There are seats that stretch the wall in left field next to the foul pole fifty feet from the opposing team’s bullpen. I was sitting four bar chairs down from the pole waiting for my friend to arrive so we could get a dog and a burger before there were any lines. I’d...
Editor’s note: With Richmond’s new CarMax Park opening soon, it felt like the right time to revisit how the Flying Squirrels first took root in the city. We had the chance to speak with Chuck Domino, the veteran minor league baseball operator during that transition. Photo of Chuck Domino (left) and Todd "Parney" Parnell (right) When Richmond’s...
Al Campanis was a scout for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1950s and 1960s. He said the hair on his arms only stood up twice in his life. Once when he saw the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the other time when he witnessed Sandy Koufax throw a fastball. Years later, baseball pundits called Koufax “The Left Arm of God,” and if God...
On Sunday afternoon, the last baseball game will be held at The Diamond after 40 years of service to a city and region and two baseball teams in what was, when it opened, “a major league park in a minor league town.” Between opening night in 1985 and the last game on Sunday is a span of 14,761 days. Through all the debates over the decades about...
Richmond’s own Garry Callis Jr. has a lot going on right now. Whether he’s lighting up the dance floor or making his mark on the golf course, he’s forging his own path and inspiring others to join him along the way. Photo courtesy of Garry Callis Jr. RVA Hard Dance Collective: A Shot of Energy for Richmond’s Dance Scene It started with an idea as...
For 30 years, Venue Skateboards has been part of the Richmond story—a skate shop that’s never been just a skate shop. Since 1994, it’s been a meeting place, a community hub, and a home for skaters from all over the city. Kim and Maury Blankenship didn’t set out to change the world; they just wanted to create a space for skaters in a town that...
If you’ve ever killed an entire afternoon on Reddit—deep in a debate on r/AskReddit, scrolling through endless memes on r/funny, or arguing about the best Star Wars movie in r/movies—you’ve been part of something that started in a small college dorm room in Charlottesville, Virginia. Yes, that Reddit. The chaotic, messy, wildly...
In a David-and-Goliath battle unfolding over Richmond’s Charged Up Entertainment, this local institution, led by hip-hop artist and entrepreneur Noah Oddo, has been locked in a long-running battle to defend its logo from the Cleveland Guardians baseball team—a story we’ve followed since 2022. Photo courtesy of Charged Up The dispute centers on...
The Richmond Flying Squirrels and CarMax have officially announced that the city’s new ballpark will be named CarMax Park. The announcement was made on Wednesday, September 4, marking a significant expansion in the partnership between the Flying Squirrels and Richmond-based CarMax, which began in 2016. The multi-year exclusive naming rights...
I had been mentally workshopping different analogies to prime you for this article, but when I asked Junebug for a thought on how to explain the phenomenon during our interview, they spontaneously conjured an image that does the reality a good bit of justice. “If you happen to be racing cars, all these NASCARs are souped up, and they’ve got a lot...
