HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — John Tatum fondly remembers the days of the Huntsville Stars.
The superfan went to the very first Huntsville Stars game. That night in April 1985 gave him a very special memory.
“It was a quite unreal experience cause at the time my parents were probably in the 70s and 80s and that was the only baseball game that four of us went to in our life,” Tatum said. “It was quite memorable just for the fact that my parents were there to see it.”
Tatum said even before seeing the Stars, he was over the moon about the professional baseball coming to town because it gave him an alternative to high school and college baseball.
“I always loved baseball, and when I first heard the Stars were going to come to Huntsville, it was like a dream come true,” Tatum said. “I couldn’t wait for it to happen, so once it happened, I just got hooked on it.”
During that first season, the Stars had a young, breakout, Cuban stud named Jose Canseco. Tatum was among the fans who gave Canseco his nickname in the Tennessee Valley.
“When he’d hit a ball, we used to have trees past the outfield fence,” Tatum said. “Sometimes his balls looked like they went over the trees to the parkway, and that’s how he got the name Parkway Jose.”
Forty years later, Tatum still loves baseball and has an unreal collection of Stars memorabilia, everything from a bed filled with hats, binders filled to the brim with cards and tickets, numerous jerseys and even old scorebooks from thousands of games spent at Joe Davis Stadium.
He attends most Trash Pandas games and still keeps score, an art that he says keeps him focused during the game. The scorecards already filled out help him preserve and remember the history on the diamond.
“I had always done it. I just kind of started on my own. I’m not exactly the professional type, I just do it for fun,” Tatum said. “I stay focused more that way.”
Each card, hat and jersey that fills his home reminds him of professional baseball in Huntsville and his love for the Stars that started on that opening night four decades ago.
The post Starstruck: Superfan fondly remembers the Huntsville Stars appeared first on WHNT.
