Fenway Park opened its doors on April 9, 1912, and has hosted Boston fans for more than 100 years. Two years and three days later Wrigley Field hosted its first game in Chicago.

While both household-name ballparks have stood the test of time, neither of them can boast the title of the longest continuously used ballpark in America.

Sims-Galle Baseball Field in Mobile, Alabama can.

Located on the campus of Spring Hill College, Sims-Galle Baseball Field has been the home for Badger baseball games since 1889. But the full story of the field goes back further than its first game. And for that, we need Father Viscardi.

Father Christopher Viscardi, a professor and Chair of the Theology Department at Spring Hill, is the “resident historian” of the college. He started working there in January 1979, and while not a huge sports fan himself, he knows a thing or two about the field.

Helen Barnes-Rielly needed something to do besides tend cows in Todd, North Carolina.

Her husband Jack, a Todd native, had convinced her a decade ago to move to the unincorporated town on the banks of the New River between Boone and West Jefferson in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but there wasn’t much of a plan on what she could do when she got there.

Jack had an office on the second floor of the Todd Mercantile, a 19^th Century wooden structure with a front porch, bakery and art gallery, among other amenities a sprawling community of about 2,100 might need.

Sometimes, things just work out.

By all accounts, Shirley’s Soul Food shouldn’t work.

No customers showed up to the grand opening. The restaurant is run by Shirley Combs, whose main career is driving a Stephens County school bus every day. It’s all she can do after her morning shift to come in and cook everything in time to open by 11:30, only to be back on the bus at 2. 

The 66-year-old Toccoa native says she hasn’t been anywhere — save for regular trips to the Chick-Fil-A down the road in Lavonia to get ice cream. 

But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and Combs’ story has reached across the country. After an opening in 2000 where her only customers were homeless, Shirley’s Soul Food has become a Northeast Georgia institution over the last two decades.

Just because a race track is lost doesn’t mean it can’t endure.

With the right amount of dedication and community support, even a dormant track can be turned into something special. In the tiny farm town of Baldwin in Northeast Georgia, that is exactly what has happened at Banks County Speedway.

The track’s story seemed to end more than 50 years ago, but its founding family has refused to let it go and has breathed new life into this historic facility.

Join Joe VanHoose and Brandon Reed as they uncover the story of Banks County Speedway and how this lost track of Georgia was found.

It’s been 30 years since race cars have roared around Athens Speedway. Looking around the place, you can tell. 

A mature patch of woods now covers the old race track property off Jimmy Daniel Road in Athens. If you didn’t know there was a ⅜-mile dirt track and long stretch of concrete grandstands sitting in the shadows of the pines off the two-lane road, you wouldn’t even think to look.