D-Braves fans help to fuel championship season

Paul Runge was tossed out of a game in the week leading up to Danville’s Appalachian League Championship Series with Elizabethton, and the situation presented the longtime D-Braves manager with an unusual opportunity.

“I had an opportunity to watch as an outsider when I got thrown out the other night by an umpire, and deservedly so,” Runge said after the title-clinching victory. “I kind of argued balls and strikes more than I should have. But I actually had a chance to sit back and kind of watch this team from a distance, and I said to myself that night, ‘Man, we’re pretty good. We’ve got a pretty good club.’ And it was a fun group of guys to watch. The crowd was really into the game. I think they felt for a while that this was a pretty good ball club. I think that there was a feeling amongst the people.”

Danville finished second in the Appalachian League in total paid attendance this summer, with 35,743 fans spread out over 33 home games. That total does not include Game 2 of the ALCS, when 1,241 turned out to see the D-Braves clinch their second title in team history, and first at home, a week ago today. Dan Daniel Park has a capacity of 2,588.

Greeneville finished tops in the league this summer with 49,293 fans in 34 games.

In 11 of the team’s 16 seasons in Danville, the D-Braves have finished in the top two in attendance in the Appy League. They led the league in attendance in each of the team’s first seven seasons and drew the second-most fans in 2003 and in each of the last three seasons. Danville finished third in the league in 2002 and from 2004-06.

“That factored in,” Runge said, speaking about the home field advantage generated by the fans. “We won the first one on the road and it was very gratifying to be able to win one in front of the Danville folks here. They’ve been hanging in there a long time and we finally were able to do it at home, and it’s nice.

“I can’t say enough about how fun it was this year, not only for me personally, being able to fill out that lineup card every night knowing that we had a chance to win every night. I honestly felt, taking the field every night that we had a chance to win the game. It was that kind of year. And I know it was for our staff, as well. We just had a lot of confidence in these guys. They had confidence in themselves. They had a little bit of swagger.”

That swagger came in part because of the environment in which these players were able to compete. Boisterous crowds showing up en masse to watch these players compete professionally is something that many of these rookie-level players had never experienced, having only played in instructional league games, or at small colleges, or even in high school before stepping foot on the playing surface at Dan Daniel Park.

“These fans have been great to us all year. We’ve had a big crowd almost every day,” D-Braves shortstop Mycal Jones said after winning the Appy League title. “Everybody knew it was going to be big today, being Thirsty Thursday (half price drinks) and that we could win a championship here tonight. It was a lot of fun winning here. I’m not going to lie. I was at shortstop that last inning getting chills. It was unbelievable. A lot of fun.”

Brett Oberholtzer, who pitched a complete-game shutout in the decisive contest, knew how important that home field advantage truly was for Game 2, and then again for Game 3, if it were necessary.

“Once we found out it was going to be in Danville, the first game meant a lot and then we knew it was just going to go two,” he said. “From the second we stepped in that dugout … there was no doubt we were going to win this game. You could see it in everybody’s faces that we wanted this game more than anything.”

He was speaking about his teammates at that point, but the Danville faithful felt the same way.

Runge became emotional after the game, after addressing his wild-eyed team and getting clobbered with a cooler of ice water.

“It’s really special, especially because we’re able to do it here at home,” he said. “… It’s a great evening, man. It’s a great day.”

It was a day, and a season, that will be remembered in Danville for a long, long time.