LYBRAND WAS PART OF PAW CREEK'S BASEBALL LORE

(copy of 2003 Charlotte Observer article by Ron Green Sr.)

Houses bloom where once there was an infield. What is it that song says, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"?

The visit was prompted by the obituary that said Craig Lybrand had died last week. He was one of the Paw Creek boys. He didn't make it as far as some of them did in baseball but he was something of a legend around here for decades. Back then, around the '40's and '50's, if you played ball in the Carolinas, people knew your name.Paw Creek might have turned out more good baseball players per square foot than anyplace else in the country.

Paul Campbell came from there. He played first base for Boston and Detroit back in the 1940's and was later traveling secretary with Cincinnati. Whitey Lockman came from there, left to play ball when he was 16 years old, homered in his first at-bat with the New York Giants, played in two World Series (he scored from second on Bobby Thomson's historic home run) and later managed the Chicago Cubs.

Pete Whisenant, another Paw Creek kid, played eight seasons as an outfielder with several major-league teams. Ken Wood came off the same dusty fields to play for the St. Louis Browns. And Tommy Helms followed them, playing in the same Cincinnati infield and rooming with Pete Rose. Lybrand was Whisenant's brother-in-law, played midget league ball against Lockman and played American Legion ball with Wood.

There were plenty more growing up on Paw Creek's two mill villages who could play the game but didn't quite make it to the top. Looking back on it several years ago, Helms said, "Paw Creek. We talked the game all the time. We had some fine players in the Paw Creek area who turned pro but didn't quite make it to the bigs."

Craig Lybrand was one of them. He signed with the old Washington Senators organization and in the late 1940's played for the Orlando Senators and the Charlotte Hornets and briefly with Concord. He decided to give up pro ball to spend more time at home, took a job with the Highland Park mill and played semi-pro ball for several seasons in the Piedmont Textile League.

For many years, the shortstop from the Paw Creek mill village was never off the sports pages for long. He was a baseball player in a time when baseball ruled, in a place where it seemed every town had a team.

He played for Paw Creek High, transferred to the urban Central High and there played in the first game at Griffith Park, an exhibition between Central and the pro Hornets. Griffith Park is no longer there, either, swept away to make room for houses. When Lybrand lost his ride to school, he moved back to Paw Creek High, which, by the way, is also gone.

Lybrand's wife Dorothy and daughter Lyn Feezor have saved a box of autographed baseballs and a well-worn bat, relics of his playing days.

The balls and the bat seem to whisper to you of summer days, of dusty diamonds and kids growing up in Paw Creek fielding hot grounders and snagging liners and ripping triples out to the trees and dreaming dreams that really would come true.

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Ron Green Sr. is a retired Observer columnist.