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Zell B. Miller Field
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| Zell B. Miller Field is One of the Best NJCAA Facilities in the Nation |
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History
Get Directions to Zell B. Miller Field
Exerpt from "Mountain to Hill" written by The Washington Post: Staff Writer, Steve Hendrix on October 17, 2002
Miller steers his pickup through the low-rise brick buildings of Young Harris College just across the street from his house. He drives past Zell B. Miller Field, the baseball stadium he raised money for with help from his friends Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle.
From the Zell B. Miller website, http://miller.senate.gov/about.htm
Zell Miller has played baseball, coached baseball, watched baseball and scoured sports pages to soak up every statistic there is about baseball. To call him a baseball fan is a huge understatement. Zell Miller is a walking baseball encyclopedia. The walls of his Senate office attest to his love of the game. There are numerous photos of his dear friends and baseball legends, Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle. There is the New York Yankees jacket signed by Mantle. There is a shelf full of autographed baseballs, including the foul ball Miller caught in the 1992 World Series. It reads, "Caught by Zell Miller, 1st World Series game, 1992. Attest: Jimmy Carter." That ball is also signed by Ted Turner, who was sitting in the box with Miller and former President Carter, and by the player who hit it, Deion Sanders. |
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| Senator Miller with Hall of Famer, Hank Aaron at the Dedication of Zell B. Miller Field |
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The following is a speech Senator Miller delivered in 1994 at a preview for Ken Burns' documentary on baseball.
Courtesy of http://miller.senate.gov/about.htm
Remarks for Preview of Ken Burns' Baseball Special
Atlanta, Georgia
July 30, 1994
By Zell Miller
I would like to thank the Atlanta Braves for sponsoring this special preview. We can only imagine what a treat this series is going to be for a team that is part of the story.
My entire life has been built around the rhythms of baseball. From the time that I was ten years old until this morning's sports page, I have followed this sport with fanatical zeal. I sat in the bleachers at the old Ponce de Leon field and watched young Billy Goodman and Eddie Matthews of the Atlanta Crackers, as they made their way to the big leagues, where Goodman was an American League batting champion and Matthews was a Hall of Famer.
Neither one was my favorite Atlanta Cracker, though. Country Brown was. He could fly, and he was the best drag bunter there ever was. But he only got to the big leagues for a few games, and later went home to the textile mills of Northwest Georgia.
Talking about the textile mills, they were the source of a very good and exciting brand of baseball. That's where I played on the old mill teams and town teams of local communities.
I can still remember how my chest filled with pride when at 16 I made the town team, playing with men much older than I, and got my first real uniform. You see, there were no well-financed Little League teams in those days. That uniform was gray wool and scratchy, and on the back it said "M.C. Hood Gen. Merchandise" with a number 4. |
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| The Young Harris Baseball Players Get Some Words of Wisdom from Hank Aaron |
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The happiest days of my life were spent on the skinned infields of North Georgia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Sometimes we would ride in the back of a pick-up truck to the games. When we played at home -in the days before television- huge crowds would turn out on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to cheer the local team. When someone hit a home run, they would pass the hat and present the hero with a pocket full of change and wadded up dollar bills.
Later, I coached -- with winning seasons, by the way -- at Young Harris College. Just last year I got Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron to come to a dinner at the Governor's Mansion, and we raised $60,000 for a new ball field at the college.
Talking about Hank, I went with him a couple of years ago to Cooperstown. I had gone there earlier with my friend and fellow mountaineer Johnny Mize, the Big Cat, when he was inducted. But I went there with Hank to be with the Legends of Negro Baseball. That's when I met Buck O'Neil, who honors us with his presence tonight, and I shouted with glee, Ken, when I saw Buck was going to be a part of this project. And I met others -- Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe -- ever heard of him? He'd pitch the first game of a double header, then catch the second one.
Baseball endures because its myth and statistics endure. It is constant. Winning 20 games or batting .300 is still the same measure of excellence today as it was before I was born.
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| Game Time at Zell B. Miller Field |
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Someone wiser than I am once wrote that whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. How true. I doubt that many football fans can say how many touchdown passes Fran Tarkenton threw, or that many basketball fans can say how many goals Wilt Chamberlain scored. But all real baseball fans know that Ted Williams hit .400, and Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record of 714 home runs.
In many ways, baseball is a simple game that anyone can follow and enjoy. It is also a complex game. I once read that somebody computed 18,000 different situations that players have to react to without thinking.
Another thing to think about with this game: Failure is the norm. Babe Ruth struck out twice in one inning 32 times. Hank Aaron ground into more double-plays than any other player. Nolan Ryan lost more games than all but seven pitchers in major league history. Yet they are all Hall of Famers. That's the essence of baseball, and of life -- how you deal with failure.
So you see that is why I, as a historian and a fan, was so thrilled when I learned that the same creative genius who kept us spell bound and touched our souls with his "Civil War" series, had turned his remarkable talents to baseball.
Traditionally, filmmakers have approached documentaries as if they were an extended version of a story from the network news. The dates and facts were pieced together and laid out in a straightforward, cut-and-dried fashion. But Ken Burns has redefined the word "documentary," and given it a deeper and richer meaning. He goes beyond the simple piecing together of well-chosen material and puts us inside the story. To him, a faded black-and-white photo from an old scrapbook is not a historical relic, but a freeze-frame in an ongoing, moving drama. And he looks for a way to bring it to life and catch up the viewer in the motion and emotion of the drama it represents.
He collected more than 150 recordings of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in every conceivable musical style, so that he could communicate every emotional nuance of the game.
In a Ken Burns documentary, the facts come alive. We learn how it felt to be there, and we come to a new level of understanding of how things happened and why.
I am looking forward to his "Baseball" series with great anticipation, because I expect to gain a deeper understanding of the game and its development. But also because I expect that his "Baseball" is going to give us a good look at 150 years of American history from a new and interesting angle.
It is my great pleasure to present to you a Red Sox fan who, in the course of working on this exceptional series, took his baseball nickname from the legendary Ted Williams -- Ken "The Kid" Burns.
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| Coach Robinson and Hank Aaron |
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Left Field Line: 315 ft.
Left Center Gap: 365 ft.
Deep Center Field: 406 ft.
Right Center Gap: 365 ft.
Right Field Line: 330 ft.
Seating Capacity: 450 patrons
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