Atrium Ballpark

Formal and informal teams abounded in early Kannapolis, even achieving championship success in the case of the 1926 Kannapolis Ball Club.[1] In the 1930s, the Kannapolis Towlers joined the Carolina Textile League, a baseball league made up of teams from other mill towns like Concord, China Grove, and Landis. Again, the YMCA partnered with Cannon Mills to sponsor the team.[2]

Sponsoring sports teams was vital for mills in the early 20th century. Not only were they a powerful tool for advertising and recruitment, but they also served as a valuable tool to keep mill workers occupied and happy during their leisure time.[3] Additionally, organized sports taught discipline to mill workers and their families, mill owners believed. Mill owners were known to lure exceptionally skilled players away from rival teams, offering them very lucrative jobs inside the mill in exchange for switching teams.[4] Winning was that important to the industry leaders. Through structured sports, athletes would learn obedience to authority (their coaches), obedience to written rules, and the importance of putting in extra effort to succeed, or so mill owners believed.[5] Knowing this, seeing the mill’s involvement with baseball teams in Kannapolis, and its funding of the YMCA comes as no surprise. For mill villages, sports teams were a benefit to both workers and owners.

Atrium Ballpark is the culmination of a century of baseball in Kannapolis. The home of the Kannapolis Cannonballers, formerly the Intimidators, Atrium Ballpark serves as an anchor for downtown Kannapolis. The announcement of the construction of the ballpark spurred rapid investment in downtown Kannapolis and acted partly as a catalyst for the recent renovations of the West Avenue shops. Additionally, a large parking deck under a 200+ room apartment complex is being built just yards away from the ballpark.[6] The ballpark is open to the public for free when events or games are not underway, and concessions can be purchased at various hours of the day. Its open structure and integration on West Avenue, with shops just across the median, Atrium Ballpark looks to serve as the economic anchor for the revitalization of downtown Kannapolis. The park also features a playground for children and a splash fountain for those steamy summer days when guests want to cool off.

[1] Kannapolis: A Pictorial History, 58-9.

[2] Kannapolis: A Pictorial History, 74.

[3] Christopher B. Daly, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Mary Murphy Lu Ann Jones, and James Korstad, Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 135.

[4] Thomas Hudson Cartledge III, "Recollections: Life in South Carolina Mill Villages," Clemson University, 2019. https://librarylink.uncc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.librarylink.uncc.edu/dissertations-theses/recollections-life-south-carolina-mill-villages/docview/2343285961/se-2?accountid=14605,” 20.

[5] Hall… [et. al.], 136.

[6] Wright, Jarah. “Ballpark Preview: Atrium Health Ballpark.” Ballpark Digest, May 12, 2020. https://ballparkdigest.com/2020/05/08/ballpark-preview-atrium-health-ballpark/.