s no comparison between when I played and now,” said Arey Poston, who first visited as a Crest High outfielder in the spring of 1976 before suiting up for Post 82 that summer. “It’s definitely worthy of pro-
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Veteran's Field at Keeter Stadium from an aerial view of a recent American Legion World Series game. (Photo provided) fessional ball.” Shelby High School opened the facility on a frigid March 17, 1976 afternoon, defeating Kings Mountain 8–2. The original dimensions — 330 feet down the lines, 360 feet in the alleys, and 395 feet to straightaway center — made home runs a genuine rarity. Poston would later hit the first Legion home run at the park. The head coach for Post 82 that inaugural summer was Tommy Pruett, a 1965
Shelby High graduate who had played for Gardner-Webb Junior College’s 1967 World Series team and Appalachian State’s 1969 NAIA World Series team. His coaching career at Burns High School included more than 353 girls’ basketball victories, over 100 baseball wins, and a role on the football staff when Burns captured the N.C. 3A state title in 1994. “There’s a lot of great memories there for me,” Pruett
said. “The ballpark was really nice, and it was bigger than any other that we played in.” His 1976 Post 82 roster pulled from Burns, Crest, and Shelby, going 10–2 in Area IV League 2 play to claim the regular season title. After falling behind 2–0 in a bestof-five series against Forest City Post 74, Shelby rallied to win three straight — only the fourth comeback of its kind in Area IV history — before Hickory ended the run in the
next round. Considering everything that has followed — the Legion championships, the high school and college games, the six-year run of professional baseball, and ultimately a permanent home for the American Legion World Series — breaking ground at that Dixon Boulevard site in November 1974 stands as one of the best business decisions in Cleveland County history.
General Admission tickets available NOW at #ALWS26
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