Hunt Field

Maryville-Alcoa was a rung on Willie Kirkland's climb. Born in Siluria, Alabama, and raised in Detroit, he signed with the New York Giants out of high school in 1952. On April 15, 1958, he played right field and batted cleanup behind Willie Mays in the first game the Giants ever played in San Francisco, and singled in a run. He hit 27 home runs for Cleveland in 1961 and 148 across nine major-league seasons, then six seasons in Japan with the Hanshin Tigers, where he hit 126 more.

What the plaque says

Hunt Field Hunt Field was the home of the Maryville-Alcoa Twins baseball team that won the 1953 Class-D Mountain States League Pennant. This 1,750-seat ballpark, built in the 1940s, averaged an attendance of about 1,550 for 62 home games. Major league teams owned several players' contracts. During the era of segregation, the Twins had two African-American players, infielder George Giles and outfielder Willie Kirkland. They helped Blount County begin the process of dismantling racial barriers before desegregation court orders and civil rights legislation of the 1960s. The Mountain States League disbanded in 1954.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blount Mansion — 11 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 12 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Cades Cove — 17 mi
  A Smokies valley ringed by mountains, once the Cherokee hunting ground of Tsiyahi and later a farming community of 685 people, kept by the park after its families were bought out.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 21 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.

More markers nearby

• Louis Philippe's Visit — 3.4 mi
• Where Houston Enlisted — 3.4 mi
• Maryville College — 3.5 mi
• William Bennett Scott, Sr. ca. 1821-1885 — 3.6 mi